The Biggest SNES Ever Made! - SNES Counter Tester - Rerez

It's the 1990s and your Super Nintendo breaks what do you do?! Do you take your damaged video game system to some independent video game store run by some mom ‘n’ pop that don't really know how to fix it or maybe you take it to some big retail chain where they know how to sell you a lot of video game systems but they actually don't know how to fix them either?! I’ll tell you what you do you take it to a Nintendo authorized service center where they'll be able to fix it pretty quickly and they really won't tell you how. Well here's how they did it. This is the Super Nintendo Counter Tester.

Modern video game consoles are treated pretty much like miniature computers. Every single console has kind of the same components like hard drives, optical drives and in many cases they use the same input and output ports like USB and HDMI. But the game systems in the ‘90s like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were very different. Each video game console used proprietary devices and components, cables and technology that were completely different from their competitor. This became a problem because anybody that needed to repair or test the systems had to pretty much take on a full education to figure out how each console worked and what was needed to fix it. So what's the solution? Make a counter tester system to test out all the available components on any of your systems. What you're looking at right here is the Super NES Counter Tester. This system was created in 1994 specifically to test out the components and all the devices attached to a Super Nintendo. The most common problems with the Super Nintendo don't actually reside within the hardware itself but what actually happens is pieces attached to the system would break down. Things like the A/V cable, the power cable, the controllers.

The instructions that came with the Super NES Counter Tester are incredibly easy to read so anyone with the basic knowledge of video games or realistically somebody that would be working at a retail center would be able to test out any component for the Super Nintendo. They'd be able to quickly identify any problems that the console may have and replace the component easily. This makes it a big money saver for people who just needed a replaced cable or controller. The Super NES Counter Tester wasn't the first counter tester that Nintendo made. There's also a variation of this exact same machine that is made for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. You can even see on this machine that there are pieces missing that would be used for NES connections and cables. The concept of a test console really wasn't that new at the time. Atari had its own test console for the Atari 2600 several years earlier. I personally believe that's where Nintendo got the idea to make their own test units for the NES and Super Nintendo. I also think that this is one of the biggest reasons why Nintendo had so much success in the ‘90s. They were able to identify some very basic retail concerns that would happen over the years to their systems and address them in the simplest way possible. Nintendo's competitors at the time may have made their own test systems but each one looked like hardened development units that were very difficult to figure out and understand.

Nintendo’s straightforward consumer focused simplicity was extended into its retail operations which provided an amazing leverage over its competitors. The only reason we don't see these kind of systems anymore is due to a better use of universal components. Everybody pretty much uses the same bits and pieces now which is much better for consumers and console producers. But the SNES tester and many other systems like it remain an interesting rarity from a now long past era that ushered video games into the mainstream.

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