GET ON BOARD
A GUIDE TO THE CHIPS THAT MAKE UP THE SNES
This is 128KB of working memory for the system, dedicated to storing program code. Graphical data and sound samples are stored in their own dedicated chips. The original spec for the console included much less RAM, just 32KB, which wouldn’t have been enough.
The Ricoh 5A22 is a custom variant of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 CPU, with some extra functions. Existing Nintendo developers would have been comfortable moving to this CPU, as it is a relative of the MOS Technology 6502 CPU family that powered the NES.
The audio hardware for the SNES. This was initially packaged as two main chips, the S-SPC and S-DSP, both of which were part of a separate circuit board. They were integrated into the main board in 1993, and combined into the S-APU chip in 1995.
These two chips together form the custom video hardware of the SNES. To reduce cost and complexity, in 1995 these chips were combined with the CPU into a single chip named S-CPUN A. These ‘one-chip’ models are noted for their excellent RGB output.
This is the lockout chip that prevents PAL games from running on NTSC consoles, and vice versa. The only thing preventing a Japanese NTSC game running on an American NTSC console is the shape of the cartridge, leading to very simple region mods.
In the late Eighties, Nintendo was the powerhouse of the videogames business. The Famicom had successfully conquered the Japanese market, and it had successfully exported the technology to the USA, reviving its console business following the crash of 1983. Like any company with a successful product on the market, Nintendo was not particularly keen on abandoning the NES, but the people at the top were aware of new technology on the horizon – mostly because Hudson Soft had initially tried to sell it to Nintendo. Having been turned down, Hudson joined forces with electronics giant NEC to launch the PC Engine in October 1987. The small, powerful machine captivated Japanese players, with over half a million units sold in just its first few months on the market. This coincided with a downturn in domestic Famicom sales, and while Nintendo was still the market leader, it clearly couldn’t rest on its laurels. Late in September of 1988, Sega announced its 16-bit Mega Drive, just a month ahead of its October release. If Nintendo didn’t show its hand soon, there was a real chance that players would drift to these new machines. n November 1988, Nintendo invited hundreds of members of the Japanese press to its announcement of its new 16-bit console – the Super Famicom. Not long after, it found its way into Computer & Video Games courtesy of Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall. “We used to buy Japanese magazines from a shop near St Paul’s [Cathedral], near to where our offices were. We’d buy these magazines every month for the most part just to see what was happening on the Mega Drive and PC Engine, those were the most popular consoles at the time. We bought some one month and lo and behold, there were some pictures of the Super Famicom,” he recalls. “We got the news stories translated and turned them into news pieces for CVG, and we published the first pictures in the UK – which were literally snipped out of a Japanese magazine with scissors.”
This early showing confirmed many of the technical details of the SNES, including its 16-bit CPU, its support for 256 simultaneous colours on-screen, its eight background modes with larger sprites and its custom sound system. The system’s most impressive technical capability was its ability to rotate and scale backgrounds, shown off via a flight simulation demonstration. A new controller was also shown, featuring four face buttons in a diamond configuration and two shoulder buttons. One thing the console wouldn’t support was backwards compatibility, though at this stage the system sported an AV input that the new ‘Famicom Adapter’ console model could be routed through. No games were shown, but it was made clear that a fourth Super Mario Bros and a third Zelda were in development.
When the Super Famicom was shown off again in July 1989, it was close
to complete. The case design was much closer to the final, with the notable differences including an extension port on the front of the console with the control ports, a headphone jack on the right of the console and a red power switch. The AV inputs for looping the Famicom Adapter through had been dropped, too. The specifications were also basically the same as the final machine, with the exception of its work RAM which was just 32KB compared to 128KB in the final machine. This time, games were shown off, too. Super Mario 4 was in a very early state, with a mushroom-shaped world map and plenty of Super Mario Bros 3 elements that wouldn’t survive development, while that initial flight simulator demo had morphed into Dragonfly, a sci-fi flight game. But what would have seemed most surprising at the time was that the console was still at least a year away. While Nintendo doubtless wanted to perfect its own games, which were still in a very early state, it had also struggled to satisfy software demand in the early days of the Famicom. By allowing third-party developers plenty of time to prepare their own games for launch, it would not have the same problems this time.
n the days before globalisation and the internet had taken hold of society, such showings were for the domestic market only as Nintendo could enact region-specific plans as it saw fit. This meant that marvelling at the screenshots was as close as Jaz got to the machine. “That’s all that we had at the time, was the screenshots. But we were very excited – we trusted Nintendo, we thought the machine would be pretty awesome, so we were already getting really excited about it.” The CVG team passed this excitement on to the readers. “We wrote about it with a fair bit of hype at the time, it must be said, without really knowing that much about it other than the technical specifications.” This approach worked, though – as did Nintendo’s slow approach to delivering the console. When the Shoshinkai show of August 1990 rolled around, plenty of Super Famicom software was available to see. Third parties brought the likes of Final Fight, Gradius III and R-type II, while Nintendo provided the newly named Super Mario World, as well as the futuristic racer F-zero and computer adaptation Simcity.
In November 1990, the Super Famicom launched in Japan to enormous demand, and Jaz was one of the first in the UK to get access to the new console on import. “Everybody wanted to look at Super
Mario World, we didn’t know much about F-zero. I just remember the entire office stopping and piling into the games room to watch the games being played, and it not disappointing.” Part of the reason for going straight to Mario was that screenshots couldn’t convey the strength of the console’s signature ability. “We had no idea what was coming – we didn’t really see Mode 7 until we received the machine,” he recalls. “One of the games that we had with it was F-zero. We were absolutely blown away by it, it was just an amazing graphical achievement at the time.” Unsurprisingly, the Super Famicom was an instant hit in Japan. Nine months later in August 1991 it hit North America, rebranded as the
Super Nintendo Entertainment System and redesigned with a boxier grey-and-purple look. UK gamers thankfully got the original Japanese look with the American name, but experienced Europe’s traditional slow 50Hz conversions and long waiting times, with the system finally arriving in April 1992.
As the games started rolling in, players had plenty of new reasons to be impressed with the console. “Final Fight, that was definitely a huge game,” says Jaz. “It was a popular arcade game with huge sprites and seeing that come to life in a very authentic version was really cool.
That was something that we got very excited about when we reviewed it.” Other favourites were very polished examples of tried-and-true archetypes. “F1 Exhaust Heat was another early Mode 7 game that I remember getting really excited about, because it was more of a ‘racing car’ racing game – I’ve always been a fan of more traditional racing games,” Jaz remembers. “UN Squadron was a nice, slick shoot-’em-up that played well and was graphically impressive, even though at the time we were getting a little bit tired of all the horizontally scrolling shoot-’em-ups.”
For Nick Jones of Visual Concepts, who was already a veteran coder at the time, Contra III was the game that really proved impressive. “I remember playing that for the first time. I was just blown away with how the game kept changing. They didn’t have just the traditional
‘scrolling background’, they sought to make the background interactive. I remember one of the bosses where it ripped open the background and the boss was in the distance. Very creative,” he remembers.