Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Sterling Sharpe: End 2 End
Spot Goes to Hollywood
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Arcana
Super Mario FX
Rampart
Earthworm Jim
Nosferatu
Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!
Disney's Aladdin
SimCity 2000
Raiden
Tom and Jerry
The Itchy & Scratchy Game
Mecarobot Golf
Sunset Riders
Family Feud
Donkey Kong Country
Champions World Class Soccer
ActRaiser 2
Madden NFL 98
Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons
Super Bomberman 3
Mega Man X2
The King of Dragons
EarthBound
Brain Lord
Mortal Kombat II
Zoop
The Lion King
Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage
Cool World
ClayFighter
Worms
Killer Instinct 2
Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon
Secret of Mana
Kirby's Dream Course
Mario Is Missing!
Saturday Night Slam Masters
Street Fighter Alpha 2
HyperZone
Rise of the Robots
Final Fight 2
Action 52
Fatal Fury 2
First Samurai
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Famicom (Platform)
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When the Super Famicom first launched in Japan, it was so hard to get that Nintendo had to hold a lottery for which employees would get a Super Famicom. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Mario series, and Yuji Horii, creator of the Dragon Quest series, claimed that they were each only able to get one.
subdirectory_arrow_right Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (Game)
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subdirectory_arrow_right Game Boy (Platform), Neo Geo AES (Platform), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform), Game Boy Advance (Platform), Arcade (Platform), Sega Master System/Mark III (Platform), PlayStation (Platform), Game Boy Color (Platform), Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Sega Game Gear (Platform)
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In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, collectively called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. These, quite obviously, did not have such compatibility, but rather were a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games from the Neo Geo; NES; Game Boy Advance; Game Boy Color; Game Boy; Sega Genesis; SNES; Master System; Game Gear; and PlayStation libraries sold at a markup. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles being a photograph of Soulja printed onto the box. Soulja Boy would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
Soulja Boy selling SouljaGame line article:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/soulja-boy-selling-cheap-consoles-1203084022/
Soulja Boy ends sales of SouljaGame line article:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/02/soulja-boy-stops-selling-souljagame-game-consoles
SouljaGame unboxing and teardown showing the packaging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-qNU7Qu3k
Rerez video reviewing the console SouljaGame was based on, showing the console list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXuAuTFXpA#t=595
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/soulja-boy-selling-cheap-consoles-1203084022/
Soulja Boy ends sales of SouljaGame line article:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/02/soulja-boy-stops-selling-souljagame-game-consoles
SouljaGame unboxing and teardown showing the packaging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-qNU7Qu3k
Rerez video reviewing the console SouljaGame was based on, showing the console list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXuAuTFXpA#t=595
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The DSP-1, DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 enhancement chips were the same kinds of 8MHz NEC µPD77C25 math co-processors used by English astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's speech synthesizer, which was developed in 1986 after complications of ALS forced him to undergo a tracheotomy, rendering him mute. Because of this shared technology, when the hardware for Hawking's synthesizer started failing in 2017, the original developers were able to create a software version of it by borrowing code from the SNES emulator higan.
Technical specs about DSP chips:
https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=66603
Articles that cover the use of higan to emulate Hawking's speech synthesizer:
• https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-Silicon-Valley-quest-to-preserve-Stephen-12759775.php
• http://pawozniak.com
• https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/06/how-snes-emulators-got-a-few-pixels-from-complete-perfection/
https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=66603
Articles that cover the use of higan to emulate Hawking's speech synthesizer:
• https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-Silicon-Valley-quest-to-preserve-Stephen-12759775.php
• http://pawozniak.com
• https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/06/how-snes-emulators-got-a-few-pixels-from-complete-perfection/
subdirectory_arrow_right Frogger (Game), Frogger (Game), Frogger (Game), Frogger (Franchise), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform)
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In the US, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System's final official releases in the 1990's were the same game: a port of the original arcade Frogger made to coincide with the PlayStation and PC reboot.
subdirectory_arrow_right Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform)
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"Blast processing" is a marketing term coined by Sega of America to promote the Sega Genesis as the cooler and more powerful console compared to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was such an effective campaign that it caused Nintendo to spend millions of dollars to ramp up their own smear campaign to rebut the claims, helping to create the textbook example of a "console war" between two rivaling video game companies through aggressive marketing and advertising. It is true that Blast processing as presented in advertisements at the time does not exist in any released Genesis game, but its creation was based on a real, low-level progressive processing method that ultimately went unused by developers.
The basic idea is that the hardware's video processor is "blasted" continuously, with the Genesis' 68000 processor working flat-out to change the color of every individual pixel during an active scan, a process where the "guns" on a CRT screen move from left to right and then down to the next line and so on. It was believed at the time that this function could be used to increase the Genesis' somewhat constrained color palette to showcase 256 color static images if timed right (this number would be exceeded by other developers like Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales who later discovered the trick).
Sega of America Senior Producer Scott Bayless claimed that Sega technical director Marty Franz first discovered the trick by "hooking the scan line interrupt and firing off a DMA [direct memory access] at just the right time", as firing it off at the wrong time would result in the scan lines appearing out of phase. This timing/synchronization issue, on top of the more pressing issue of the feature using all of the 68000's CPU time (meaning that while you could run the feature, you couldn't actually play the games that use it), effectively made it useless for cartridge games, and no shipped Genesis games ever used the feature. It’s speculated that it could have been used for Sega CD games, as the add-on had its own CPU that could run the feature, but this also did not come to pass.
The people responsible for the name "Blast processing" are Bayless and Sega of America's PR team. They interviewed him about the specs of the console, and he described to them how the feature could "blast data into the DAC's [digital-to-audio converters]". When talking about how the name came about, he assumed the PR team just liked the word "blast" without understanding what Bayless was explaining, and Blast processing was invented by them to more easily and vaguely sum up the technical capabilities of the Genesis when marketing it. Bayless later expressed reservations about the phrase, calling it "ghastly".
It should also be noted that this feature was not exclusive to the Genesis. In 2020, former Sculptured Software programmer Jeff Peters claimed that they discovered a similar technical trick on the SNES before Sega started using the phrase, but it was focused on audio rather than graphics. He claims that when porting Mortal Kombat to the SNES, Sculptured Software encountered an issue where the amount of graphics data being put onto the cartridge meant that sound had to be cut back drastically. To overcome this problem, Peters and his team used a homegrown system which allowed them to read sounds from the cartridge one at a time and blast them directly to a buffer in the sound memory. While the two tricks were achieving different things, it's interesting to note that both were possible on either console, despite Sega's insistence that only the Genesis could achieve Blast processing.
The basic idea is that the hardware's video processor is "blasted" continuously, with the Genesis' 68000 processor working flat-out to change the color of every individual pixel during an active scan, a process where the "guns" on a CRT screen move from left to right and then down to the next line and so on. It was believed at the time that this function could be used to increase the Genesis' somewhat constrained color palette to showcase 256 color static images if timed right (this number would be exceeded by other developers like Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales who later discovered the trick).
Sega of America Senior Producer Scott Bayless claimed that Sega technical director Marty Franz first discovered the trick by "hooking the scan line interrupt and firing off a DMA [direct memory access] at just the right time", as firing it off at the wrong time would result in the scan lines appearing out of phase. This timing/synchronization issue, on top of the more pressing issue of the feature using all of the 68000's CPU time (meaning that while you could run the feature, you couldn't actually play the games that use it), effectively made it useless for cartridge games, and no shipped Genesis games ever used the feature. It’s speculated that it could have been used for Sega CD games, as the add-on had its own CPU that could run the feature, but this also did not come to pass.
The people responsible for the name "Blast processing" are Bayless and Sega of America's PR team. They interviewed him about the specs of the console, and he described to them how the feature could "blast data into the DAC's [digital-to-audio converters]". When talking about how the name came about, he assumed the PR team just liked the word "blast" without understanding what Bayless was explaining, and Blast processing was invented by them to more easily and vaguely sum up the technical capabilities of the Genesis when marketing it. Bayless later expressed reservations about the phrase, calling it "ghastly".
It should also be noted that this feature was not exclusive to the Genesis. In 2020, former Sculptured Software programmer Jeff Peters claimed that they discovered a similar technical trick on the SNES before Sega started using the phrase, but it was focused on audio rather than graphics. He claims that when porting Mortal Kombat to the SNES, Sculptured Software encountered an issue where the amount of graphics data being put onto the cartridge meant that sound had to be cut back drastically. To overcome this problem, Peters and his team used a homegrown system which allowed them to read sounds from the cartridge one at a time and blast them directly to a buffer in the sound memory. While the two tricks were achieving different things, it's interesting to note that both were possible on either console, despite Sega's insistence that only the Genesis could achieve Blast processing.
Eurogamer article:
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2019-blast-processing-retro-analysis
Jon Burton video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qgArSqMsc
Scott Bayless interview:
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2022/09/the-man-behind-segas-blast-processing-gimmick-is-sorry-for-creating-that-ghastly-phrase
Jeff Peters claims:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/segas_blast_processing_we_did_it_on_the_snes_first_says_former_sculptured_software_dev
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2019-blast-processing-retro-analysis
Jon Burton video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qgArSqMsc
Scott Bayless interview:
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2022/09/the-man-behind-segas-blast-processing-gimmick-is-sorry-for-creating-that-ghastly-phrase
Jeff Peters claims:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/segas_blast_processing_we_did_it_on_the_snes_first_says_former_sculptured_software_dev
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Nintendo planned to create the CD Add-on for the SNES. Nintendo partnered with Sony and Philips to create the CD Add-on, but it was ultimately cancelled. This agreement allowed Philips to use Nintendo's IP on their own Gaming Console, the "Phillips CD-i.
Sony's own gaming ventures appear to have been influenced by this as the canceled reader was dubbed "The Play Station", akin to the PlayStation.
Sony's own gaming ventures appear to have been influenced by this as the canceled reader was dubbed "The Play Station", akin to the PlayStation.
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The character which would eventually become Captain Falcon for the game F-Zero was originally conceived as a potential mascot for the SNES. F-Zero's designer, Takaya Imamura, revealed in an interview that "So I started thinking about a character who would match the colors of the Super Famicom controller, with some red and blue and yellow."
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The SNES, like many electronic devices of its time, had its outer casing made from a type of plastic called acrylonitrite butadiene styrene, or ABS for short. To make the console more fire-resistant, a large amount of bromine (a naturally brown liquid) was added to the ABS mixture. When exposed to ultraviolet light and/or heat, the bromine breaks free to oxidize, causing the normally grey plastic to turn yellow over time.
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In 1998, TranDirect Holding was planning to release a cartridge for the SNES to be used for online banking at home. The reason was because many households lacked a PC to do it from. The service was backed by Nintendo of America, and even would've come with a special SNES keyboard controller, however, it was never released.
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A North American Super Nintendo isn't software region-locked. By carefully removing two stubs of plastic inside of the cartridge slot, a Super Famicom game can be inserted and played without issue.
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In Japan, Nintendo decided to ship the Super Famicom at night to avoid being robbed by the Yazuka.
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British actor and comedian Rik Mayall appeared in several advertisements in the UK for the SNES, including "Super Mario All-Stars" and "Link's Awakening". He used the money he earned to buy a house in London which he nicknamed "Nintendo Towers". He also starred in the cartoon "King Arthur's Disasters" which included a familiar looking merchant, selling the main character a donkey named "Kong".
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Early in its development, Nintendo planned on making the SNES backward compatible by having a second cartridge slot for NES games. Nintendo ultimately decided against it, as it would have made the SNES around $75 more expensive.