The Super Nintendo and its launch year games have officially turned 25-years-old today. Considered one of Nintendo’s greatest consoles ever made, on its quarter-century anniversary, it’s time to look back on what made the Super NES such a titan in game console history.

When the SNES was first released, it touted mind-blowing graphics. Of course, every console released since then has promised the same thing in increasing levels of expectation. The console exceeded expectations in its graphical prowess and its controller’s setup.

The release of Street Fighter II, at the time a Super NES exclusive, was a huge deal. Back then, fighting games were bursting into the gaming scene and drawing crowds at arcades. People gathered from all over the neighborhood for their chance to deliver the proverbial beat-down in Street Fighter II and its eventual rival Mortal Kombat. The fighting game genre was one of the first times Super Nintendo games had an advantage. The controller had six buttons, two of them were on the outer edge of the controller, and it was perfect for fighting games. Rival console maker Sega had to release their own six-button controller, boasting a more arcade-style configuration, in order to compete.

The SNES won the first round simply by not forcing its owners to go buy new controllers to play the hottest games at the time. The Sega Genesis gained its own advantage by giving Mortal Kombat gamers a chance to turn the “blood” on with a code.

This wasn’t the end of the shoulder button controller scheme. It would become a trend among the most popular consoles from that day forward. Today, the shoulder buttons are used as everything from action buttons to triggers in most first-person shooters. Yes, that feeling of actually pulling a trigger on a firearm in Call of Duty is in part due to the evolution of the Super Nintendo game controller.

Another advantage that the SNES had over its rival was the ability to rotate in-game graphics, a technical trick used in Super Mario World, and most noticeably, Super Mario Kart. The first popular combat racer in gaming history was possible due to the Super NES’ hardware. Those racing games you enjoy these days owe their realistic 3-D environments to Nintendo’s 16-bit advancements.

A video game console is nothing without its games, and the Super Nintendo had some of the biggest and most important games of its generation. Movie Pilot has released a list of its 15 greatest games ever released on the console.

Coming in last place on their list was Super Mario Kart, the game which took Mario and his friends out of the platform genre and stuck them in go-carts with weapons based on their adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom. The most infamous among them is the blue turtle shell, a weapon which can literally change the race by taking out the lead racer.

Street Fighter II Turbo was once again a game-changer among Super Nintendo games, proving that Sega gamers would need to upgrade their controllers to play when it came time for Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat to hit the shelves.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is 25 years old today! https://t.co/g6aP1WmM0U pic.twitter.com/0bxZ4wFTs8 — HBVideoGames (@HBVideoGames) November 21, 2015

When Mortal Kombat II came out, the SNES out-performed the Genesis with its richer colors and almost arcade-accurate gameplay, despite the missing “blood.”

Mega Man X was Capcom’s first port of their blue bomber onto a 16-bit console, and it gave us visuals which only made one of the best third-party titles even better.

Add in several hit RPGs like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and of course, Final Fantasy III, and it’s easy to see why Super Nintendo games helped the gaming titan dominate the market.

Happy Birthday, Super NES!

[Image via Evan-Amos/Wikimedia Commons]