“It used to be better” - gamers like repeating this phrase. Many believe (and not always unfoundedly) that at the dawn of the development of the video game industry, developers approached the matter with much more care than they do now. A thoughtful plot, exciting gameplay with relatively poor graphics (the most powerful graphics card is your own imagination) - all this distinguishes the games of the past from what is now.
That is why console emulators are so popular, both software and hardware. For example, here you can remember how buyers began to snapping up like
NES Mini and
SNES Mini pies. In addition, DIY-games for NES
are still being produced . But there are more original solutions. About one such - below.
So, a game lover and an electronics specialist named Tom Murphy created a specialized system that allows you to run games from SNES on an unmodified NES. In order to prove the fact of launch, Murphy published several videos. Here is one of them.
As it turned out, it does not modify the console, but the cartridge for the NES. The craftsman built in there a custom electronic circuit that is compatible with the original NES. And this “cartridge” just allows you to play the NES games on the NES. Murphy developed a custom cartridge scheme himself, but for convenience he orders its production in China. The cost of the order, along with shipping about $ 10. In fact, this Raspberry Pi 3, however, is somewhat video-modified.
“Malinka” allows you to connect to the console a specialized EEPROM chip, which helps the NES to correctly process the data, “telling” what to work with and where to output. True, there are certain limitations that make it impossible to conclude the game and the gameplay itself is ideal. The difference is in the ability of NES to process information, in the number of colors displayed and much more. All this leads to the fact that the image displayed on the screen can not be called perfect.
However, the “raspberry” gives Murphy a lot more options than a regular cartridge. For example, the standard NES game limits the block of pixels of 16x16 size to the ability to use only three colors (plus one color for the background). But the hardware NES generates each image line as a set of 8x1 discrete pixel bands. By switching color palettes between stripes, the system can actually display more colors.
Raspberry allows you to update each strip of pixels as often as the capabilities of the device’s hardware itself allow. Thus, it is possible to play complex animated inserts, which in the normal situation can not be displayed.
Unfortunately, NES cannot cope with 32768 colors transmitted by SNES games, so you have to adjust the Raspberry Pi in such a way as to achieve the maximum performance without much harm to the image. Plus, the NES controllers do not have enough buttons for comfortable playing SNES games, but there is also an opportunity to solve the problem in a certain way.
An emulator of this kind does not support the SNES sound, since NES has a four channel limit. Over time, the developer plans to somehow achieve high-quality sound.
In fact, Murphy created a specialized emulator, moreover, quite complicated. In this case, the question “why” can only be answered: “because it can”.
By the way, NES Mini should soon be on the market again, moreover, information about the release of an updated
version of Sega MegaDrive appeared not so long ago. This is the same miniature console, as well as competitors from Nintendo. On the possible appearance of such a prefix on the market said the company Sega, which is very much alive. The announcement, unfortunately, was made only in Japanese, so it is not yet clear whether the prefix will appear only in Japan or will go on sale in other countries. The hardware characteristics of the new console are not reported, but it is clear that conventional cartridges will not be supported. Probably, the company will simply “sew up” the most popular Sega games in the console.