I'm about to buy an old SNES and some games on ebay for only a few euros.
The guy on the phone is telling me the first controller port is broken, so I'd have to go with only one controller on second port.
Is it possible on a SNES? I don't know how those old consoles are made. Would I be able to play solo games with only one controller on second port?
Best Answer
I read this question and instinctively agreed with Agent86's answer. But I decided to dust off my own SNES to do science and confirm his answer. The results were not exactly what I expected.
I took out my North American SNES and my library of 13 games. All 13 (eventually) worked. I plugged in one of my controllers in the Player 2 port and tested them out. Results:
Out of the 13 games, 5 recognized and worked with a controller plugged only in the P2 port.
5 out 5 of those games supported two player mode.
4 out 5 of those games allowed you to start a single player game with a single controller plugged in the P2 port. The other game would only let you choose two player mode.
The other 8 games were all one-player games only.
What I am concluding from this experiment is that you can play some SNES games with only the P2 port functioning, but it seems those games have to support two player gameplay with a second controller. Some of those games have good one player campaigns (Super Mario World, for example), but solely one-player games seem to be a no-no.