Category:Unlicensed SNES games

Games and applications for the Super Famicom / Super NES that were produced without the permission or knowledge of Nintendo.

Pirated cartidges and unlicensed games didn't really seem to continue from the 8-bit era, as the SNES' copy-protection was much harder to circumvent. This would instead lead to the rise of the "video game copier", which utilized floppy disks instead of cartridges and effectively turned the SNES into a personal computer. This resulted in the interesting shift in the SFC/SNES scene as the line between a console and PC began blurring. Not only can it run games, but also slideshows, ezines, and demos.

Due to these shifts on how it was being used, the Super Famicom and SNES suddenly had more in common with the Amiga than the Famicom and NES to sceners. This extended to how pirated games and unlicensed software was distributed, as they were distributed in the rising medium of bulletin board systems or BBSes (think of the Internet, but very primitive).

As a consequence (including the aforementioned copy protection), few contemporary unlicensed cartridges were made during this time. In fact, there were once games that were distributed for these copiers, namely Hong Kong 97. That game had very few copies sold on its own, because it got uploaded to the internet and in turn spread like wildfire - a visage of how homebrew for the console would be published in the coming decades.

On the bright side, the lack of any viable cartridge production prevented the planned SNES version of Action 52.