Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, and Australia. In Japan it is known as the Super Famicom (スーパーファミコン). In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy (슈퍼컴보이). That console was licensed and distributed by Hyundai Electronics.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was Nintendo's second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (often abbreviated to NES, released as the Famicom in Japan). Whereas the earlier system had struggled in Europe and large parts of Asia the SNES proved to be a global success, albeit one that could not match its predecessor's popularity in South East Asia and North America—due in part to increased competition from Sega's Mega Drive console (released in North America as the Genesis). Despite its relatively late start, the SNES became the best selling console of the 16-bit era but only after its competitor Sega had pulled out of the 16-bit market to focus on its 32-bit next generation console.

History

Even as the original NES/Famicom was at the height of its popularity, several companies were launching their own consoles. In 1987 and 1988 respectively, NEC and Sega launched their contenders, the PC Engine and the Mega Drive, one of the first 16-bit home gaming systems. Although the NES would continue to dominate the video game industry for years to come, Nintendo's hardware was beginning to show its age, and though Nintendo executives initially showed little interest in developing a new system, Sega and NEC's growing market share soon forced Nintendo to reconsider.

Masayuki Uemura, the man responsible for designing the Famicom several years earlier, was put in charge of the design of the console and the Super Famicom was released in Japan on November 21, 1990 for ¥25,000. An instant success, Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units quickly sold out. The system was so popular that it was said to have attracted the attention of the Yakuza, leading to the decision to ship the devices at night in order to avoid robbery. In Japan, the Super Famicom easily outsold its chief rival, the Mega Drive, and Nintendo retained control over approximately 80% of the Japanese console market thanks, in part, to Nintendo's retention of most of its key third party developers from the Famicom, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square Co., Ltd., Koei and Enix.

Nine months later, on August 13, 1991, Nintendo released the Super Famicom in North America with a new redesigned case as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Initially sold for a price of $200 US, the North American package included the game Super Mario World. The SNES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for £150, with a German release following a few weeks later. The PAL versions of the console looked identical to the Japanese Super Famicom, except for labelling.

Nintendo's Japanese market dominance was not repeated in the American and European markets. By the time of launch the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis had already become firmly entrenched in the US and European marketplace, helped by the lower cost of the Mega Drive/Genesis console and games and Sega's aggressive marketing in North America. In addition many US gamers had come to expect backwards compatibility from console developers (as was the case with the Atari 2600 and 7800), but the SNES was not designed to play NES cartridges.

Rivalry between Nintendo and Sega produced what is possibly the most notorious console war in history. Nintendo would never achieve market leadership in Europe and did not manage to do so in the U.S. until 1994, benefiting from Sega pulling out of the market and its continued production of SNES and its games well after the 32-bit era of gaming had started.

In the period of the early 1990s, a blue-collar anti-Japanese sentiment had grown to maturity. While the NES was accused of shoddy construction and poor planning, the SNES was rumored to be a tool of outright economic war. The SNES was incompatible with several American-brand TVs, causing the screen to hop 3-5 times a second. Nintendo fixed all units aftermarket free of charge, but the theory held on for years.

By 1996, the 16-bit era of gaming had ended, and a new generation of consoles, including Nintendo's own Nintendo 64, caused the popularity of the SNES to wane. In October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned SNES 2 in North America for $99 USD (which included the pack-in game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island). Like the earlier NES 2, the new model was designed to be slimmer and lighter than its predecessor but lacked S-Video and RGB output, and would prove to be among the last major SNES-related releases in America. A similar redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan around the same time. All the American cases from the original NES to the SNES 2 were designed by Lance Barr.

Nintendo of America ceased production of the SNES in 1999. In Japan, the Super Famicom continued to be produced until September 2003 (also some new games were produced until the year 2000). In recent years, many SNES titles have been ported to the handheld Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. Some video game critics consider the SNES era "the golden age of video games," citing the many groundbreaking games and classics made for the system,[1] whereas others question this romanticism.[2] See video game player for more.

Regional lockout

Nintendo employed several types of regional lockout.

Game cartridges, depending on which market they were released in, were of different shapes. The North American model had a rectangular bottom that had inset grooves which when inserted complemented the console's shape whereas the Japanese, Korean, and European cartridges had a smoothed curve on the front of the cartridges with no inset grooves. Since the North American console has protruding grooves, the Japanese/European cartridges could not be inserted without the removal of these grooves and North American cartridges being completely rectangular could not fit into the slightly curved opening of the Japanese and European console units.

Additionally, a regional lockout chip within the console and in each cartridge prevented European games from being played on Japanese/North American consoles and vice versa despite the fact that European and Japanese Cartridges fit in each other's consoles. The Japanese and North American machines had the same region chip, so once the difference in the shape of the cartridges was overcome, cartridges were interchangeable.

The simplest way to play the Japanese and European cartridges in the North American system was to use a Game Genie cheat device with the small rectangular piece of plastic from its top removed. This not only circumvents the problem of different cartridge shapes but also removes any problem with lockout chips due to the internal design of the Game Genie.

Alternatively, various other adapters or physical modification of the console could overcome regional lockout.

The chip lockout system worked by having hardware in the console act as a lock and the chip inside the cartridge act as the key. Disconnecting pin 4 of the console's lockout chip caused a situation where there were two keys and no locks. This meant that the lockout chips would not operate and could not halt the console. Games towards the end of the console's lifecycle, such as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars could detect this deadlock situation and refuse to run, so it later became common to install a switch that disconnected and connected the lockout chip as required.

PAL consoles often faced another modification. Instead of being re-coded, most PAL games were simply slowed down from 60Hz to 50Hz, resulting in 17% slower gameplay and sound effects. Additionally, PAL's higher resolution was not taken advantage of, and the extra scanlines were blank, creating large black bars that letterboxed the image. This practice was common across all consoles at the time, but created a squashed and out of proportion picture. As most PAL TVs support NTSC and the SNES hardware made such a thing quite simple to add, a switch to select 50 or 60Hz operation was often added.

As an additional form of region lockout, later games would check that the SNES was running at the speed the game was expecting. PAL games would refuse to run on 60Hz machines and vice versa. The solution was to start the game in the native speed and then flick the switch once the region check had successfully completed.

There was an adaptor made by various third parties designed to circumvent the regional lockout issues. A player could plug the device into the SNES (either version) and then place a game that would normally not run on that particular SNES unit (e.g. a rectangular cartridge that would not run in the SNES unit designed for round cartridges) into the front. Then, in the back part, the player would put in another game that would work on this SNES unit. The adaptor would read the game from the front port and use the regional lockout chip programming from the second.

Peripherals

Throughout the course of its life, a number of peripherals were released which added to the functionality of the SNES. Many of these devices were modelled after earlier add-ons for the NES: the Super Scope was a light gun similar to the NES Zapper (though the Super Scope featured wireless capabilities) and the Super Advantage was an arcade-style joystick with adjustable turbo settings akin to the NES Advantage. Nintendo also released the SNES Mouse in conjunction with its Mario Paint title, and Hudson Soft, under license from Nintendo, released the Super Multitap, a multiplayer adaptor that allowed games to support up to eight players.

One of the most interesting and successful first-party peripherals released for the SNES was the Super Game Boy, an adaptor cartridge allowing games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the SNES. The Super Game Boy touted a number of feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including color support (in reality, merely the ability to substitute a different color palette: the games themselves were still limited to four colors) and custom screen borders.

Like the NES before it, the SNES saw its fair share of unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with SNES games and a variety of game copier devices. In general, Nintendo proved to be somewhat more tolerant of unlicensed SNES peripherals than they had been with NES peripherals.

Japan saw the release of the Satellaview, a modem which attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St. GIGA satellite radio station. Users of the Satellaview could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom titles, released in instalments. Satellaview signals were broadcast from April 23, 1995 through June 30, 2000.

During the SNES's life, Nintendo contracted with two different companies to develop a CD-ROM-based peripheral for the console. Ultimately, negotiations with both Sony and Philips fell through, and the two companies went on to develop their own consoles based on their initial dealings with Nintendo (the PlayStation and the CD-i respectively), Philips also gaining the right to release a series of CD-i titles based on popular Nintendo franchises.

Screenshots

Emulation

Like the NES before it, the SNES has retained interest among its fans even following its decline in the marketplace. It has continued to thrive on the second-hand market and through console emulation. Many gamers discovered the SNES after its decline. The SNES has taken much the same revival path as the NES.

Emulation projects began in 1996 with projects such as "VSMC" and "Super Pasofami," which, despite some important initial gains, did not last long past 1998. During that time, two competing emulation projects--Snes96 and Snes97--merged forming a new initiative entitled Snes9x. In early 1998, SNES enthusiasts began programming a console emulator named ZSNES. From then on, these two emulators have continued to offer the most complete emulation of the system and its various add-on chips like the Super FX Chip, although development continues on other emulators as well.

Nintendo took the same stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and emulation as it did with the NES, insisting that they represented flagrant software piracy. Proponents of SNES emulation cite as arguments for their continued distribution: the discontinued production of the SNES, the right of the owner of the respective game to make a personal backup, the frailty of SNES cartridges (even though cartridges are far more durable than optical discs), and the lack of certain foreign imports. Starting in the 128-bit era, both Nintendo and emulation proponents began to have a less active stance on this issue.

Despite Nintendo's attempts to stop the proliferation of such projects, ROM files continue to be available on the Internet. Since the console's discontinuation, second-hand market decline, and rapid growth of the Internet, finding the files has become less of a challenge than it had been with the NES. Most general ROM sites offer files for the SNES.

The SNES was one of the first systems to attract the attention of amateur fan translators: Final Fantasy V was the first major work of fan translation to be completed, in 1997.

Technical specifications

The design of the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom was unusual for its time. It featured a low-performance CPU supported by very powerful custom chips for sound and video processing. This approach would become common in subsequent video game hardware, but at the time it was new to game developers. As a result early third-party games were of low technical quality. Developers later became accustomed to the system, and were able to take advantage of its full potential. It was the first console capable of applied acoustics in video game audio sold in North America, Europe, and Japan.

• CPU
  • Core: Nintendo custom '5A22', believed to be produced by Ricoh; based around a 16-bit CMD/GTE 65c816 (a predecessor of the WDC 65C816, used by the Apple IIGS personal computer).
  • The CPU additionly contains support hardware, including circuitry:
    • For interfacing with controller ports;
    • For generating NMI interrupts on Vblank;
    • For generating PSG sound with included 2A03 core.
    • For generating IRQ interrupts on screen positions;
    • DMA unit, supporting two primary modes, general DMA (for block transfers, at a rate of 2.68MB/s) and Hblank DMA (for transferring small data sets at the end of each scanline, outside of the active display period);
    • Multiplication and division registers.
  • The CPU, as a whole, employs a variable-speed system bus, with bus access times determined by the memory location accessed. The possible clock speeds were 1.79, 2.68 and 3.58 Megahertz. But for most purposes the bus runs at 2.68 MHz and drops to 1.79MHz when accessing certain PPU registers. It works at approximately 1.5 MIPS (using strictly 16-bit instructions) and has a theoretical peak of 1.79 million 16-bit adds per second.

• RAM
  • The SNES/SFC 5A22 CPU has direct access to 128KB of Work RAM.

• Sound
  • Sound Controller Chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700 CPU for controlling the DSP; running at an effective clock rate around 1.024MHz.
    • Sound RAM: 64KB shared between SPC700 and S-SMP.
    • Memory Cycle Time: 279 milliseconds
  • Main Sound Chip : Sony S-SMP
    • Hardware ADPCM decompression,
    • 8-channel PCM
    • Hardware sound effects pitch modulation, echo effect with feedback (for reverberation) with 8-tap FIR filter, and ADSR and 'GAIN' (discretely controlled) volume envelopes.
    • Polyphony of 8 notes per voices
  • SFx sound chip : SonyNintendo S-DSP
    • 3-channel PCM
  • Low-pass filter for improved quality of low-frequency (bass) tones
  • Pulse Code Modulator: 16-bit ADPCM (if programmer uses 4-bit compressed ADPCM samples, expanded to 16-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, a format used by SPC players.

• Video
  • Picture Processor Unit: 15-bit
  • Video RAM: 64KB
    • 64KB 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 depth (RGB555) for a total of 32,768 colors.
  • Maximum colors per layer per scanline: 256.
  • Maximum colors on-screen: 4,096 without alpha and 32,768 (using color arithmetic for transparency effects).
  • Maximum colors per sprite: 128
  • Resolution: between 256x224 and 512x448. Most games used 256x224 or 512x224 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 Mode1 (16 colors (4-bit) per tile; 3 scrolling layers) and affine mapped Mode7 (256 colors per tile; one rotating/scaling layer).

• Game cartridge size
  • 2 to 32-Mbit (0.25 to 4MB) which can be accessed at two selectable speeds ('SlowROM' and 'FastROM'). Upon power up, the SlowROM speed is selected by default, unless the game's program code tells it to run at the faster speed. This allowed ROM techology to scale with the system, as all early games were SlowROM, and then most became FastROM towards the end of the SNES/SFC's commercial market lifetime.
  • Custom address decoders employed bank switching techniques to allow for larger sizes, eg. 48-Mbit for Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia.

• Power adapter
  • Transformer Input: NTSC: 120 volts AC, 60Hz, 17 watts, PAL: 240 volts AC, 50Hz
  • Transformer Output: 10 volts DC, 850 mA (NTSC), 9 volts DC (PAL)

• Game controllers
  • Controller Response: 16ms
  • 2 seven-pin controller ports in the front of the machine

Enhancement chips

As part of the overall plan for the SNES/SFC, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console. Rather than require a complicated upgrade procedure found in the IBM PC Compatible world of computers, these certain enhancement chips were included inside the plug-in game cartridges themselves if needed for a specific game. This is most often characterized by an extra set of small leads under the cartridge.

• Super FX: Developed by Argonaut, the Super FX chip is a supplemental RISC CPU that was included in certain game cartridges to perform functions that the main CPU could not feasibly do. The chip was primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. Some 3D game carts that this chip can be found in are Star Fox, Doom, Dirt Trax FX, Stunt Race FX, Vortex, and Winter Gold. The chip however could also be used to enhance 2D games such as Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. This chip went through three revisions, first starting out as a Chip-on-Board glob in the earliest Star Fox cartridges. Rather quickly, it was given a more conventional surface-mount package and labeled as the Super FX GSU-1, which was used in various games. Finally, the design was tweaked to become the Super FX GSU-2 chip, which had a larger address bus and was manufactured with an improved semiconductor process to allow it to reach its target clock speed of 21MHz. Although the pinouts and maximum clock speed differ, the instruction set for the FX 1 and FX 2 chips are identical. Star Fox 2, Comanche, and FX Fighter, all games designed to take advantage of the increased power of the Super FX GSU-2, were developed but never released for the SNES/SFC, disappointing many followers of the technology at the time.
• DSP-1 chip: This fixed-point Digital Signal Processor chip was created to allow programmers to generate more enhanced Mode 7 rotation and scaling effects in their games, and to perform very fast vector-based calculations. The chip can be found most notably in Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart, as well as a few other games. Later revisions of the chip, the 1A and 1B, were functionally the same but included bugfixes in their internal math calculations.
• DSP-2 chip: A bitmap scaling and bitplane conversion chip used only in one game cartridge, Atari's port of Dungeon Master to the SNES console.
• DSP-3 chip: An assistant chip used only in one Japanese game for the Super Famicom titled SD Gundam GX. Although this chip does handle graphics decompression and bitplane conversion, a large portion of memory inside this chip is dedicated to rendering a very complicated title screen, leading one to the likely conclusion that its inclusion was more intended to prevent the game from being easily pirated.
• DSP-4 chip: A DSP used in only one game cartridge, Top Gear 3000. It primarily helped out with drawing the race track, especially during the times that the track branched into multiple paths, which was a unique feature of this type of game at the time.
• S-DD1 chip : Other than its normal processing and copy protection duties, this chip was primarily a memory compression chip. This allowed games to be bigger than normal by compressing the data. Games that used this chip were Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Star Ocean.
• C4 chip: A chip created by Capcom. This chip was used to handle the wireframe effects, perform more general trigonometric calculations, and to help out with sprite positioning and rotation. The chip was used in Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3.
• SA-1 chip: This is an ASIC chipset with a 65c816 8/16-bit processor core, clocked at 10MHz, containing some extra circuitry specified by Nintendo, including some fast RAM, a memory mapper, DMA, several programmable timers, and the region lockout chip. The SA-1 was a multipurpose chip that allowed games such as Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Super Mario RPG, as well as the Super Game Boy to stay competitive in the changing marketplace during the aging SNES/SFC's final years.

References

• Mary Bellis. History of Sony Playstation. Retrieved 9 February 2005.
• Mattias Liedholm. The Golden Era. Retrieved 1 February 2005.
• Silent Axis. The Golden era - Just for the nostalgics?. Retrieved 1 February 2005.
• Bayer, Glen. SNES-CD. Retrieved 9 September 2005.

Market share

Although 49 million Super NES units were sold worldwide [3], Nintendo was unable to recapture the preceding NES's market share.

The Golden Era

The Super Nintendo is considered by many older gamers (usually those born in the late 80's and before) as the Golden Era of gaming. [4]

Many gamers argue that in today's current gaming generation, graphics are being influenced much more than gameplay.

However, the Super Nintendo has some of the most widely sought after games of all time. To this day, people still search for classic titles such as Mega Man X3, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. On eBay, many classics games sell for more than forty dollars used. Games that still include the box easily sell for over one-hundred, and those still wrapped sell for more than $200.

Many people are willing to spend the money to buy these games. It was reported by Entertainment Weekly that the most expensive classic bought on ebay was Chrono Trigger when someone spent more than $300. Other titles that easily go for over $100 include Mega Man X2, Mega Man X3, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III (VI), and Final Fantasy II (IV) to name a few.

However, thanks to emulation and porting, many Super Nintendo classics haven't been forgotten. Thanks to titles such as Final Fantasy Anthology and the Mega Man X Collection, gamers can experience some old Super Nintendo titles without having to search high and low for them and pay an outrageous price. Likewise, the Gameboy Advance's library garnered a lot of success off porting games from the Super Nintendo.

Even long after it was taken off the market, the Super Nintendo still garners attention, and is sometimes considered by old school gamers as the greatest system of all time.