10 SNES Games That Made Couch Co-Op Feel Like an Event

3 hours ago 2

Published Feb 25, 2026, 2:18 PM EST

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

Depending on how old you are, when you think of couch co-op, you may think of things like splitscreen shooters from the fifth console generation onwards. However, that generation most certainly did not invent couch co-op, it just made it flashier. Gamers have been working together on games as far back as the third generation, thanks in large part to home ports of arcade games. Even if it only had two controller ports, the Super Nintendo in particular was a top-shelf co-op console.

Best NES Games with High Replay Value Featured

10 Best NES Games With High Replay Value

Though there are plenty of amazing NES games, here are a handful with a bunch of replay value.

Nintendo has always had something of a knack for multiplayer, and this manifested on the SNES both in original games and the aforementioned arcade ports. Yeah, you couldn’t have an entire gang of buddies join you for co-op, but there was something to be said for spending the weekend with a close friend, blitzing through a SNES game together and forging an unbreakable camaraderie. If a friend invited you over to play one of these co-op games, that’d be all the impetus you’d need to bike on over. Well, that and a pizza, maybe.

10 Goof Troop

An Extremely Goofy Adventure

Like many millennials, I have plenty of fond memories of the Disney Afternoon block of cartoons, including Talespin, Darkwing Duck, and Goof Troop. Goof Troop, in particular, never felt like a series that would’ve lent itself particularly well to any game, given its sitcom-y setting, but Disney knew how to be flexible when it mattered back then, resulting in a surprisingly good SNES game.

The Goof Troop SNES game has two players assuming the roles of Goofy and Max, cast away on an island full of salty pirates. The how and why of it are immaterial, what’s important is getting out of there. The game has a top-down, screen-based view, similar to A Link to the Past, but rather than full-on combat, you primarily navigate by either avoiding enemies or chucking rocks at their heads.

Each level has a handful of environmental puzzles, which can only be solved through careful coordination and use of the appropriate pick-up items. By today’s standards, it’s rather simple, but back in the day when I was barely nine years old, playing on a tiny CRT with a friend, it felt like a mind-bending adventure like no other.

9 Legend of the Mystical Ninja

Go Go Goemon

Legend of the Mystical Ninja co-op gameplay

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja

A lot of retro games specifically depicted the adventures of single, primary protagonists, with any potential co-op characters mostly being an afterthought. However, Goemon and Ebisumaru of Legend of the Mystical Ninja (or “Kid Ying and Doctor Yang,” if you prefer), have always been a package deal, and their game reflects that in its gameplay.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja’s gameplay is divided into two segments, town exploration and platforming. During town exploration, both players can move around town freely, entering buildings to buy items or character upgrades, and play mini-games to earn more money or other handy goodies. You need to gather information in the town to find the next segment, so both players need to work together to stay on task.

In the platforming segments, players can move, jump, and attack independently, but they can also team up in a piggyback, with one player moving and the other attacking. This allows one player to focus on jumping over stuff while the other keeps enemies off your back. It’s a synergistic set of systems, as well as a generally engaging game you can lose quite a bit of time to.

8 Super Smash TV

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors

Around the early-to-mid-2000s, dual-stick shooters became one of the hallmarks of couch co-op multiplayer, with players letting loose bullets in every direction in massive arenas. If you want to thank a particular game for gracing us with that sub-genre, you can send your gratitude to Smash TV, or Super Smash TV as the SNES port was known.

Super Smash TV is a fairly straightforward top-down shooter, with both players using their D-pads and face buttons to move and shoot in four directions independently. The two of you are dropped into a large arena, and have to keep on killing dudes until the game says stop, all while grabbing money and prizes.

Super Smash TV wasn’t an easy game, but difficulty helps to forge strong bonds. It was the kind of game you and a friend would play multiple times over the course of multiple consecutive weekends, getting a little bit further on each subsequent run.

7 Wild Guns

Everyone Loves Steampunk Cowboys

Growing up in the 90s, everything was all about guns. If you didn’t like cowboys spraying bullets everywhere, what else even was there to like? Naturally, there were plenty of cowboy-themed video games, one of the best for co-op purposes being Wild Guns.

Wild Guns stars a pair of swashbuckling bounty hunters, Clint and Annie, as they blast their way through a steampunk wild west. Unlike traditional sidescrolling shooters, Wild Guns places both players in the foreground while having them shoot at enemies in the background, jumping over and dodging away from incoming gunfire. It was not unlike a light gun game Hogan’s Alley, but much faster-paced and playable with a controller.

Besides being fast-paced and action-packed, Wild Guns benefited from co-op play because it rewarded those with sharp eyes. With so many bullets flying, it’s all too easy to miss a stray shot heading toward you, which is when a friend can call out and tell you to dodge at the last minute. It was probably the closest feeling a pair of players could get to being in an actual firefight back in the day.

6 Sunset Riders

Regular Cowboys are Good, Too

While steampunk cowboys are a fun sub-genre, regular cowboys had their place on the SNES as well. Specifically, they had their place in the form of Sunset Riders, a home port of one of Konami’s hidden gem arcade games. You couldn’t play with four players like in the arcades, unfortunately, but other than that, it was a remarkably faithful port of an excellent sidescroller.

Sunset Riders plays similarly to a sidescrolling beat ‘em up like Streets of Rage or Final Fight, albeit with both sides using revolvers and shotguns instead of their fists and everyone being vulnerable to instant death. As a duo of sheriffs, you and your friend would pepper the sandy streets of the west with bullets, run across herds of stampeding cattle, and occasionally perform flying backflips up onto building balconies to take out snipers.

Double Dribble Policenauts Sunset Riders Kid Dracula

9 Forgotten Konami Games That Deserve A Remake

There are plenty of lesser-known Konami games like Sunset Riders and Policenauts that would benefit from a revival in the modern age.

Sunset Riders isn’t the longest or hardest game, but because it’s fairly short, it’s very replayable. Whenever you had a friend over and you weren’t sure what to do, you could readily agree to another round of Sunset Riders, just for the fun of it.

5 Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Corpses are Weak to Squirt Guns, Who Knew?

The SNES didn’t really have much in the way of proper “horror” games, since the medium could barely convey actual horror in the fourth generation. There were, however, plenty of action-horror games, and much like horror movies, some of them were best enjoyed with friends. The prime example of this is Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors can be best described as an action dungeon-crawler, with you and your partner navigating mazes of neighborhoods, caves, and laboratories. You need to rescue your inexplicably identical neighbors while gunning down various undead and supernatural horrors with whatever’s on hand, from squirt guns to flamethrowers.

The game has surprisingly detailed sprite art, which is both cool and helps to sell the gross factor of some of the larger enemies. It’s a fun game to brave with a buddy, or, if you had a childhood like mine, have some neighborhood brat threaten you with it if you didn’t want to do what he wanted to do.

4 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

Heroes in a Half-Shell at Home

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, the SNES had its fair share of excellent arcade ports, particularly of Konami’s various beloved sidescrolling action titles. To this day, one of the most fondly-remembered sidescrolling beat ‘em ups remains Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, though interestingly, the SNES port of this game is in a class of its own for the various changes made during the porting process.

The SNES version cuts the four-player co-op down to just two players, but those two players can choose any of the four turtles they want to play as, pummeling Foot Clan soldiers and extradimensional threats on a voyage through time and space. The level layout is mostly the same as the arcade version, but with some of the more elaborate levels paired down, and an entirely new level at the tail end.

The game also adds several entirely new boss fights, including a battle with Super Shredder to coincide with the release of the second Ninja Turtles film. If you and a friend were used to playing the arcade version, it would definitely be a visit-worthy event if either of you got this game, just to see what’s different and what’s the same.

3 Contra III: The Alien Wars

Stand and Shoot

Contra III: The Alien Wars

One of Nintendo’s earliest co-op console hits was Konami’s original Contra on the NES. From that game’s release, the IP became synonymous with couch co-op multiplayer, so naturally, the SNES needed its own entry, which it got in the form of Contra III: The Alien Wars.

Like the original Contra, the game is primarily a sidescrolling run ‘n gun affair, with two players constantly firing off their guns at the assorted alien menaces spawning in all over the place, upgrading their weapons with pickups to switch to different firing modes. It’s the kind of game where you can never have too many bullets on the screen, so having a second player has its obvious appeals.

In addition to its gameplay, though, Contra III was quite the contender in the presentation department, thanks to some exceptionally clever use of the SNES’ Mode 7 rendering in both top-down levels and with certain elaborate boss fights. Hyped-up presentation means more action-packed gameplay, and more action-packed gameplay means more hooting and hollering with your friend whenever something cool happens.

2 Donkey Kong Country

Banana Slamma

Arguably one of the most iconic partnerships in gaming history is that of Donkey Kong and his little buddy Diddy Kong. In fact, Diddy Kong and his friendship with DK were introduced in Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, and rather fittingly, that game also featured optional co-op.

While the game would normally have one player controlling both Kongs, when playing in two-player mode, your buddy would assume control of Diddy when DK gets knocked out by an enemy. You could also tag in your partner at any time if you just didn’t feel like playing, which was a fun way to inflict the worst parts of any given level on your friend for laughs.

The idea of tag-in platforming may not sound like the ideal co-op formula, but it actually worked surprisingly well, thanks in part to the game’s naturally high difficulty level. There are few moments as tense as getting near the end of a level only to lose DK to a stray Klaptrap, leaving your friend to cross the finish line with Diddy. When they managed to seal the deal, it was high-fives all around.

1 Kirby Super Star

Kirby’s Good at Making Friends

Everyone loves Kirby. If Kirby asked to be your friend, you’d immediately say yes, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. In addition to making friends in the traditional sense, though, Kirby Super Star on the SNES also proved that he is quite adept at making friends. That is to say, making them from nothing. Always a multi-talented chap, that Kirby.

In all of Kirby Super Star’s main gameplay modes, whenever Kirby gets a Copy Ability, he can instantly bring the ability to life as a helper. This helper is usually AI-controlled, but a second player can also take direct control, turning the game into a full co-op adventure. The second player uses whatever ability went into the helper’s creation, but player one, as Kirby, can always create additional abilities for them to swap to, creating a nice symbiotic power system.

Kirby Super Star is a pretty great game in general, arguably one of the best platformers on the SNES, so the additional flexibility that comes with drop-in, customizable co-op only escalates it even further. With the number of different modes the game has, you and your friend could conceivably spend an entire weekend glued to the TV.