legendary tech: the SNES and its inner workings
the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, otherwise known as the SNES is the successor to the very famous NES is a home game console which was released in north america in the dawn of the 90s. the SNES in a quite similar fashion to its older brother the NES was also quite popular, however it did have some competition unlike the almost monopoly of the NES.
similarly to its predecessor the SNES also had a japanese counterpart The Super FAMICOM which released earlier than the north american version. they both did not have any differences other than some aesthetic and I/O differences; they were both highly anticipated on release and were met with a great welcome.
now moving on to the technological specifications: the CPU jumped up from a 8-bit 6502 clone by Ricoh to a 16 bit 65C816 clone by Hitachi which was significantly more powerful and had access to a higher range of memory due to its more advanced and wide memory bus; the registers of the processor compared to its 8-bit predecessor are also quite a bit more upgraded too. the microprocessor had access to around 128kb of ram. now moving on to the graphics processing processor, which was a Ricoh 5A22 was a custom made 16-bit processor. it was miles ahead of the previous PPU and due to its more advanced memory bus, registers, and overall architecture was able to output many more sprites and colors to the screen making use of its upgraded amount of memory; speaking of memory it had 64kb of dedicated VRAM and due to these such leaps in its manufacturing it also sported a brand new mode of graphics output known as MODE 7. this enabled this console to output semi 3D visuals as seen in the F-ZERO games.
and the inner specs were not the only things getting an upgrade, the controllers were also quite groundbreaking too. they were reshaped to be more circular and ergonomic compared to the previous ones which, although nostalgic and iconic, were square and not very ergonomic. they also sported two new shoulder buttons at the top as they introduced new game mechanics into their video games.
speaking of their video games: the console hosted three brand new installments in the Super Mario Bros franchise: Super Mario World, Super Mario: All Stars and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island with all of them receiving outstanding reviews from gamers and critics alike. the The Legend of Zelda also got a legendary installment: The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past. all of these games along with many others propelled Nintendo's reputation as one of the best console manufacturers on the market.
moving on to the programming aspect of the SNES the programmers certainly didn't have to be such ingenious in their tactics, like they had to when coding on the NES, so, they could focus more on the aesthetics and mechanics of the video games, which in turn, made the games better looking with more concentrated and unique storylines. although, along the lifetime of the SNES, with the games getting bigger and the game developers wanting to cram more content into their products, there came some mapper chips in the cartridges which provided crucial SRAM and DRAM.
in conclusion, the SNES was a worthy successor to the NES, with it and its games receiving outstanding reviews and being remembered by gamers and nerds for generations.