Snes Classic Hack

[Henry Gallagher]

Im assuming most of these adapters will just vertically stretch the pillarboxed 16:9 SNES Classic output to fill your 4:3 SD CRT. Between that and the borders that already pillarbox the game, the proportions of everything are going to look awfully strange. The aspect ratio of each game is going to be along the lines of how a 3:4 arcade classic would appear on your CRT.

Best case will be that it respects the 16:9 aspect ratio, and correctly letterboxes the picture being sent to your CRT. With the SNES Classic pillarboxing to the left and right of the SNES image and your adapter's letterboxing at the top and bottom of the picture, that will leave you playing 4:3 SNES games in a window on your 4:3 CRT. No distortion, but between the smaller size and likely some fuzziness introduced by the converter, it's probably going to negatively affect the ability to read text here and there.

With so many compromises (I also imagine these adapters add a fair bit of lag as they downscale the image), I don't think you're going to be very happy with the end result if you get it working. If it were me and I didn't intend to acquire a HDTV for years to come, I'd consider keeping one of the controllers, possibly selling the rest on Ebay to recoup part of the cost, and buy a $20 used Wii console to homebrew and install a SNES emulator on.

Connected to a Wii remote, your SNES Classic controller that you hung onto will work just fine on a Wii. It's just a Wii Classic Controller without the dual analog sticks, disguised as a SNES controller.

I'm assuming most of these adapters will just vertically stretch the pillarboxed 16:9 SNES Classic output to fill your 4:3 SD CRT. Between that and the borders that already pillarbox the game, the proportions of everything are going to look awfully strange. The aspect ratio of each game is going to be along the lines of how a 3:4 arcade classic would appear on your CRT

Very good point, due to the SNES and NES Classic HDMI only output for HDTVs; made sense that Nintendo set the video to widescreen. Not owning either Classic, I am guessing there is nothing in the settings to change the aspect ratio to 4:3? SNES games originally displayed in 4:3, a shame if not an option on the Classic systems. If a lower 480p option with full also allowed, then the 4:3 full screen could be achieved.

My TV Cable box is hooked up with HDMI thru the DVI input of my HD CRT. The cable box allows for full view in 4:3 as well as setting to different resolutions. For the PS2 console, anything above 480p will kick my 4:3 HD CRT to widescreen mode resulting in black bands top and bottom. I suspect the Classic console will have a similar issue unless it could be set to 480p.

The aspect ratio of the game is correct, but the video output itself is 16:9. There's a selection of borders to choose from to pillarbox the 16:9 screen to preserve the original 4:3 ratio of each game.

You can't disable these borders such as via a stretch option, which some would enable were it there since they perennially feel like they're not getting their money's worth if they're not using every square inch of screen real estate on their new tv (regardless if it distorts the proportions of everything).

Ironically, such a stretch option if Nintendo had provided it for this segment, could've also been used to achieve near full screen 4:3 for the handful of people out there that want to connect this to a SD 4:3 CRT. It would eliminate the pillarboxing, so as long as the downscaler distorts the 16:9 input it's receiving by stretching it vertically to fill a 4:3 tv, you'd only end up with the tiny bit of letterboxing that's evident in that screenshot.

Here's what that screenshot would look like if distorted by a downscaler to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio by stretching the image. Instead of a 1.33 aspect ratio for the game, you'd instead end up with a .98 ratio. The game is actually slightly taller than it is wide.

And here's what one of the Sega Vintage Collections that M2 developed for Sega looks like on a 4:3 SD CRT (They're mini compilations on the Xbox Live Arcade service for the 360). It's a 4:3 game being emulated here, but they didn't support full screen 4:3 output with these collections despite the 360's standard definition support. So you end up playing in a window on a 4:3 tv, as shown by this screenshot.

It's at the correct aspect ratio, but it doesn't approach filling the screen since it's being treated as a widescreen 16:9 only title on a 4:3 tv, with the 360 letterboxing it to preserve the 16:9 ratio. You can expect this sort of result with your SNES Classic if the downscaler you buy preserves the 16:9 signal it's receiving by letterboxing it before displaying on your tv.

The cord issue is a serious one. The SNES Classic has wired controllers with a cable that I think is something like 4-4.5 feet long. While that was all well and good when we were kids, that was when our 30 inch CRT TVs were perched on little stands two feet off the ground, and we sat on the floor playing cross-legged. But now? This design is borderline unusable for most modern day entertainment setups.

While I still may not personally feel the pull of the mini console craze, I can understand its broad appeal, particularly in an age when modern games and consoles can be a chore to keep up with, and sometimes you just want the classics. And $80 seems totally worth it for that chance, which is why this and the NES have been selling out instantly.

I'd love if the Nintendo Switch had this type of back catalog of classic gaming. But it doesn't -- not yet. Maybe, once the promised Virtual Console arrives in 2018, it will eventually get there.

Those same Super NES games on the 3DS play really well, and have restore points that allow a single quick-save between plays. Games cost $8-10, which is a bit expensive. But many of these addictive titles are totally worth it, and some are available as collections. I ended up buying about seven over the last two years.

Sega Genesis and arcade games: Sega's collection of 3D classics on the 3DS are the best arcade and Genesis ports I've ever played, and a far better experience that you'll get on the AtGames Sega Flashback. I recommend most of them, especially the arcade-perfect Outrun, Afterburner II and Galaxy Force II. Sonic and Sonic 2, Ecco the Dolphin and Streets of Rage are fun, too.

That aside, they are gaps you can cover up. Extenders are cheap to get and basically a requirement. The controller missing from the NES Classic is a bigger deal, but hopefully with the re-release, getting a second gets easier. Hopefully its like the SNES Classic ended up, and easier to find, as well.

All that being said, the point of the article is to do something within that same range of what the NES and SNES classic can do, and what they cost. Sure, I could trick out a gaming laptop to do it and hook it up to a PC, but the pi makes it far easier to make a media box I can put next to my TV, much like the Classic consoles.

Well, it already runs on ARM, and almost all system-on-a-chip solutions these days seem to run ARM instruction sets. If so, it would seem to be a possibility. I guess it would be predicated on those SoC platforms already having a compatible linux OS like ARMbian working on them.

I think someone noted recently though that the Raspberry Pi build relies on some Broadcom libraries, which causes it to fail to run on most (or all, I forget) other ARM-based platforms, so zep would need to address that.

I have a sense though that zep may be busy with some other matters in his real life. I have no idea what they might be, or if they actually exist, but he doesn't seem to be reading the forum very frequently in recent months. It's unfortunate if so, but ... real life, uh, finds a way ... of doing that.

This is a really intriguing idea!! there is something similar for other consoles called FAKE-08, which is a p8 emulator for various consoles. I suggest contacting the FAKE-08 team on Github asking if they have plans for older hardware.

If not, id love to learn something new and i might tackle the project if @zep is okay with it. ive always been fascinated in the homebrew community and would love it if more people could experience pico, even if they dont have internet.

I remember a video by someone where they made a program called NesOS, which was a GUI operating system for the NES, with on-cart memory and a text editor, so i dont think it would be too hard porting lua over, seeing as its very portible in nature. the one thing that would be hard is size constraints. while pico stays faithful to the limitations of old hardware, filesize only applies to cartridges. pico-8 itself is well over the size limits of a NES cartridge, although SNES might be easier.

If we're talking about the MINI series of consoles, i dont know much about them, but i DO know that they are easier to work with, so that might be a solution to our size limits. The other issue is that PICO-8 requires a 700MHz ish cpu, and the SNES is about 4MHz, so thats another issue. even the 64 is only around 100. gamecube is almost 500, so thats the closest we can get before exiting the retro zone.

If we were to tackle this project, the NES and SNES classic consoles would be the best because they seem to have chips, according to most sources, that clock in at 1.7GHz for the NES classic and the SNES classic seems to have the same chip. It says that its a Cortex-A7, and has very similar specs to the Raspberry PI 2, which should be perfect for pico! the only issue is that the classic consoles only will load roms less then 60mb, or at least thats what reddit says. good for us, pico-8 fits well into that 60mb limit! or at least without any carts... the only other hurdle i can think of is that the nes and maybe snes use assembly, which i dont know if LUA and pico-8's weird mishmash abomination of languages can be reverse reverse reverse written in.

The classic consoles seem like the only safe way into this, but maybe once we get more specific device req's, we'll be able to port poor old pico to other things that shouldnt have it. if any of you have any other ideas, then we might be able to work something out and stand more of a chance (if you two are even still on this platform).

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