Sears Super Nintendo and Game Boy Christmas TV Television Commercial from 1991.
Sears (officially Sears, Roebuck & Co.) is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1886; it used to be based in the Sears Tower in Chicago, and is now headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It began as a mail order catalog company, and began opening retail locations in 1925. The company was bought by the American big box chain Kmart in 2005, which had just emerged from bankruptcy at the time and renamed itself Sears Holdings upon completion of the merger. In terms of domestic revenue, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States until October 1989, when it was surpassed by Walmart. It is the fifth-largest American department store company by sales as of October 2013 (behind Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot), and it is the twelfth-largest retailer in the country overall. It operates divisions in Canada and Mexico, among several subsidiaries within its brand.
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (officially abbreviated the Super NES or SNES, and commonly shortened to Super Nintendo) is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Australasia (Oceania), and 1993 in South America. In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom , officially adopting the abbreviated name of its predecessor, the Famicom), or SFC for short. In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy (슈퍼 컴보이 Syupeo Keomboi) and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another. It was released in Brazil on September 2, 1992, by Playtronic.
The SNES is Nintendo's second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other consoles at the time. The development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated in game cartridges helped to keep it competitive in the marketplace.
The SNES was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era despite its relatively late start and the fierce competition it faced in North America and Europe from Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis console. The SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, and continues to be popular among fans, collectors, retro gamers, and emulation enthusiasts, some of whom still make homebrew ROM images.