bocchi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:39 amI think S-video cables were readily available back in the day.
I don't believe Nintendo ever sold an s-video cable for SNES either, though. For SNES, all I've been able to find evidence of is RF switch, composite, and composite-SCART.
It is quite easy to get third party ones now. Back in the day of Jurassic Park? I really don't think it was.
Back only 20 years ago, though, I think maybe yes. S-Video probably peaked around 2000-2005, and around that time I do believe Nintendo was offering S-video AV-multi cables for separate purchase. I think the Gamecube's manual is the first of their consoles to acknowledge S-video. Though even as late as the Wii they
still only shipped with composite and composite-over-SCART.
Throughout the whole lifespan of the SNES, the capability was there, for anyone who had the knowledge to wire up their own cable for RGB or S-Video. People always
could, but I really don't think many at all did. I suspect it was maybe another decade before there was a relevant popular mass-market connector, and even by then I think the audience largely did not care about the difference and stuck to the "default" of composite. S-VHS was a flop because it just wasn't a compelling difference to the average consumer. It became a lot more important when HD TVs eventually took over.
I'm open to the idea that there was some market where something better than composite really caught on for SNES during its lifetime, if you wanna present a case for it, but with the topic question being "why did Jurassic Park do this" I feel the state of the market at that specific time is very relevant.
Kirby 3? I dunno, maybe that's just late enough that its developers might have thought about RGB or S-Video a little bit. To me it's more likely they just didn't. It's was absolutely necessary for them to consider how it looked on composite, because the vast, vast, majority would be using that. Did they think about the RGB (or S-Video) version looking more stripey instead? They could have, but they didn't have to.