Best Adventure Games on the SNES

The adventure games worth playing on the Super Nintendo start with The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger.

The SNES and Adventure Games

The best-balanced 16-bit library there is. The SNES is where the NES generation's ideas got room to breathe, and where the Japanese RPG became a genre people outside Japan cared about.

Adventure Games are a solid rather than a defining part of this library — worth knowing, but not the reason anybody owns the machine.

Filtering to adventure means the place and the story are what you want back, not the challenge. It is the right filter when the thing you remember is where you were rather than what you did.

The Adventure Games Worth Playing

  1. 1. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  2. 2. Super Metroid

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  3. 3. Chrono Trigger

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  4. 4. Final Fantasy VI

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  5. 5. Earthbound

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  6. 6. Super Castlevania IV

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  7. 7. ActRaiser

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  8. 8. Secret of Mana

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  9. 9. Super Mario RPG

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  10. 10. Final Fantasy IV

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

What Makes a Good Adventure Game

A world with a reason to wander it, and writing that survives being read rather than skipped.

Mechanical depth. Several of the best adventure games have combat that is deliberately unsatisfying, because they want your attention somewhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best adventure game on the SNES?

The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past is the usual first answer, and there are 10 in the library we cover.

Was the SNES good at adventure games?

It is a solid rather than a defining part of the library.

What counts as an adventure game?

Anywhere the story and the place matter more than the skill ceiling — point-and-click, walking sims, narrative thrillers and most open worlds. The label alone tells you very little, which is why each pick here says what it actually is.

Are adventure games long?

They split hard. Open-world adventures run to a hundred hours; the narrative ones are often finishable in an evening, and the short ones are usually the better written.

How is this list put together?

From the games this site covers on the Super Nintendo, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.

Adventure Games on Other Consoles

More From the SNES

Or browse the whole Super Nintendo library.