Mini Snes: first impressions

sergioad

@stuart2773 try lr-snes9x 2005, works almost flawlessly, lr-armsnes works with any slow down but the ship's reticle, blasts and the enemies suffer a severe case of flickering

FlyingTomahawk

A video of the UI would be cool.

Used2BeRX

Yeah. I knew about the roms already being dumped. I actually heard that No-Intro was going to be adding these to their database which really surprised me seeing as how picky they are.

I was under the impression that these games were no different than their old cartridges. Am I mistaken? Have they all received some sort of tweaks that no-intro would want to add them to the sets? I just think it's funny that they would add the NES classic, but they don't have the VS arcade machines when in almost every case the VS games are very different than the NES carts.

I'm really curious to hear what you guys have to say about the new Star Fox 2 game. My brother has been telling me for months that Nintendo actually finished the game themselves for this special release. I'd love it if that were true.

lilbud

@used2berx Maybe they cleaned up translations? Or removed rapidly flashing colors

sergioad

@used2berx Man, Star fox 2 is awesome, I finished it but sadly with not all the planets completed

edmaul69

Well it has been hacked already so i assume it will be the same as the nes classic

UDb23

@flyingtomahawk said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

A video of the UI would be cool.

Some people already did it ;-)

Ranma

@tonytoon said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

I've not seen any of the tech places I follow mention frameskipping in their reviews or impressions, so I'm going to have to assume it's an artifact of the video recording process or something similar.

@udb23 said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@ranma played Star fox and contra, image quality is great. Used default 4:3 screen option.

Probably just either me or the video quality, but I was watching this guy playing F-Zero

and have to say something doesn't look quite right. Thought it might be frame skipping or something. Almost like it's on a GBA. Seen similar in a few videos of the console.

ByteThis

@edmaul69 I'ts not hacked yet..they are working on it, although the NAND can be accessed and downloaded using a certain version of Hakchi via FTP. The NAND can be uploaded to the nes mini and the nes mini emulating the snes mini, but that's about it so far. I have been following the progress as I own an nes mini, and was going to buy an snes mini as well, but changed my mind and sticking with my pi. The snes mini would have been modded and put away like my nes mini is..lol..so kinda an expensive toy to have kicking around. Using the money I was going to spend(on the snes mini) on building a bartop cab soon!

PetroRie

@stuart2773 said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx

the Starfox 2 rom has already been dumped from the SNES Mini, i was playing the new version last night on RPi and theres a slight bit of slowdown on the intro cut scene that was not present in the hacked versions, other than that it plays really well,

Overclock the SuperFX chip via the SNES emulator and it will run much better.

sergioad

@sergioad said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx Man, Star fox 2 is awesome, I finished it but sadly with not all the planets completed

@petrorie is not necesary

ruckage

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Overclock the SuperFX chip via the SNES emulator and it will run much better.

That wouldn't helps as I'm assuming the slowdown and sound distortion is because the pi isn't fast enough to emulate the SFX chip so overclocking the SFX would need even more processing power.
However if you use snes9x2005 instead of 2010 you'l find it runs much much better.

ruckage

@sergioad said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx Man, Star fox 2 is awesome, I finished it but sadly with not all the planets completed

A big part of Star Fox 2 from what I can tell (haven't played it properly yet) is re-playability, a lot is random so it will be different everytime.
The gameplay structure from what I've seen reminds me of Star Raiders on the Atari 8 bit, same basic idea, you have a galaxy map and defend space stations from the enemy - I wonder if that's where the inspiration came from.

sergioad

@ruckage Indeed, I will play it again soon

PetroRie

@ruckage I had slow downs with Starfox 1, after I overclocked the FX chip via the emulator the game ran fine. Same story with Yoshi's Island. It did work.

"the pi isn't fast enough to emulate the SFX chip so overclocking the SFX would need even more processing power."

That is not true, look at the specs of the Pi and compare them to the SNES. An another example, look at the specs of N64 and look at the specs of the Pi3. The pi 3 is in both cases much faster. The problem with lagging emulators isn't the hardware but the software. It will get sorted out eventually.

When I used the a newer version of the SNES emulator it I didn't even need to overclock the FX chip at all. The games who used the FX chip ran perfectly.

ruckage

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@ruckage I had slow downs with Starfox 1, after I overclocked the FX chip via the emulator the game ran fine.

The slowdown in Starfox 1 (super FX 1 chip) you are correcting is what was present on the original SNES, you can check the FPS in retroarch - regardless of the SFX overclock on a pi 3 the emulation runs at a fairly consistent 60fps. Overclocking the SFX makes the game smoother but it also physically speeds up the game.

Star fox 2 uses The Super FX 2. Due to this being a more advanced chip (and I'm assuming being more accurately emulated) in snes9x2010 the RPI can't keep up, you can test this also. Regardless of the SFX overclock the framerate drops to 47fps in the intro - this is emulation slowdown and not slowdown present on the original hardware.

However if you play Star Fox 2 on the Snes9x2005 core it runs at 60fps (1 slight dip to 59fps). This is most likely because the emulations isn't quite as accurate so needs less processing power to run at full speed.

That is not true, look at the specs of the Pi and compare them to the SNES. An another example, look at the specs of N64 and look at the specs of the Pi3. The pi 3 is in both cases much faster. The problem with lagging emulators isn't the hardware but the software. It will get sorted out eventually.

Emulation doesn't work like that, going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't).

As emulators progress and become more accurate you need more speed, that's why devices like raspberry pi use older versions of the emulators - they're less accurate but have lower spec requirements.

This is a good article on the subject: why-perfect-hardware-snes-emulation-requires-a-3ghz-cpu

UDb23

@lilbud Took pictures of all Borders ("frames").

You can find them here.
The "Grid" one is dynamic, meaning line color and glow is not fixed but instead changing over time (suppose it's a random color cycling).

0_1506860256094_snes mini frames.jpg

lilbud

@udb23 Thanks, the close up of the grid is really helpful. I'm trying to recreate them as best I can. (Though I did hear of the mini's kernel being extracted, so maybe one day we will have the raw images.)

Do any of the others change colors or flash or do something animated?

UDb23

@lilbud said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Do any of the others change colors or flash or do something animated?

The other seem static.

ruckage

@UDb23
Thanks for posting those pics, nice to see them all. Seems a bit of a lost opportunity that they didn't do game specific borders though like they did on the supergameboy (they only had 21 games to make borders for after all).

@lilbud
I'm willing to bet that the borders will be dumped pretty soon.