Why did Super Mario RPG need the SA1 chip?
There's nothing in particular about the game that seems demanding. There's no heavy calculations being done, Donkey Kong Country series used a bunch of pre-rendered sprites without any issues or co-processors. None of the effects in battle seem to be anything outside of what a normal SNES game could produce, infact I'd say they aren't even as impressive as some that are in FF6.
Was it the music?
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Copy protection maybe?
Code probably ran like shit normally so they threw better hardware at it to cope
this
japanese "people" are generally bad at coding
Square can’t programmed: Vroom Vroom
More or less running like shit. Square had a scripting system that made developing their RPGs simpler. This was fine when it was doing a Final Fantasy where the characters move around and talk and you have static sprites on a battle screen but the SNES CPU just is too weak to interpret code for anything more complicated. Chrono Trigger demonstrates how their system falls down to 15fps and slowdown whenever things get heated, so for SMRPG with all the knobs on a better CPU helps immensely.
Yes, of course they could have coded the entire event system in true 65816 ASM and got an identical game with no add-on hardware. But that would have required better coders acting as go-betweens for the scenario writers instead of letting the jumped up writers write the scene files directly.
The chandeliers in the first castle
They're nothing but static sprites.
Because Sega does what Nintendon't.
What if Nintendoes what Segain’t?
SEGAren't?
The default SNES CPU was atrociously slow. Even Earthbound can't even manage to maintain 60FPS with the default specs, and it's not exactly a fancy looking game, but the scrolling is constantly stuttering coz the CPU can't keep up.
Yeah but SNES is what Genesisn't
Lol that’s where they put the FREAKING SOUL LOL
It’s a soul chip!!!!
haha am I freaking right or what dudes?
Finally! Someone who also freaks out! I can't take it anymore either! Lord, have mercy at our souls! Hahahaha! Got it? SOUL! Oops! My bad! I meant SOVL!
No, you're wrong, bye
Imagine SNES had built in SA1 at launch.
Still not even sure where it helps. Games like Kirby and SMRPG both look like they'd run fine on the SNES without them, neither of them seem to be at the scale of say Yoshi's Island in terms of graphics on screen and effects.
Bro... KSS would either be a slide show or melt the SNES' CPU. It's one of the most graphically intensive games on the system.
It's been a while since I've played KSS but I don't remember it being nearly as intensive as Yoshi's Island, it has been quite a few years though and I may be mixing it up with another Kirby game.
Yoshi's Island had the SuperFX.
Yes I'm aware, that doesn't change anything about what I said.
Then why are you comparing completely different enhancement chips designed for different purposes?
At what point did I do that? Are you illiterate? I said it wasn't as graphic intensive as Yoshi's Island. Learn to read homosexual.
KSS has quite a bit of slowdown, too, from what I recall.
Especially so when playing 2 players
You're overestimating the SNES. Maybe Brits don't need enhancement chips, but even Super Mario World had slowdown and was recently patched to use SA-1 fixing it.
>neither of them seem to be at the scale of say Yoshi's Island
Yoshi's Island did not use SA-1, it used SuperFX 2, which blows away SA-1.
Interesting, seem to be random hit-or-miss if the games will complain or not.
Also interestingly, most games that do complain seem to not specifically complain about the Multitap like Mario RPG goes, but also complain if you have a mouse or super scope connected.
None of the Cx4, SDD-1 or SPC7110 games seem to complain. Some SA-1 games complain and some don't, also some FX games complain and some don't. (Star Fox 1 did not complain, but 2 did. Stunt Race FX and Dirt Trax FX complained, but Stunt Race only did it after the Nintendo logo while Dirt Trax did it instantly on boot).
No surprise none of the EA SA1 games I tested like the PGA tour games seemed to follow that spec. None of the games that had an additional ARM processor seemed to care about a multitap either.
Now I am curious what games did and did not have that warning, and if any had a more interesting or funny message than just a generic "use a standard controller" one.
Most games seem to have the "use a standard controller" message if you have anything that's nost a standard controller connected, multitap, superscope, or mouse, but I noticed that Super Mario RPG will not have that error message if you have a mouse or super scope, specifically just if you have a multitap. And Momotarou Dentetsu Happy is the opposite, it runs with a multitap but has an error if you have a mouse or Super Scope connected.
I doubt Nintendo would have allowed it, but I just wonder if any of them had any cheeky messages about it like the Japanese version of Mickey Mania did if you try to bypass the region lock while it's running.
This is because people install mods to change the region using a switch, and you can operate the switch whilst the system is powered on.
I've seen this actual lock-out in Mickey Mania demonstrated on real hardware in person.
Yes I know why it happens, I saw the GameHut video explaining it. I meant if there was any games that had a cheeky message like that instead of just a standard one.
>Still not even sure where it helps. Games like Kirby and SMRPG both look like they'd run fine on the SNES without them, neither of them seem to be at the scale of say Yoshi's Island in terms of graphics on screen and effects.
If the SA1 was built into the SNES, developers would not have even bothered with the 5A22. The SNES CPU and the SA1 are both based on the same WDC 65C816 chip. I would imagine that devs would use the 10MHz CPU as the main processor and use the 3.5MHz CPU as a support chip.
>Saturn two cpu but more comfortable and easygoing
This^
there is an expansion port on the bottom of the SNES that connects to the A-Bus (CPU, cart, etc.).
theoretically addon hardware could have been connected through the port to give basic carts the ability to use the expansion hardware without every cart having to have their own copy.
Go Sega 32x way? No thanks!
Dreamcast BTFO
>put whole company out business
kek
Not the joke I was going for, I actually like Sega consoles
so they could charge a higher price
Best answer so far, t bh
how? they could charge more and not put that in too. prices varied more back then
I know, I was buying games back then. I still remember $80 SNES games, I was just saying the bar was pretty low at that point in the thread compared to other replies.
My parents paid $100 for SimCity when it came out on SNES. $100 in 90s dollars. For SimCity.
(turns out it was worth it though because my mom loved that game)
How is this possible? MSRP was $60USD.
Not trolling but genuinly want to know where did your parents buy that game? Was it common back then to have some stores blow the MSRP?
I can recall sometimes weird novelty stores would carry 3rd and 4th gen games and overcharge for them.
You know the King of the Hill where it turns out Hank never shops around because he has one guy he trusts, and that guy rips him off constantly? Lots of middle-class white boomers operated that way.
Before the internet, shopping around took a lot of time, doing it for anything that doesn't require a loan made you look like a israelite, or worse, an intellectual.
Yes but videogames generally had an MSRP that most stores stuck to even back then. Even if the price was different, it was usually lower due to some kind of sale or other event, not significantly higher than MSRP.
Also don't forget in the 90s there were a LOT more physical electronics and videogame retail stores than there are today, it wasn't much effort to shop around at least a little, especially when a game that was priced at $50 to max in some special cases $70 was priced at $100 for the store you went to.
Even some of the most Hank-like people I knew did not just stick to one electronics store for everything, especially not on games for their kids.
My deddit fueled imagination
A few gens later, but I remember that at some point I could only find SA2:B on GC at some random computer store and it was clearly marked up than usual
2kb internal RAM. Super Mario RPG uses this internal RAM to store some data, including the current party formation. I have zero idea if the RAM map for Super Mario RPG was full to the point that they really needed the extra 2kb of RAM to work with, but they took it and used it all the same.
That seems hard to believe. The SNES already had 128kb of work RAM. What could possibly be taking up so much memory that they took the expense to add a whole co-processor to the cartridge just to provide an extra 1/64th of it? There's definitely more to it.
The SA-1 also has a built-in converter that can convert bitmaps to tiled graphics the SNES's PPU can understand. It also provides multiplication and division on a CPU nearly 3 times faster than the SNES's. I only know for a fact that Super Mario RPG stored the current party info in the internal RAM of the SA-1, I dunno if it took advantage of these other features.
>There's no heavy calculations being done
RNG
Is there something about SMRPG's RNG that's more complicated than that of literally every other SNES game ever released?
Easy experiment to solder off the chip and see if it still runs.
Every game with an expansion chip starts by running some test operations to make sure the chip is present and is functional. If not it locks out. You'd have to find that part of the code and disable it.
>Explain to me processing technicalities that I couldn't perceive
I wonder if this is a bait thread...!?
That's just not true. You can easily find videos online that go deep into the hardware and code to explain what's going on. There's no reason this should be impossible to find out. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=011UDCmNUnU
>actual discussion occuring
>is this bait?
moronic homosexual
Ah interesting.
It gets better. The SA-1 had what was known as BW RAM, or Backup and Work RAM. This RAM could be accessed and used by either the SA-1 or the SNES's CPU, effectively adding more RAM to the console. The biggest SA-1 BW RAM used was 512kb. Most SA-1 games used 64kb or 256kb, but it could be used to save data and/or as work RAM. Since you wouldn't need 64kbs of data just to keep track of party levels, stats, items, money, current progress, and various other associated data, there's no way Super Mario RPG used all 256kb of the BW RAM as save RAM. Given .srm files for Super Mario RPG are 32kb, that would leave an additional 224kb of RAM for the game to use, bringing it up to 354kb's of RAM including the 2kb internal RAM.
Anyone have any SRAM saves of Super Mario RPG larger than 32kb?
wtf is this post
do you think that technology is unknowable magic pulled from hell or something
sufficiently advanced tech is yada yada you know the quote
>he doesn't know
Both of those imply that demons could just write books / draw pictures for the same effect. Eh.
If what you're saying is true, demons are lazy fricks and we're doing their dirty work? They can frick off
>attention seeking troony is a devil worshipper for the lolz
Oh golly this is surprising. What are you going ti do next, post pictures of your cute socks?
to fix slowdown
Caused by what though? There's nothing demanding going on in a turn based RPG.
I imagine quicker loading transitions was probably the main focus
Copy protection. Emulators weren't as good then and Nintendo was more worried about bootleg carts and flash drives, so shoving a spare SNES processor into a cart was a good way to make sure pirating their AAA games wouldn't be cost-effective. I'm sure it also let devs cut corners codewise but that was always a fringe benefit.
Did all of you erase your memories of the 90s so you'd have more room to obsess over trannies?
>I'm sure it also let devs cut corners codewise but that was always a fringe benefit.
moron.
>Did all of you erase your memories of the 90s so you'd have more room to obsess over trannies?
moronic homosexual.
>Emulators weren't as good then and Nintendo was more worried about bootleg carts and flash drives
SNES emulators were non-existent in 1996 and copy machines aren't flash drives and copy protection was almost always done via software.
kys idiot
Nta, but Pusofami was functioning in '96 and VSMC was 95, so.
puraguram harru
>add-on chips
>Add on Hardware
needed the model 1 of the sega cd to be even taller
Did you know that Super Mario RPG does not allow you to play if you boot with a multi-tap connected?
Probably a power draw concern of both the SA-1 and Multi-Tap both drawing additional power.
>Probably a power draw concern of both the SA-1 and Multi-Tap both drawing additional power.
it is. it is listed as a programming caution in the second dev book.
I discovered this by accident. Play tons of Super Bomberman and Super Bomberman 2 with other kids. They leave, I don't bother to disconnect the Multi-Tap since I figure it's harmless and go back to playing other games. Then eventually I start up Mario RPG and see this message.
Does this happen with games that used other enhancement chips like the FX?
it also happens with the FX. i don't think it applies to all chips. i would have to check the manual to see if DSP-1 has the same limitations.
unfortunately the dev manual doesn't have details on 3rd party enhancement chips.
now THATS what i call a fun fact
>WHY DID THIS 40 YEAR OLD GAME NEED THIS PARTICULAR CHIP IN ITS CARTRIDGE
who fricking cares
i can't imagine the level of virginity necessary to obsess over meaningless bullshit like this
This. That game is literally more than twice as old as you are.
Less than the level needed to spend all day randomly insulting people on the internet.
Where do you think you are?
Shhh, grown-ups are talking.
It increases the on-screen sprite limit and reduces load times.
Joking? That's just mode 7.
pilotwings used a DSP-1 to accelerate the vector math needed to run the game. it was pretty much a tech demo for both Mode-7 and the DSP-1.
i can't think of a single reason why an SA-1 was put into SMRPG. square went on to make Seiken Densetsu 3 which doesn't have an SA-1 and has some of the best technical tricks on the system. maybe the engine was just too sluggish and it was decided using an SA-1 was more cost effective than improving the code.
Always seemed weird to me that they launched with a DSP game instead of putting it in the console in the first place. Or even just putting it in the US/PAL versions of the console. Either way it would have required the use of fewer chips since they had to add one to every single cartridge that used it (which there were a lot of).
>pilotwings used a DSP-1 to accelerate the vector math
I was actually wondering as I made that post how they managed that on base hardware. ty
that's just mode7+hdma, there are no ad-hoc SA-1 calls during that section.
SMRPG needed SA-1 because if it wasn't there, there would be legitimately concerning loading times. See the ROM map; every fricking thing is compressed to fit. Doing all the rapid decompression+drawing to VRAM would be very taxing if done realtime by the CPU with no help.
>See the ROM map; every fricking thing is compressed to fit. Doing all the rapid decompression+drawing to VRAM would be very taxing if done realtime by the CPU with no help.
Very interesting, good answer thank you
If you've got BSNES+, open the tile viewer during normal gameplay, especially battles. Writes are being made at worst at the page level almost every frame.
Super Metroid could do raw writes to a 1024 byte segment every frame and even that with HDMA (everything that was read was uncompressed) but SMRPG does that same x8 at worst and from compressed sources.
I guess that's the way it was advertised to devs too, after all "SA" is "Super Accelerator" so speed for operations is implied. To fit more stuff into games, you need to compress them (and by design, decompress) so speed is valued
In light of this, it makes sense as SMRPG has a large number of bespoke, non-repeating, untiled environments. In terms of assets, it's not far off from texturing a truly 3D environment.
What's fricked up is that all devs were bound by the cart size (price) / content amount / compression efficiency tradeoff... but once PSX came around and devs suddenly had fricking 700MB of space to dick around with they spent it all on FMVs or streamed audio.
A PSX game that had utilised the full 700MB for well-compressed graphics and zero FMVs/XA would have been mind blowingly huge and unique.
They also did a shitload of assets, see FF7, it may have had a ton of FMVs but it also had a shitload of static backgrounds as well, more than what would've fit on any cart at the time.
if they did it all on player maps and shit, that would've taken a LOT of time to make. They would've needed hundreds of people all making RPG maps for 2 years.
>more than what would've fit on any cart at the time
you sure about that? With efficient compression it MIGHT'VE unironically fit onto a 64MB cart.
Fact is, FMVs take an obscene amount of space, even short ones take megabytes.
>64MB cart
There's the problem: In 1997, 64MB carts weren't available to devs yet.
A 64mb cart in 1997 would've made the game cost as much as the system.
Speaking of expansion chips, I am getting some conflicting information about FX1/FX2.
Some sources say that the only difference between them is that the FX2 can handle ROM sized up to 16Megabits while the FX1 only goes up to 8Megabits.
Others say that the FX2 actually ran at double the clock speed too.
Others say that it was just the MARIO-1 variant used in Star Fox 1 that ran at half speed, something about maybe the chip being early or not fully tested or something back then.
Others say that the FX1 did at first run at half speed, but later versions that were still FX1 chips ran at full speed., with again the only difference with the FX2 and these newer FX1s being the double ROM size.
There are 3 Super FX chips, the MARIO, the GSU-1, and the Super FX 2 GSU-2. The MARIO is at 10-ish MHz, the GSU-1 is at 21-ish MHz, and both are limited to 8Mbit, and both have a 100-pin package. The GSU-2 has a 114-pin package, was clocked the same as the GSU-1, and supports up to 16Mbit. There was also a GSU-2-SP1, but it is effectively identical to the GSU-2 and doesn't seem to have any difference beyond labeling.
I see. Did anything other than Star Fox 1 use the MARIO chip? I only see games listed as GSU-1 or GSU-2, not which variant of GSU-1 they used.
It's in 3d.
What CRT shader would you recommend for this game? I found a custom someone designed for the DKC games specifically that seems to work well for me (pic related), but I can probably do better. My display is only 1920 x 1080. CRT Royale looks to pretty much require a 4k display to look really good.
Guest-Advanced, as others have said.
Seems a fair consensus. I really should just pop it on and go. I've been swallowed by shader minutia and tinker with that instead of playing the games. I hate that so many seem to require adjustment and customization. Almost wish these things didn't exist, but this game in particular is hideous raw.
https://forums.libretro.com/t/please-show-off-what-crt-shaders-can-do/19193
Look through the last thirty or so posts in this thread. They share lots of nice presets, so maybe pick one to your liking.
Ooh, neat.
Oh Yey
They used the additional chip to hide that one frog coin where you need to jump on Toad's head at the beginning of the game.
Fricking bullshit.
That one pissed me off so much. I remember asking for a hint guide as a kid just to get that one chest... and it was some unofficial shitty guide where the one chest it didn't explain how to get was that one.
Why the frick was that the ONLY secret in the game that's missible? And not just missible, but something you need to know to do right at the beginning of the game most likely before you even talked to the npc who explains secret chests to you, and long long long before you get the ring that lets you know where a secret chest is.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
Replay value.
I personally happened to go to a friend's house that happened to have a magazine with the secret in it
Worst of all, you get nothing for getting all hidden chests anyways
The games that use extra chips like SMRPG and YI always cause the SNES I spilled soda on years ago to flicker epileptically.
considering the chips are on the cartridge, I don't see how that would affect it
might be the extra power draw
Or the extra connectors/traces to those connectors that carts which had additional chips used might have been the only ones effected by the spill.
hmm could be
do games with mode 7 also have issues on it?
Super Mario Kart and Pilot Wings sprite flicker like a motherfricker on my sticky SNES.
both have additional chips, your cartridge slot needs cleaning or you have a bad power supply/ 5V power regulator.
Yeah, but just for DSP-1. Those didn't use the extra connectors, so I guess it's not specific to carts that use those.
If it's a power draw issue though, then would an accessory that also draws power like the Multitap cause the same issue? Anon should check that with a non-flickering game if they have a multitap and enough controllers to fully populate it to see if that also causes it to flicker.
SNES multitap power draw is low, wouldn't stress the system
Yet it's enough to make it not feasible to have both it and a game with a SA-1 or FX chip connected at the same time? That's some tight tolerances if true.
The OEM SNES power brick is expected to give 10V DC at 850mA's. You'll notice a lot of 3rd party power bricks will be 9V DC at 850mA. Because that is still enough to meet the requirements for running a SNES with a basic game and one or two controllers. You'll notice people start complaining about third party bricks when trying to use a multi-tap, some special chip games, flash carts, disk copiers, etc, since the bare minimum doesn't leave room for the add-ons that are expecting you to have the full 10v at 850mA's. There is a tolerance to make room for add-ons and expansion chips, but not much.
To follow up on this, 850mA at 10V is 8.5 watts of power. 850mA at 9V is 7.65 watts. On an OEM 10V supply, a basic game needs 6mA, a DSP game needs about 16mA, and a Super FX game can use up to 108mA. Meaning at 10V, a Super FX game could be using 1.08 watts out of the 8.5 available. It doesn't magically need less power because of lower voltage. Given that Nintendo warned devs about multi-taps with SA-1 and SuperFX games, it would seem the tolerance is barely over 1.1 watts, and the SuperFX and SA-1 chips were designed to be just within the limit.
>all that mental gymnastics
All the information is in the task
Undercover Cop SFC port…three player
I think it sounds like the CPU is dying
Some of those spells were pretty wild for the system. Also keep in mind the overworld sprites were a fair bit larger than SNES RPG usual, and more of them appeared on screen/per line than you might think. The SNES is a huge piece of shit at juggling any amount of sprites, so SA1 was probably necessary to have it smoothly scroll at all times, especially in busy towns or field segments with a bunch of enemies.
all spells were done via HDMA, doable on a stock SNES
theoretically generating the HDMA data could utilize a coprocessor. but this game doesn't do that (and i can't think of a game that does)
Okay, fine. Still has big by JRPG standards sprites, and can have quite a few of them at once at 60fps.
SA-1 doesn't magically grant more sprites though, you can draw the same amount of sprites on-screen/per scanline on a normal game and a SA1 game.
blast processing
idk, they probably put it in for no reason. obviously the eye test of some random autist can easily determine that the game didn't need it, and that's obviously a more qualified opinion than the people that developed the game and made that decision in the first place
keep it