RetroGames

OK. Now, along with that, can you somehow magically figure out how to get "RARE" to let you finish and announce a physical SNES cartridge and a modern digital release of the basically complete Killer Instinct 2 for SNES, please. RARE, Microsoft, Stampers, are you there.... No one can convince me this wouldn't be awesome and indeed turn in nice little profit. I guarantee SNES fans would absolutely lap this up.

Would be cool to have this in the collection too. Still, it will surely be part of the Satellaview revival thing at some point, so that's cool.

@X68000 Well, it will be interesting to see how this develops.

@MegaManFan The guy is doing great work on SNES for sure. And although many people still don't quite get it, he's laying a great foundation for so many potential "All-Stars" versions of these great NES games on SNES at some point in the future should the community decides that's something they want.

@YANDMAN I thought that it was going to become Retro Game Forge going forward, with I guess NESmaker just being the legacy version for people who already own that, no?

@GravyThief I wonder if the community will take advantage of the "FX3" for stuff like this once that comes out with the recently announced official release of Doom Definitive Edition for SNES. That would be pretty cool to see.

I just went to the Game On exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland, and it was very cool seeing a bunch of these old systems and being able to play games on them old style. It wasn't ideal due the systems clearly not being in the best state and such, with some that were even already broken and waiting for repair or just stuck on some screen you couldn't move past and so on. And they bizarrely didn't have all the most important Mario platformers like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, or any of the Super Mario Galaxy games on display, despite Mario being used on all their main promotional banners and stuff. So, really, I figured they were going to have a proper section fully dedicated to Mario with all his best moments on show and available to play. They had Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 64, which was okay and all, but it just seemed like the least possible they could have done there. Still, it was just kinda cool playing around 100 games on old consoles, handhelds, PC, arcades, etc. I was impressed with how well games like Pong, Asteroids, and Pac Man actually played when playing them on the proper original hardware with their original controls and such. They just felt so responsive and like that was exactly the way there were supposed to be enjoyed. I kid you not when I say there was a moment there where I nearly cried at the tangibleness of playing games like this and the understanding we're slowing losing that in gaming. They even had at least one spectrum game too, Manic Miner. Also, it actually felt much like being in a proper '80s-'90s arcade again, albeit a slightly run down one, which was kinda cool. A fun little hour or two.

@UtopiaNemo I'd love to see more homebrew games for SNES too alongside the Genesis.

Yeah, I think right now the Genesis has much better development tools and is also just much easier to work with in general because of its simpler internal design, only one background mode on Genesis where you can use all its tricks vs a very convoluted eight to choose from on SNES that each have different special features for example, which I think has really helped there.

It will be interesting to see what the homebrew scene is like for each system in a few years from now, especially as the various tools continue to develop and also now that it seems the SNES is about to get its first proper development tool that actual laymen can use too (the "SNESmaker" part of NESmaker's new Retro Game Forge).

I'm hoping both systems have a very healthy and exciting future ahead in that regard.

@Daggot Dunno, but there's games on SNES and even NES that move just as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis, including a fan demo of the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog on SNES, so I don't think Sonic moving fast was truly some special or unique technical achievement so much as it was just impressive to see him running around like that at that time.

It was impressive though, right, and certainly something Sega's marketing team fully leaned into.

But the DMA stuff is mostly useful for switching in some more new tiles and such slightly faster basically, as far as I understand it, which can be useful if you have very large animated characters or lots of characters that you want to animate separately and want to avoid using forced blank (the black bars you sometimes see at the top and bottom of the screen in some games, more often on SNES than Genesis).

Another way you can do that is by using smaller memory tiles, where you use less colours per tile, if you have such an option as a built-in feature. Standard 2bpp NES tiles take up half the memory space of standard 4bpp Genesis and SNES tiles for example, and the SNES also has a standard option to use these 2bpp tiles for at least the background(s) if desired. It does mean working with less colours per tile in the 2bpp background(s), kind of like a souped-up NES in that regard, but that's a tradeoff for actually being able to stream in/out even more background tiles per frame than Genesis there. And, because of how the SNES' colours work in general, the fact it's still 24 visible colours per layer and even still 96 colours total on-screen for backgrounds alone if using Mode 0 for example (plus another 128 colours for sprites), along with the SNES' huge 32,768-colour master palettes' colour gamut, it's not quite as big a challenge as it might initially seem to work with less colours than normal there.

There's basically lots of different options on these consoles for trying a bunch of interesting tricks if you know where to look.

So, it will expand the capabilities of the Sega CD and 32X, but not the Genesis itself, as in Genesis cartridge games cannot directly use this extra RAM chip too, correct?

@Axelay71 Have you seen the very early demo of the opening area from Bloodlines that someone did for SNES?

It's pretty interesting that they're adding some extra effects there like a layer of rain or semi-transparent fog, some flashing lightning, a proper fully overlapping HUD/GUI, some additional background parallax, and even a random extra texture on one of the stones in the foreground.

It's all early and very rough right now, and I have zero clue how far they are planning on going with this or indeed if they have enough talent to truly do a great job of it--I'll be honest and say I'm a little skeptical--but it's an interesting start at least.

@X68000 The current development environment and tools is not an indicator of how well a console is technically suited for a port of a particular game, but rather how easy or indeed how much hassle it is to simply make something for said console.

There is no doubt the SNES' specs and capabilities are better suited to a more accurate port of this game for all the reasons I listed previously, just as there is no doubt the Genesis' development tools are simply much more user friendly right now and therefore such a port is currently more practical on that system at the present time. The recent announcement of SNES support in Retro Game Forge, previously known as NESmaker, should hopefully help the SNES side of things there in the not too distant future though.

And technically the SNES more than capable of a great port of Symphony of the Night with some concessions just like the Genesis port obviously. To try to suggest otherwise is disingenuous. The SNES has two great Castlevania games already that pull off plenty cool tricks of their own, someone has started a port of Bloodlines to it recently with some additional graphics effects too, and a port of SotN is not a matter of if it's possible but simply how to go about it and whether someone will actually give it a go at some point. In fact, if "SNESmaker" works as I hope it does and indeed as it should, I might even try making a small demo of a level from SotN on SNES myself just as a proof of concept.

But the point I'd like to make is to not conflate the two things that are actually different, that being the hassle of doing something due to currently immature development tools and a system being technically suited or not to such as thing.

Genesis is getting a pretty solid port of this game. And I think it would be great to see SNES get the same.

So, they're adding each volume to the one base system, yes?

If so, that's pretty cool.

Man, there be a LOT of Mario ROM hacks.

I'd honestly like to see every single FX game get support for the FX3.

In fact, if possible, I'd like to see both the "FX3" and the chip the Bitmap Bureau have used in Xeno Crisis be made available for other homebrew developers to use too.

Same goes for a whole bunch of old and new SNES games getting rumble support added as well if possible.

Loving the pixel art here.

@MARl0 Maybe send him a wee message on Twitter, as he'll likely look into this if it's possible to fix.

@angel68 Yeah, it seems like it's about to really come into its own now. It's on track to become the reto-centric equivalent of GameMaker. Maybe it will even spur on the GameMaker team to add support for beloved retro consoles like the SNES too. That would be very cool as well.

@angel68 He's done a bunch of top quality NES to SNES ports thus far, so we know this is in good hands.

Totally excited for this one. I'm hoping it helps spur on some really cool new homebrew development for SNES. If it works as expected, I'll definitely be giving it a go to see what's possible there.

A pretty cool announcement, right.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Now make a SNES Super Mario World ROM hack with most of this in it.

@Bunkerneath It's a new controller they've made specifically for this release, or that at least coincides with it.

Well this is an interesting development.

@GravyThief I also didn't realise the article went back that far.

@Azuris Ah, okay. Thanks.

@Azuris Can you use this service without the original system. I didn't quite read up on that part.

@GravyThief At least they're actually re-releasing SNES games and helping keep the system alive. Their recent Doom re-release that comes with multiple improvements is pretty dang impressive. I'd love to see a lot more stuff like that for the system, alongside more brand new homebrew games too.

One of the most graphically impressive games on SNES, and even more so when you realise it is stock hardware doing this, no add-on chips, while also running in SlowROM, so artificially throttled to only 70% of the system's full CPU speed. And, just to clarify, it's pushing out stunning full-screen intense run 'n' gun and shmup action with lots of gun fire and enemies and explosions and other stuff going on, in full SNES pre-rendered colour, with multiple layers of parallax, using lots of the system's cool effects like transparency and Mode 7 in places, etc, and it never drops a frame from 60fps even in the most intense action moments. This is what a stock SNES running in its most gimped configuration can do when simply used properly.

Such an interesting thing there. I hope they get a good amount of support from the SNES development community.

@VGScrapbook And my SNES never got even remotely yellow in the two decades or so I owned it. So I 100% do not have nostalgia for those horrible yellowed models. I think they look terrible. And I don't think a well designed trainer that's meant to represent the SNES should be using the yellowed colour either; that's just a bad design choice.

I feel like more than the Genesis version, whomever the designer was, they completely half-assed and flubbed the SNES design. I mocked up a much better representation in a matter of minutes. I should be getting paid whatever that random got paid.

@smoreon Yeah, that sounds about right. No pun intended.

I remember my as I recall launch SNES had a cable with the stereo capable red/yellow/white connectors on the end. And, after the first basic TV I owned for a little while where I think I just had it plugged in directly like that, I had it plugged into a 21-pin EuroSCART connector and port on my TV for the rest of the time I owned it. I always thought it both looked and sounded great. Don't know if I ever upgraded to a proper RGB SCART at some point, but it's possible.

So, out of those systems, it seems like the SNES was the most practically stereo ready and most likely to actually be used as such at that time then. And that would be for all models of the system I presume.

I expect the PC Engine was possibly somewhere in between the NES/Master System and Genesis when it came to audio connections and stereo output as standard. And I'd have to imagine the Neo Geo was proper stereo with appropriate cables in the box given how expensive and cutting-edge it was for the time.

If they did a Nintendo version where the stripes and one other part were the four colours of Japan/Europe SNES, I think that would be very cool. And the stripes should have had the purple accent for the US variation too.

How hard would it have been to do something like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/xjgjXQZv/Purple-Gray.png

https://i.postimg.cc/pVgvhdZn/RGYBGray.png

@KingMike So, were you playing all your old consoles in crappy mono, such that this mod would be quite representative of the audio quality you were getting at the time from your games.

@KitsuneNight Yeah, something like that. And, yeah, I think they could make the system a bit wider horizontally for overall comfort. I also still expect they could pull off a SNES version where the carts could sit fully flush with the top of the system (so the connector part would be as close to the bottom as possible without being too fragile there). And I think they could bring the overall thickness down quite a bit by having basically the screen then the cart with nothing extraneous in between, so the overall thickness would be a SNES cart plus maybe half a centimeter or whatever. And the control grip areas at the back would be the full thickness there so the cart lies flush with them on the back too.

Edit: Something like this maybe: https://i.ibb.co/DwT4yxL/20240807-140728.jpg

And, I guess, because the centre section would be kinda hollow without a cart inserted, maybe it could come with a faux cart that holds an SD slot, a bit like those Everdrive carts, so you can have either that in there when not using an original cartridge or an original cartridge. I think that would be a cool way to go.

I didn't draw this in the image, but I think the inside edge of those grip sections could actually curve too, so they really do act like grips. And the system would be design so it can take both US and Japan/European carts, so there'd even be a little additional gap between the curve of the grips and carts that might even serve that function further.

Edit 2: Just found a video showing a design that's almost exactly what I was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RicLNAz70O0

Another example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc0S9AZ_64o

Make it something like that but a tiny bit smaller and tighter and with much better injection moulding or something, plus styled in either or both the Super Famicom and Super NES looks, and sorted.

Well, here's a question I have, how many people were listening to their games in mono vs stereo back then?

I know the SNES had stereo output as standard, as it was literally a choice in pretty much every single game and there were official first party cables that supported it (it even supported Dolby Surround sound too, although not quite sure what connectors you needed to get that), but I don't know how it was with other consoles.

Which of these systems came with the connection points and standard first party cables that let you plug them directly into and then output your games to a typical CRT in stereo:

Famicom/NES
Master System
PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (standard version)
Genesis/Mega Drive
Neo Geo
Etc

Can anyone answer for those systems, including the various models (as I know there were at least a couple of different main official models for most of those systems). That would be interesting to know.

" It goes without saying that the television sets in the '80s and '90s didn't offer the best aural experience; you'd often be saddled with low-quality mono sound."

Also, I just want to mention that my TV was outputting Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound back in the '90s and came with the five speaker setup in the box that was vastly superior to any TV or audio setup I've ever had since. My 50" 4K TV now is just boring ass stereo with crappy voice separation and is utterly underwhelming. So you could definitely get brilliant audio experiences in the '90s if you wanted to. And similarly, it's not like all modern TV are just amazing in that department out the box.

This looks very cool.

With the reveal trailer now released, I can see he's using a few the cool SNES graphical tricks, which is great.

Actually looks pretty cool.

@KitsuneNight Yeah, I get what you're saying. I still think there's gotta be a way to make it work. In my head I visualise it being the height of the cart plus connector pin section basically, and the depth of cart plus screen basically, and then the control sections basically stuck on the sides. So, really, without the cart plugged in the centre section of the console would be pretty thin really. I'd have to see a mockup or something, but I think it could work.

Looks pretty decent. And nice to see it's with pretty much exactly the SNES button layout and such, right down to the names, Start and Select, and even a similar d-pad design. I'm going to assume it has shoulder buttons somewhere too.

Edit: Ah, the image at the top of the article is confusing/misleading, as that's not his system. Well, apply what I said to the device in the image at the top of the article.

Not the slickest looking device, but still cool to see a new piece of SNES hardware.

I do wonder if there would be some way to make a device like this where the cartridge connecter could just be exposed and at the bottom back of the device pointing up, such that when you connect the cart it basically sits flush with both the back and top of the system. And you could even have the cartridge label facing outwards from the back of the machine too, so you could see it nice and clearly there. You can think of it basically similar to how the cartridge connector is on the back of the Analogue Pocket for example.

@wiiware It would be great if Nintendo would do stuff like that. Sadly, I think we know it almost certainly won't.

@Bonggon5 Well, that's my take on it based on how it looks. It is what it is.

@gingerbeardman That's fine and your opinion.

I'd certainly be totally fine owning the black model, which I think has a great balance of a more retro "toy" gaming device like those old handhelds were and a modern take on that.

For example, I actually think the Analogue Pocket looks too bland and clean, such that it come across more like some poncy businessman PDA or hipster Apple device than a fun handheld games console imo. I'd be scared of getting fingerprints on the Analogue Pocket and that the screen might shatter at the slightest drop. But I would be able to play a device like the Chromatic with no such worries. And I'm really not a fan of none of the buttons having any labels and everything being a single colour on the Analogue Pocket either, which makes it almost look like an unfinished prototype mold to me, even as clearly slick and expensive as it looks.

So the ModRetro Chromatic appeals to me because it feels more whimsical and playful yet still clearly very well put together and high quality at the same time, and also because of how just simple and pure it is as a device and experience. That's something I miss from classic games consoles like the SNES, Genesis, GB/GBC/GBA, etc.

But that's just my personal take.

@gingerbeardman Me too with the coloured ones, and even this white one a little. But I think the black model looks totally fine. They do give it more of an '80s/'90s retro vibe though, I guess.

@Azuris I don't quite get what that means?

@wiiware The thing I like about this getting directly ported to SNES, other than I want as many games put on SNES in modern times as possible, is that it now opens the door for someone to go in and do a full 16-bit colour makeover at some point there. I'm hoping this happens to most of these direct NES to SNES ports at some point, and I think it would be very cool to see that happen. A whole bunch of "All-Stars" version of NES games on SNES would just be a total bonus imo.

Cool. I know this is a well regarded NES game, and especially the NES version specifically, so this is another very solid choice.

A totally random one I saw the other day that I actually think would now make a great choice to directly port to SNES would be the fan hack of Sunman game on NES, now titled Superman 2 - General Zod Edition:

https://youtu.be/T3SCP7QGg2U

If ported, it could end up being the best Superman game on SNES, especially if it ever got an update to proper 16-bit colours too.

But, before that, I really want to see Batman: Return of the Joker get a direct NES to SNES port:

https://youtu.be/M0iCZ9-FbG0?si=JLWyqAa4N8b62tXT

@Peteykins Kinda makes sense given then website's entire schtick is all things retro gaming in modern times. If the ModRetro Chromatic doesn't epitomize the idea of "Time Extension", nothing really does.