Welcome to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System Official Thread. Come in! Grab a pad! You’ll be safe from pesky blue hedgehogs in here. Coming off the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo realised that they needed to release a console that would rival Sega’s Genesis/Mega Drive and hence the SNES was born. Offering an extensive game library rich in memorable sidescrollers, lush RPGs and so much mario, feel free to discuss all things SNES right here.
SNES SPECIFICATIONS - WTF IS BLAST PROCESSING?
Here’s all the boring technical stuff for all you electronics nerds out there.
CPU
based around a 16-bit CMD/GTE 65c816. Console provided the CPU with 128 KB of Work RAM.
The CPU also contains other support hardware such as:
interfacing with controller ports.
generating NMI interrupts on Vertical blanking interval.
generating IRQ interrupts on screen positions.
Direct memory access unit, supporting two primary modes, general DMA (for block transfers, at a rate of 2.68MB/second) and Horizontal blanking interval DMA (for transferring small data sets at the end of each scanline, outside of the active display period).
multiplication and division registers.
Sound
Sound Controller Chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700 CPU for controlling the Digital signal processor running at an effective clock rate around 1.024 MHz.
Main Sound Chip: 8-channel Sony S-DSP with hardware ADPCM decompression, pitch modulation, echo effect with feedback (for reverberation) with 8-tap FIR filter, and ADSR and 'GAIN' (discretely controlled) volume envelopes.
Memory Cycle Time: 279 ms
Sound RAM: 512 kilobit(Kb) shared between SPC700 and S-DSP.
Pulse Code Modulator: 16-bit ADPCM (using 4-bit compressed ADPCM samples, expanded to 15-bit resolution, processed with an additional 4-point Gaussian sound interpolation).
Note - while not directly related to SNES hardware, the standard extension for SNES audio subsystem state files saved by emulators is SPC_sound_format(.spc), a format used by SPC players.
Video
Picture Processor Unit: 15-Bit
Video RAM: 64 KB of VRAM for screen maps (for 'background' layers) and tile sets (for backgrounds and objects); 512 + 32 bytes of 'OAM' (Object Attribute Memory) for objects; 512 bytes of 'CGRAM' for palette data.
Palette: 256 entries; 15-Bit color (BGR555) for a total of 32,768 colors.
Maximum colors per layer per scanline: 256.
Maximum colors on-screen: 32,768 (using color arithmetic for transparency effects).
Resolution: between 256x224 and 512x448. Most games used 256x224 pixels since higher resolutions caused slowdown, flicker, and/or had increased limitations on layers and colors (due to memory bandwidth constraints); the higher resolutions were used for less processor-intensive games, in-game menus, text, and high resolution images.
Maximum onscreen objects (sprites): 128 (32 per line, up to 34 8x8 tiles per line).
Maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline: 256. The renderer was designed such that it would drop the frontmost sprites instead of the rearmost sprites if a scanline exceeded the limit, allowing for creative clipping effects.
Most common display modes: Pixel-to-pixel text mode 1 (16 colors per tile; 3 scrolling layers) and affine mapped text mode 7 (256 colors per tile; one rotating/scaling layer).
Cartridge
Size Specifications: 2 - 32 Megabits (Mb) which ran at two speeds ('SlowROM' and 'FastROM').
Custom address decoders allow larger sizes, eg. 48 Mb for Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia.
Certain Cartridges contained enhancement chips such as the Super FX, Cx4, DSP 1-4 series, GB-Z80, MX15001TFC, OBC-1, S-DD1, S-RTC, SA1, SPC7110 and the ST010, ST011 and ST018.
and of course…
MODE 7!
SNES VARIETY (or how nostalgia has clouded our perception and understanding of good colours, design principles and cartridge shapes)
Your SNES came in 6 delicious flavours!
Classic Coke
Ah! the default classic look first released in Japan. The colours on buttons, rounded corners, grey grooves, slender cartridge, obscure box art. Admire it! Appreciate it! Accept it!
Diet Coke
Similar to the Super Famicom aside from the unfortunate fact that it runs at 50Hz with black borders. Poor thing. Mostly found in remote regions of Europe and the deserts of Australia.
Grape Coke
Radical! To distance itself from its European and Japanese siblings, the USA SNES took on a unique “Not for kids yo! Far out! Gnarly! Badass!” look to stay cool and relevant in that region. Can be found in US college dorms nationwide.
Mellow Yellow Coke
Limited Rare exclusive edition Super Nintendo console! Only a certain number of consoles released are available in this colour. How do you know if YOU have one? Just wait 5+ years and see if you’re the lucky individual with a Super Nintendo that magically transformed itself into the colour of a light shade of smelly pi-
Those small Coke cans you get on airplanes
(Only available on internal US and Japan flights. Sorry Europe)
Boasting great picture quality, The SNES/Super Famicom Jr released at the end of the SNES lifecycle with a new, slimmer, lighter look. There was never a PAL version released.
Limited Quantity New Coke
…that scalpers buy in bulk and resell
The Super Nintendo for 21st century casuals. Comes with 2 controllers and 21 games including 1 unreleased SNES game titan “StarFox 2”.
Games available on all region models:
Contra 3: The Alien Wars
Donkey Kong Country
Final Fantasy 3
F-Zero
Kirby Super Star
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Mega Man X
Secret of Mana
Star Fox
Star Fox 2
Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
Yoshi's Island
Games exclusive on European and North American models:
Earthbound
Kirby's Dream Course
Street Fighter 2' Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Super Castlevania 4
Super Punch-Out!!
Games exclusive on Japanese model:
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem
The Legend of Mystical Ninja
Panel de Pon
Super Soccer
Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers
NOTABLE GAMES - Get ready to take out a second mortgage
Finally! The best part! The games right?! Sadly your sheer excitement for collecting SNES games will soon evaporate once you realise that its long past the golden cheap era of SNES game collecting and you’re now required to sell your own kidneys to save up for that mint, CIB, never been breathed on copy of Earthbound.
Just wait for the inevitable retro video game crash of 20XX like the rest of us…or start harvesting!
ANYWAY
Here’s a selection, a little taste if you will, of what the Super Nintendo offers:-
NOW YOU’RE PLAYING WITH SUPER DUPER POWER
The finest original nintendo hardware peripherals and add-ones.
Add some more grey plastic to your gaming experience.
Super GameBoy
Super Scope
Super NES Mouse
More Goodies!
SuperCIC Mod
Want to own one SNES that handles every single game with no borders/region/chip restrictions? You need the SuperCIC. This clever modification enables you to run any game from any region by identifying and bypassing the CIC chip on the cartridge.
No more uncertainty. No more ugly flip switches on your console. No more multiple SNES consoles in your collection that caters to specific regions. This thing works with the Super Gameboy 2. I know because I got my SNES modded for this reason.
More info: http://consolingmyself.co.uk/post/1251747918/supercic
SD2SNES
A beast of a flashcart. We know you’re a hardcore SNES fan. Don’t settle for anything else and grab this bad boy. Supports more games (some special chip ones) than your conventional Flashcart and its open source! Not to mention it also supports MSU-1. More about that later.
More info: https://sd2snes.de/blog/
MSU-1
Oh! That was quick. I thought we were going to talk about…Oh really? like, now now?? Oh for the love of G- Ever wanted to play Road Avenger but couldn’t because you wouldn’t want to be seen dead near a SEGA console? Well, now you can thanks to MSU-1. Using emulators or the SD2SNES, you can now play the SEGA CD title that everyone on the playground didn’t rave about!
Crisp FMVs, CD-Quality audio. All thanks to the MSU-1! What are you waiting for? Don’t you wanna listen to the F-Zero X Guitar Arrange CD Soundtrack while playing F-Zero? or what about the Metroid Metal soundtrack during Super Metroid?
And Finally
check out these guys playing Super Nintendo back in the day. I wonder how their lives turned out.
(From Left to Right: Paul Rudd, James and Dave Franco)
Still want to get a SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive?
Yeah I didn’t think so either.
Sega are just as much as part of the history and culture as Nintendo 
