Super Nintendo ROMs
Nintendo · 1990 · 1,404 games
Showing 1–30 of 1,404 · Most popular
This page lists 1,404 Super Nintendo (SNES) ROMs, sorted by how often each one is downloaded. The SNES was released by Nintendo in 1990. The games archived here originally came out between 1976 and 2017.
The most common genres in this library are Action, Platformer, Sports and Role-Playing. The most downloaded titles right now are Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Kart.
To play these files you need a SNES emulator — Snes9x and bsnes are the ones most people use. Each download below is a game file, not the emulator itself.
- Manufacturer
- Nintendo
- Released
- 1990
- ROMs archived
- 1,404
- Games from
- 1976–2017
- Regions
- USA, Japan and Europe
- Emulators
- Snes9x and bsnes
Super Mario World
Donkey Kong Country
Super Mario Kart
Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (EU)
Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World (EU)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Unl)
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Super Bomberman 4 (EU)
Super Metroid
Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World
Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi's Island
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV - Turtles in Time
Megaman X
Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers
Donkey Kong Country 3 - Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
Mortal Kombat 3
Chrono Trigger
Aladdin
Wesley Girl 26 (PD)
Contra III - The Alien Wars
Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past
Mortal Kombat
Super Mario RPG - Legend of the Seven Stars
EarthBound
Anime V1.1 (PD)
Killer Instinct
Kirby Super Star
Lion King
Super Castlevania IV
Doom
About the Super Nintendo
The Super Nintendo launched in 1990 into a fight it was not obviously winning. Sega's Genesis had a faster processor and a year's head start, and Nintendo's answer was to compete on everything except raw speed: a richer colour palette, hardware scaling and rotation, and an audio chip designed by Sony that gave the console a sound nothing else could imitate.
It worked. The SNES library is the reason the console is still emulated more than three decades later — the run of first-party and Square releases between 1991 and 1996 is arguably the densest concentration of quality in any single console generation.
Choosing a SNES emulator
Snes9x is the practical default: mature, fast, available on every platform and compatible with effectively the entire library. For most people it is the right choice and nothing else is needed.
bsnes and its successor ares aim for cycle-accurate emulation instead, reproducing the hardware's behaviour precisely rather than approximately. This matters for a small number of games with unusual timing and for anyone wanting accuracy over performance. It costs more CPU, which is irrelevant on modern hardware.
Special chips inside the cartridges
Several SNES games shipped with extra processors inside the cartridge itself — the Super FX chip in Star Fox and Yoshi's Island, the SA-1 in Kirby Super Star, the DSP in Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart. Emulators must reproduce these separately from the console.
Modern versions of Snes9x, bsnes and ares handle all of them. If a specific game misbehaves, an outdated emulator is the most likely cause.
File formats you will encounter
SNES ROMs appear as .sfc or .smc. The difference is a 512-byte copier header on .smc files; every current emulator detects and skips it automatically, so the two are interchangeable in practice.
Compressed .zip files work directly in most emulators without extracting.
Frequently asked questions
- Do SNES games need a BIOS?
- No. The SNES has no separate boot ROM to supply, so emulation works immediately with the game file alone.
- What is the difference between PAL and NTSC versions?
- European PAL releases usually run at 50Hz rather than 60Hz, which makes them roughly 17% slower with borders on the screen. Where both exist, the NTSC version is generally the better experience.
- Why does my game run but look stretched?
- The SNES output is not square-pixel. Setting your emulator to 4:3 or 8:7 aspect ratio restores the intended proportions.