Questions tagged [snes]
For questions about the different versions and products of the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
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How could the SNES take advantage of in-cartridge coprocessors that weren't invented when the SNES came out?
The SNES had a number of "enhancement chips" that were available in the cartridges. These chips did lots of different things. How did these chips actually transfer data to the SNES? How did ...
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Does the Super Game Boy have any battery powered non-volatile memory?
I'm not sure if my copy of the Super Game Boy is broken, or has had its internal battery run out of power, but it doesn't seem to retain any information.
In particular, I'm annoyed by how it doesn't ...
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Was the SNES really a "highly pirated" console? [closed]
I just watched the YouTube video How Nintendo Stopped Bootleg Games on the Nintendo 64.
The presenter claims that the SNES had a massive pirate scene and you could "easily buy" one of ...
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How did the SNES do the “pixelate” transition effect?
This effect is seen in many SNES games, including Super Mario World. The effect pixelates the screen, and makes the pixels larger, then smaller again when it switches to another scene.
It is done so ...
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How could/can there exist NTSC->PAL converters for SNES and other classic game consoles?
Re-reading my old video game magazines from the mid-1990s, there's constant mentions of "USA import" games which were not released here and which "require an adapter". Many of the ...
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What kind of graphics hardware did Nichibutsu's 1985 arcade game "MagMax" use?
The arcade game MagMax by Nichibutsu came out in 1985 and features for its time an impressive 3D scrolling effect which, in my observation, is not widely discussed yet, although it should be ...
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Is my "SNSP-001A (FRG)" SNES a one-chip or two-chip SNES?
The SNES I bought from Toys "R" Us in Sweden in ~1993 has this model number: SNSP-001A (FRG)
I find very conflicting and confusing info online on this. It seems to be from France... or Spain....
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Were the classic game consoles *technically* able to play both NTSC and PAL games, if ignoring artificial region lock-in?
I'm not asking if they were region-free; I know they weren't generally.
I'm asking if, given an NTSC-supporting PAL TV, an NTSC game cartridge, and a PAL NES/SNES/N64/whatever, and also given some ...
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What's wrong with SNES original controller's shoulder buttons?
This is probably a hardware-related question.
I have recently bought a total of 7 (seven) different original SNES controllers from different sources, all of them being somewhat used but mostly ...
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How did SNES render more accurate perspective than PS1?
The PlayStation was notorious for texture warp, because it didn't have the transistor budget to implement perspective: Why do 3D models on the PlayStation 1 “wobble” so much?
But wait a minute. The ...
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Did any SNES games use the fast ROM?
According to the transcript at https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/
... I could get the software running again to run at about 30 frames per second if of course I'm using a fast ...
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What data compression did Donkey Kong Country use?
Donkey Kong Country was among the most ambitious, popular and influential of Super Nintendo games. Technically, its big trick was taking animations rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations and ...
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Why didn't SNES Doom use mode 7?
Doom was ported to the Super Nintendo using a Super FX 2 chip on the cartridge. It has most of the features of the full game, though with a few omissions, such as absence of sound propagation, ...
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Did the Nintendo S-SMP really contain 3 million transistors?
According to http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=S-SMP
The S-SMP (perhaps: Sony - Sound & Music Processor?) is the audio CPU used by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It consists of ...
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Why do multiple SNES games share the same title screen music?
Please watch the first few seconds of gameplay of the following two SNES games:
Pocket Monster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbPw6-Z2pkU
Disney's Bonkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
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How did old car games, using "sprite illusions", function on a technical level?
Example: https://youtu.be/E9QJZSBpvg0?t=80
The road turns not only left and right, like in the classic Pole Position, but also goes up and down. Other than the cars and the road, there are numerous ...
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Is the Raspberry Pi Model B (2014) technically inferior to an original Xbox (2001) in compute power/specifically for emulators? [closed]
(I first asked this in the Raspberry Pi section, but it received no responses. I think this, Retrocomputing, might be a better fit.)
I the year 2003, I had my Xbox chipped in order to be able to run ...
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Why doesn't Nintendo fire up the old factories and re-produce *exact* copies of many of their most popular games, controllers and consoles? [closed]
Let's suppose that Nintendo announce tomorrow that they are going to create exact re-releases of the American and European NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 consoles, exactly the same as when they were ...
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How does the Everdrive handle all the special chips and stuff that were put in cartridges?
An "Everdrive" is like a cartridge that looks just like a NES/SNES/N64/whatever cartridge, and is put into a real, original console. So you need the original hardware for it to work. And ...
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What's the deal with "higan"? [closed]
https://byuu.org/higan/
https://byuu.org/bsnes/
The domain is called "byuu.org".
The emulator is said to be called "higan" or "bsnes".
The download link for "higan&...
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Why does the "Mesen-S" SNES emulator require a separate DSP ROM for Super Mario Kart, but *not* for Stunt Race FX?
If I start vanilla "Mesen-S" and load in Super Mario Kart, it says:
This game requires a firmware file for the DSP1B chip.
If I feed the emulator that "DSP ROM" file, it then ...
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What limited the performance of the SuperFX chip?
The SuperFX chip was an additional RISC processor includes in some Super Famicom cartridges to generate 3D graphics, the most famous example being the game Starfox.
However it's performance wasn't ...
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How do I interpret these instructions for decompressing game data? [closed]
I'm trying to write a tool for the 1994 SNES game Super Metroid that creates "out of bound" maps for each the game's rooms. To do so, first I need to extract the tile-by-tile data of each room. For ...
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Self-modifying code in commercial games for the (S)NES, Gameboy, Genesis/MD, PC Engine, Atari, etc
I'm curious if there are any extant examples of commercial games for classic consoles (let's say, pre-32-bit era here) which make uses of self-modifying code. As far as I know, all the systems I've ...
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How can I clean the RF-Out jack of the SNES
I have got a Snes which is in pretty good shape. My problem is that the RF jack is very dirty and corroted. I haven't tried cleaning it because I think I could accidentally break it. (The jack is ...
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100-pin connector to FPGA/SOC, can I auto-detect if attached to NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, GB, GBA?
If I have a 100-pin connector that may be connected to any of several known devices (NES, SNES, Gameboy, and so forth), can the device somehow auto-detect which device it's connected to?
For some of ...
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Did Nintendo change its mind about 68000 SNES?
Compared to its main rival from Sega, the Super Nintendo has a weaker CPU but a more powerful graphics chip.
According to http://web.archive.org/web/20080505070423/http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-...
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When did hardware antialiasing start being available?
An important step towards 3D gaming was the ability to scale sprites or tiles by nonintegral factors. Examples of the former from the eighties were the arcade games Pole Position, Outrun, Space ...
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SNES PPU die photo
The heart of many classic home computers and game consoles was the graphics chip, yet these tend to be less well-documented than the corresponding CPUs. Still, there are die photos of two of the most ...
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Who developed the Super FX co-processor?
The Super FX co-processor was, according to Wikipedia and every other source I can find, a custom designed RISC chip made by Argonaut Games.
Argonaut was a small British company and back in the late ...
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How many transistors in the Nintendo Super FX chip?
The Super FX coprocessor, released with Star Fox in 1993, provided 3D rendering capabilities that were absent from the SNES itself. Given that 3D gaming was quite widespread by the late eighties, it ...
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Why can't special controllers or accessories be used with Super FX games?
SNES games with the Super FX processor generally do not support special controllers or accessories such as the Multi Player 5 multitap, SNES Mouse, or Super Scope. Yoshi's Island, for example, ...
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Why does the SNES have a separate memory bank for sound?
According to https://snescentral.com/article.php?id=0088 the SNES has the following memory banks:
Work RAM for CPU - 128 Kilobytes (CPU temp. storage)
Video RAM for PPU - 64 Kilobytes (temp. storage ...
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Why did Nintendo commission Sony to create a disk reader if the Famicom already had one?
The way I understand it, Nintendo's engineers couldn't figure out how to design a disk system for the SNES, so they commissioned Sony to do it for them. Why would Nintendo do this if they already had ...
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How did Konami games recognize the famous cheat code?
The famous Konami cheat code is the sequence
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A
What original algorithm was used to detect that the code was entered? I can think of two possible ...
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Why aren't each pixel's bits stored sequentially on the SNES?
When storing graphics in a non-sequential/planar format (like the SNES does), converting to an 8-bit value representation requires first accessing multiple bytes (amount depending on bits-per-pixel), ...
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How does the SNES (Super Nintendo) calculate the address of a character?
The SNES has a PPU (Picture Processing Unit) which comprises VRAM, OAM (Object Attribute Memory), and CGRAM (Color Graphics/Palette RAM). These are used to represent tiles, tile maps; attributes for ...
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Why use repeated STZ instructions with the same operand on the 65C816 for the SNES (Super Nintendo)?
Please consider the code in Super NES Programming/Initialization Tutorial/Snes Init.
Here is an excerpt:
stz $2113 ; Plane 3 scroll x (first 8 bits)
stz $2113 ; Plane 3 scroll x (last ...
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If the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive could be overclocked so easily, why couldn't the SNES?
I discovered quite a number of videos on youtube demonstrating the effectiveness of over-clocking the CPU of Sega Genesis/MasterDrive. The video features games that are known for their intensive ...
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How does JSR actually work on the 65c816 CPU for the SNES (Super Nintendo)?
Take the following machine code for the 65c816 for the SNES (Super Nintendo):
00000000 ea ea 78 18 fb c2 18 a2 ff 1f 9a 20 fa 80 e2 20 |..x........ ... |
00000010 a9 80 8d 00 21 a9 e0 8d 22 21 ...
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How long will SFC/SNES consoles and cartridges last?
I am thinking of collecting Super Famicon/SNES games but one thing holding me back is the integrity of the cartridges.
I am aware of the issue of batteries running out of charge and not being able to ...
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SNES / old graphics: merging sprite's with background [closed]
I have one question about how old computers or consoles like Super NES merged background layer(s) and spirites. Or another way - how layers were merged to not overload a PPU / CPU? OR how about ...
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Graphics Editor for 16-Bit Games
Which programs or tools were used to create the sprites and backgrounds for 16-Bit games like those on the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis?
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What did the Super FX co-processor do?
The Super FX co-processor was built into games cartridges such as Star Fox, Yoshi's Island and Doom. It was used for sprite transformations in Yoshi's Island and 3D effects in Star Fox and Doom, as ...
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Game cartridge save-game battery lifetime
Some cartridges on older consoles (like on the SNES) had battery save in them, so you can turn off the console, come back some time later and continue where you left off.
These use an actual battery ...
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Can input lag be modeled as a function of controller cable length for SNES?
While playing on my SNES, I almost yanked my controller out of my console due to the cable being so short. I went on Amazon to buy a cable extender, and then started reading on different forums that ...
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How does one bypass the region lock on Japanese Super Famicom?
I recently bought a Super Famicom on my trip to Japan. However, the console is region locked so you can't play American SNES games. It seems to be that the plastic cartridge doesn't fit in the console ...
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Why use static RAM addresses instead of the stack?
I'm studying the 65c816 assembly for the 1994 game, Super Metroid.
A hobbyist studied the game in-depth and created a RAM map. From it:
7E:0B56 - 7E:0B57 Moves Samus this distance horizontally, ...
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Reconditioning and cleaning old Nintendo (and other) game cartridges
I used to blow the dust out of the cartridges but I heard that can actually damage the cartridge or the system itself.
I am looking for the proper way to clean old Nintendo game cartridges (such as ...
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