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TLDR: Some NES game cartridges contained coprocessors. The Pilotwings math coprocessor had 3 revisions and one of them produces slightly different outputs, even

TLDR: Some NES game cartridges contained coprocessors. The Pilotwings math coprocessor had 3 revisions and one of them produces slightly different outputs, even though the game ROM is identical. Star Fox had a 2D/3D chip called Super FX that sounds a lot like a GPU. It’s pretty cool that console games of that era could augment your existing hardware to support their requirements.

city41 7y ago
Small correction, these are SNES games. The extra chips on NES games were primarily memory mappers and not as interesting as what SNES games did.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Even though the NES chips were still called "mappers" some of the later chips did a lot more, particularly on the Famicom, where cartridges could add extra sound channels. Even on the NES though you saw some minor graphics enhancements.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
JohnBooty 7y ago
The most hilarious enhancement chip is the SA-1, used in the Super Mario RPG and other games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#SA1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... It's essentially the same exact chip as the SNES's main CPU. Except three times faster. Imagine buying a game for your 3ghz PC that ships on a flash drive. And that flash drive also contains a 9hz (edit: whoops, 9ghz, haha) Intel Core i9 CPU.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  This was almost a thing with Xeon Phi... 57 CPU cores for 2 slots...
- ryandrake 7y ago
  A 9hz microprocessor would indeed be something. Start the game up, come back 10 days later and one frame would almost be rendered...
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Never had that centered Nintendo logo been a bigger disappointment.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    It might even be longer than that... I wonder how long it would take to render one frame of a modern game by hand if everyone on the planet joined in (let's make it easy and render at 160x120).
    - lokedhs 7y ago
      I don't even have a napkin to write on so this will be the most back of the hand of calculations. One floating point calculation for a human would probably take on the order of 2 minutes. That's 1/120 FLOP. Let's round it to 1/100. It's not like we're accurate here. Let's say a GPU is 1 TFLOP. That means the GPU is 100 trillion times faster than a human. With 10 billion humans on earth (again, let's just round these numbers), that makes the GPU 10000 times faster than the combined power of all humans. I don't think computational requirements scale linearly with resolution, but let's just assume it does. Your regular 1080p screen has roughly 100 times the pixels compared to your 160×120 screen. 10000/100 = 100, which means that the framerate of your manually computed game will be 1/100 of the performance of a regular GPU playing in 1080p. I welcome someone else to make the same calculation. It'll be interesting to learn if I'm close to a reasonable answer.
- Causality1 7y ago
  They could do that because the SNES's main CPU was ridiculously pokey even for the time it was released. Even calling it 16-bit was a bit of a white lie.
Causality1 7y ago
Not just back then. Nintendo has put a lot of wacky stuff in cartridges. Learn with Pokemon Typing Adventure had a bluetooth adapter in its cartridge to communicate with its bundled bluetooth keyboard. Some early NES games were actually Famicom boards with a 60 to 72 pin adapter embedded in the cartridge. Morita Shogi 64 had a modem and a phone jack built into its cartridge. Animal Crossing for N64 had a real-time clock. Mario Artist: Talent Studio had a cartridge that featured an entire composite video capture card. The Japanese version of Tetris 64 had a modified controller pak which connected to an infrared heartrate sensor for a special play mode that tested the user's ability to keep calm.
- mrob 7y ago
  More examples: WarioWare: Twisted! for Game Boy Advance with a gyroscope sensor, and Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (also for GBA) with a light sensor for detecting sunlight.
- freeone3000 7y ago
  Pokemon: HeartGold/SoulSilver have an infrared comms port to communicate with the pokewalker, and to mystery gift - because the Game Boy Color had one!

city41 7y ago

Small correction, these are SNES games. The extra chips on NES games were primarily memory mappers and not as interesting as what SNES games did.

aidenn0 7y ago
Even though the NES chips were still called "mappers" some of the later chips did a lot more, particularly on the Famicom, where cartridges could add extra sound channels. Even on the NES though you saw some minor graphics enhancements.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

JohnBooty 7y ago

The most hilarious enhancement chip is the SA-1, used in the Super Mario RPG and other games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#SA1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... It's essentially the same exact chip as the SNES's main CPU. Except three times faster. Imagine buying a game for your 3ghz PC that ships on a flash drive. And that flash drive also contains a 9hz (edit: whoops, 9ghz, haha) Intel Core i9 CPU.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
This was almost a thing with Xeon Phi... 57 CPU cores for 2 slots...
ryandrake 7y ago
A 9hz microprocessor would indeed be something. Start the game up, come back 10 days later and one frame would almost be rendered...
- skrebbel 7y ago
  Never had that centered Nintendo logo been a bigger disappointment.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  It might even be longer than that... I wonder how long it would take to render one frame of a modern game by hand if everyone on the planet joined in (let's make it easy and render at 160x120).
  - lokedhs 7y ago
    I don't even have a napkin to write on so this will be the most back of the hand of calculations. One floating point calculation for a human would probably take on the order of 2 minutes. That's 1/120 FLOP. Let's round it to 1/100. It's not like we're accurate here. Let's say a GPU is 1 TFLOP. That means the GPU is 100 trillion times faster than a human. With 10 billion humans on earth (again, let's just round these numbers), that makes the GPU 10000 times faster than the combined power of all humans. I don't think computational requirements scale linearly with resolution, but let's just assume it does. Your regular 1080p screen has roughly 100 times the pixels compared to your 160×120 screen. 10000/100 = 100, which means that the framerate of your manually computed game will be 1/100 of the performance of a regular GPU playing in 1080p. I welcome someone else to make the same calculation. It'll be interesting to learn if I'm close to a reasonable answer.
Causality1 7y ago
They could do that because the SNES's main CPU was ridiculously pokey even for the time it was released. Even calling it 16-bit was a bit of a white lie.

Causality1 7y ago

Not just back then. Nintendo has put a lot of wacky stuff in cartridges. Learn with Pokemon Typing Adventure had a bluetooth adapter in its cartridge to communicate with its bundled bluetooth keyboard. Some early NES games were actually Famicom boards with a 60 to 72 pin adapter embedded in the cartridge. Morita Shogi 64 had a modem and a phone jack built into its cartridge. Animal Crossing for N64 had a real-time clock. Mario Artist: Talent Studio had a cartridge that featured an entire composite video capture card. The Japanese version of Tetris 64 had a modified controller pak which connected to an infrared heartrate sensor for a special play mode that tested the user's ability to keep calm.

mrob 7y ago
More examples: WarioWare: Twisted! for Game Boy Advance with a gyroscope sensor, and Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (also for GBA) with a light sensor for detecting sunlight.
freeone3000 7y ago
Pokemon: HeartGold/SoulSilver have an infrared comms port to communicate with the pokewalker, and to mystery gift - because the Game Boy Color had one!