SNES 1991

 `When I was sick with the flu, I stayed in my room and solved all the old games I have -- 1, 2, 3," Danny Cook says. "It's time to move on."

The people at Nintendo of America know their children. Players have been going around the block with Mario for years now. They are ready to take the next step.

We invited several Nintendo followers, ranging in age from 6 to 15, to test- ride the new 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (courtesy of Toys "R" Us) and to let us know why this game is a must, why they can't just live with their old, tired, outdated setup. Is it so much better that we should be happy to dish out $200 and start fresh?

"Yes, it is," says Josh Shore, 15. He finds it superior to everything on the market, including Sega's Genesis, the first 16-bit game, introduced in 1989. "Everything has 16 channels to go through instead of eight. Automatically things get bigger and bigger. If you're coming at an object real fast, the system is capable of making it smoother, not choppy like the old one. There's a lot more depth."

Josh bought the system when it came out about a month ago, so he's already an expert. But most of our test panel is experiencing Super Mario World -- the new game included with the new system -- for the first time.

"The graphics are so much better," Chris McKinley says, as if mimicking a TV commercial.

But what does that mean?

"The clouds look different," says Chris, 8.

It's hard to imagine the kids will be able to sell their parents on that fact alone.

"Look at Mario," Josh says. "How cartoonish he is."

"Looks like the same old Mario to me," says Christine McKinley, who accompanied her son to this tryout. "He's exactly the same, a little wormy guy."

"Mom, you don't know," Chris says, as if she has no right to comment. "She never plays at home."

And that's what it comes down to. Mario may be just a wormy little guy to the naked eye, but when you're trained in the art of Nintendo, when you've spent hours and hours running his butt all around the universe, he's ... he's not just a little wormy guy.

"There's Yoshi, there's Yoshi," Danny is yelling as he maneuvers Mario through a drainage pipe. This is the first time he has played the new game, but he seems to identify with everything popping up.

"I've known Yoshi all my life," he says.

It's not hard to comprehend how big a part Nintendo plays in Danny's life, and he's trying to convince himself that it's not going to be too tough to sell his dad on the new system. "He sometimes takes my Gameboy (portable Nintendo) to work with him," Danny says. "I picture him in a board meeting staring down at the screen and looking up after a half-hour and saying, `Oh, yes, I agree completely.'"

One facet of the new game that everyone agrees is superior is the sound.

"Yeah, what is it about the sound?" asks Caitlin Walsh, 12, lifting her ears to those arcade bleeps spitting out rabid circus tunes.

Johnny Vitolo, 10: "I like the way it sounds."

Brian Stevens, 6: "It sounds good."

"I believe it has a separate sound processor," Josh says. "I think."

To the naked ear, the music may sound as if it were composed by hamsters in their exercise wheels in the middle of the night, but when you're trained in the art of ...

"Don't forget this one has more buttons on the controls," Caitlin says. "I haven't figured them all out yet but they're there."

"And it has battery storage," Josh says, "so you can leave off at a certain level and it will save what you've done."

"Yeah, so if you have to go to the store or something you won't lose everything. With the old one, you could only do that with Zelda," Danny says.

The case is building for this new machine. Mario is more cartoonish, the clouds are different, the sound is magnificent, it has a great memory and there are more buttons.

But the parents in the room are still skeptical. "Dad, definitely buy this," Johnny says. "It's way better."

"Way better," his father, Dennis, says. "I don't think so."

"I'm trying to get him to go out more," Dennis whispers. They were making some progress.

Brian, who has had the original Nintendo for about a year, has one thing to say about it: "No good anymore."

In spite of all this talk about the old, useless Nintendo, Danny has an announcement to make: "I don't think the new one's gonna be big. Everyone already has the old one and they've been building up their collection of games for a long time."

That's a very rational statement from Danny but, of course, he has to own one. "Could you call my parents and tell them I have to have one of these because ..." And it sounds as if the debate over whether it will sell is already over.

Josh had to put his name on a waiting list to get his a few weeks ago, and Gary Dunn, a Toys "R" Us manager, says, "As soon as we get `em, they're gone."

If that's not convincing enough, Danny takes one last look at the system and says those frightening words: "I can't wait to tell my friends."

BITS OF INFORMATION

Going from an 8-bit system to a 16-bit system is "like going from a cassette player to a CD," our Nintendo spokesperson says. A "bit" is considered a basic unit of computer information, so the capacity of information the game now can hold has been doubled. This translates into the following improvements over the old Nintendo:

-- Images build faster and seem more fluid.

-- Different scrolling backgrounds create a 3-D effect.

-- Color pallet has been expanded to 32,768 colors, and sharpness has been increased dramatically.

-- Eight sound channels provide stereo digital sound that coincides more with the action. (Eerie music in ghostland, for example.)

-- Games are more advanced. There are 96 play levels. Games are designed for weeks, months and years of play instead of hours.

-- More buttons have been added to controls to improve action.

-- Memory capacity now allows a player to stop playing at the end of a certain level and return to it later.

-- There are various ways to proceed through an adventure. Play is no longer restricted.