Five SNES Games That Don't Look Like SNES Games 

Hey Sharopolis. Just wanted to say thank you for years of your super niche and nerdy comforting content.

Randy Linden's work on SNES Doom was nothing short of sorcery.

4:00 The hilarious thing here is that *thirty years later* it's now becoming commonplace for 3D games to render at a lower resolution and then use scalers to magnify the image - like DLSS and XeSS upscaling. Talk about being ahead of the curve!

The MSU-1 still blows me away even after over half a decade of using one on my SNES. I implore you to play through the English Dubbed versions of the Satellaview Zelda games. The experience is now brought so close to the original broadcasts, only now as if they had received an English release of some kind.

I loved the SNES port of Doom back in the day. I played it to death. I didn’t care about its low resolution and slow frame rate (I even had the slower PAL version!). It was the only way I could play Doom at the time and that was that. It was also the most complete port of the first 3 episodes of Doom 1 at the time. All the other versions had fewer levels. Even the PS1 port had less Doom 1 levels than this version (ignoring episode 4).

Speedrunning the New Super Mario Land on original hardware is what got me through the early days of quarantine. I'm still so impressed by how great it turned out and how fun it is to play. Definitely recommend hunting it down!

Race Drivin' was the worse game I've ever owned. My family bought the SNES in 1992 and loved F-Zero. We were looking for another racing game and chose this. 😢

The 80286 that Wolfenstein was designed for was not a 32 bit CPU it was 16 bit but at 16 MHz it was still loads faster than the SNES CPU. x86 CPUs only became 32 bit with the 80386 which ran wolf3d fantastically well. The PC had a big memory advantage over the SNES too ( a problem for all pc ports to pretty much any console except very recently) 640KB of RAM with 256kb of VRAM was unthinkable for 16 bit consoles.

Love the homebrew stuff. Always wondered what a SNES game could be if storage space wasn't an issue.

It's always a very pleasant surprise to see your next video is ready. Take care and thanks for all the hard work!

I think I speak for everyone when I say if Sharopolis wants to discuss ontological questions that he is unfit to answer in a long form video, we would all watch it and like it.

I really thought you were just doing another explanation of raycasting for no reason. Then you pull out that wolf 3D for NES was the first time Carmack used binary space partitioning, and my jaw dropped lol. How did I not know this link in the story!?

Honestly, I was expecting more SNES games that look like NES games or something, but I am not disappointed.

Another hit from the legendary Sharopolis, this man never misses.

Thank you for this video. I always wondered how the Noah 3D game worked on the SNES. Since it uses the same engine as Wolfenstein, you explained it already.

I liked how they used the Mode 7 in Wolfenstein. The layer with the rooms were drawn as a small background graphic using Binary Space Partition, and then they made it full screen by scaling the background graphics using Mode 7. I wonder if the same trick could have been used with Race Driving to make it much smoother.

There were also a few NES games that looked like SNES games. I think there was an unofficial, hacked port of the SNES version of Golden Axe, I remember playing, although it was extremely buggy. Many kids in the 90's in India were introduced to NES games with an NES clone system, "Little Master." The controller resembled an SNES controller, with the top left button being the *B* button and the button below that being the *A* button. The buttons on the right next to them served as "turbo," buttons of the adjacent "A" and "B" buttons respectively, which when held down served the purpose of sending rapid successive A/B button presses. I'm mentioning this because those who'd never seen an SNES system may incorrectly think that the "Little Master," system was based on the SNES due to the similar controller, whereas it was actually based on an NES system.

The homebrew Genesis port of Wolf 3d looks 10 times better than the SNES version. It is truly amazing.

Great video. I had heard that CW used Mode-7, but never understood in what way. This video clears it up!

I thing BSP trees and Raycasting aren't exclusive techniques, more like, SNES Wolf3D still uses raycasting, but the data is optimized using BSP. This way player only casts rays toward walls that are marked as possibly visible in the BSP tree, without wasting time on stuff that's definitely not visible.

You explained that raycasting concept so effectively in layman's terms, most people bodge that up!

German: Like typewriters eating tinfoil, Being kicked down the stairs

Great list! Of course the games that immediately come to mind is the Donkey Kong Country games and their pre-rendered sprites. But this is a great list of less obvious titles and I look forward to seeking out a few I missed.

Empire Strikes Back on the SNES had some kind of height in the flying stages to Cloud City if I remember correctly. Never seen that in any other game and without FX.

2:34 A 286 is not a 32 bit processor. It’s still a 16 bit processor.

23:15 I think a guy who goes by "Ikari" is actually behind the FXPAK Pro, from what I understand, Krikzz just does the manufacturing and distribution.

...and New Super Mario Land is a winner too! I beat it within a couple of hours of downloading it, but I remembered a lot from GB SML.

Waiting for Zizek to write an essay on SNES games now.

Regarding Romanians (Transylvania is a STATE that is a part of Romania), I have met people from Romania. They told me that their education system REQUIRES that they learn Romanian & 1 other language of their choosing, & a lot of them choose American english. Not only that, but their (American english) accents are IDENTICAL to that of (example) somebody from Kansas, USA.

The Super FX chip was basically a self contained computer with it's own display. It had it's own 256 color framebuffer (bitmap not tile based), the SNES cartridge port has pixel bus pins and the SuperFX sends the pixels out to the SNES graphics chip to be displayed as an additional graphics layer. The SuperFX pixels still used the SNES pallets though, they used color indirection not RGB i.e a pixel's numerical value pointed to a pallet entry in the SNES's color pallets.

Get it right buddy! Wolfenstein 3D is pronounced "Waffle-stain Thud" and must be spoken in a heavy South Florida accent. ;) Addendum- Excellent content! I would love to see you cover the Sega Genesis port of "Waffle-stain Thud next. Maybe a Sega Genesis games that don't look like Genesis games video.

Any SuperFX game was amazing!!! (Starfox, Stunt Race FX, Doom, Yoshi's story had the superFX 2 chip and was by far the best graphics on a 16 bit console period, the Doom port was nothing short of a miracle. (especially since it was able to keep its music, not even the 32X version accomplished that!!!)

New Super Mario Land port is insane; couldn't help but imagine if that was released during SNES lifecycle, would've floored people lol

About impossible Doom ports, someone ported the PC version of Doom to the Game Boy Advance and it works like a charm! Now mind you, there already was an official version of Doom on GBA, but it's terrible and quite different. I don't know what magic they used, but the modern unofficial port looks great, feels responsive and runs at a smooth framerate.

Wolfenstein also has a pretty good MSU Port with a really rocking Soundtrack.

Doom looks rough today but it was pretty incredible when I first played it as a teen

As a Transylvanian Saxon, I feel called out 😂

I wish people today could see how impressive the SNES was for its time, especially features like Mode 7 & the pre-rendered 3D graphics for games like Donkey Kong Country & Killer Instinct. The Genesis/Mega Drive came out several years earlier, and that felt like a big upgrade over the 8-bit platforms we were playing (mainly the NES), but it really kicked into gear the same year the SNES released. Sega dropped the first Sonic the Hedgehog title just a few months before the SNES launched (in North America), and us kids thought it was crazy how good these games looked. And even though people feel PS1/N64 era 3D games were primitive & didn't age well, that generation felt like the biggest leap in visuals EVER. It's not just nostalgia either. I can safely say the leap from playing Yoshi's Island/Donkey Kong Country to then playing Super Mario 64 was absolutely mindblowing. The leap from PS1 to PS2 did not feel that way, nor did moving to HD with the PS3/360 era. Law of diminishing returns, I know. But it was just incredible to see that transformation as it was happening. That being said, 6 year old me had to play SNES/Genesis at a friend's house, as my dad opted for the 3DO.... 😅

Doesn't the MSU-1 use an untapped method that would have been an official way for the CD add on to stream? Like, the modern use of it is homebrew, but the reason it is possible is because of how the CD add on would have been able to stream data or something? I could be remembering wrong..

I had a feeling it would be possible to stream high-quality audio through the SNES from some chip in the cartridge. Nice to know it's actually been done, though it's a shame it never happened officially, back in the day.

There's something about the way you talk (the energy, maybe?) that's really comforting.

I always thought the dotted lines on the road in the SNES Race Drivin' looked like they were hastily drawn in MS paint.

I played Doom in 1995 thanks to Linden, no regrets, it was awesome at the time

Wolfenstein3D is a 16-bit game for MS-DOS. 80286 is not 32-bit CPU but 16-bit like 8086. It is much more efficient per clock than 8086, but 16 MHz 286 was not able to achieve playable FPS in Wolfenstein 3D at full screen. Wolfenstein 3D was really meant for 386 machines with 25+ MHz clock. It even had branching code which executed 32-bit instructions when 386 or better CPU was detected in selected areas to achieve better speed. Furthermore 3D games become so popular on PC, because it was easier to make 3D games than 2D tile based ones. VGA cards allowed to efficiently draw individual pixels on the screen. It also could draw 4 pixels of the same color in single byte write. This was used by Wolfenstein3D to quickly draw background for each frame. Raycasting was simple enough, but not as efficient as BSP used in DOOM. Wolfenstein3D for SNES used BSP because Carmack already developed it for DOOM. Wolfenstein3D for PC would run faster with BSP, but ID Software was only interested in pushing the limits of the new hardware with limited support for older PCs. Wolfenstein 3D was a game that could run on 286, but required fast 386. DOOM would run on 386, but 486 was needed for good FPS. Same thing with Quake, Pentium was required for playable experience, but 486 was able to run at less than 10 FPS in smallest window.

Race Drivin was Stunts in DOS version. I played that game a lot when I was 7 and 8.

If you want to flip it around, Board Game Top Shop is a late PS1 game that looks like an SNES game.

Hats off to you if that’s you playing Race Drivin on the SNES!

Yoooo, thanks for telling us about _New Super Mario Land._ I've got like half a dozen SF Memory Cassettes (Nintendo Power cartridges), I'll have to write it to one and give it a go! 😃👌

Wow. Really well done video.

John Carmack is a programming Goliath. If he was a footballer he's be right there alongside Messi.

Hey Sharopolis, whats the song name being played in the background at 13:06?

I wish you explained how some snes goes uses digital sound streaming and i would be not surprised if new supermarioland uses sound streaming as well because those sound effects are crystall clear, The sound streaming from the msu1 chip is done analogue thus passing throung the snes soundchip,wich i don’t count, I wish you explained how sprite scaling was done with wolf3D as the snes has no sprite scaling builtin.

Pardon for weird and irrelevant question but I've been wondering this now and then watching your videos - where are you from with that brilliant dialect? My guess is Yorkshire, but bear in mind I do have the handicap of being Swedish so my analysis of accents might not be more than ill advised guesswork.

I only heard about Wolfenstein on the SNES but I have never seen the game running on the system. It actually runs way better than I expected. Jurassic Park had FPS sections and it's nowhere near as fast or smooth (by SNES standards). I wonder if a Fastrom hack could be used to speed the game up some more. Or maybe even an SA-1 hack for it. Would that be enough juice to bring it to 60fps I wonder.

I feel that the 16-bit era was the ultimate segue (saig-wey) between classic arcade gaming and modern cinematic gaming. Looking at early Genesis and SNES games and comparing them to later games on those consoles, you can definitely see a progression between simple action platformers and beat'em-ups and shooters that barely capture the point-a to point-b hi-score experience of arcade gaming, and video games with higher-end graphics like Gunstar Heroes and Chrono Trigger that sometimes tell a story. Truly a generation between NES and PlayStation. So cool that I lived it all as a youth... it felt natural!

Race Drivin' reminds me of a game I played on the PC years ago called Stunts.

Having been a philosophy major in a past life, I appreciated the references at the end!

Love that SNES Doom music! Couldn't they have used a co-processor chip of some kind on MK2 & MK3 to have bigger characters & to get things like the swirling portals moving on the Street & Roof from MK3 along with other background things?

hehe I remember that homebrew version of Super Mario Land. It was reported there was a game he created, and no one believed him. Then he sent videos and pictures of it, and so many was amazed by it. And then... it got leaked. The Dev stated he was never going to release it. I wonder if he got hacked...

I came into this video skeptical but hell I'm not skeptical anymore

I would definitely watch a video discussing the finer ontological & epistemological points of SNES games, you know, if one just HAPPENED to appear in my subscription feed *hint* *hint*

I believe Zizek would say that *schniff* road blaster is eating from the *schniff* graphics pipeline of ideology

The SNES wasn't a full 16-bit system it had a CPU that was half 8-bit and half 16-bit.

That DOOM did run on the SNES will always be worthy of respect. Considering you didn't need an actual hardware add on like the Mega Drive/32X version or a super console like the Jaguar or PlayStation. It was, impressive and struck me at the time as being just cool. Yoshis Island and this were 2 superb examples of what could be done on the ageing and outgoing hardware. Was going out with a few bangs 😂

Many fond memories of doom. Bought it on sale with bsay money for Like 70 bucks. Back then I thought it was an amazing 1 to 1 port...but I was a stupid kid, and only had shareware doom. One game that looks pretty damn good and near early ps1 is psycho dreams

I bought an fxpakpro for my super nintendo and it was the the best thing i did to play everything. A bit expensive but worth it

new super mario land.. holy cow. that is awesome

10:35 OMG, you shudda tried Hard Driving on the Amstrad CPC. That was measured in seconds per frame and I still played the shizz out of it!

I suspect those video artifacts on the last game would be much less visible on a CRT, which is what the SNES was designed for. I mean sone of it looks like VHS tracking, which makes me wonder if it was bases on a VHS copy. And, sure, you could see VHS tracking on CRTs, but rhe small stuff definitly looks worse on LCDs.

It would be awesome if someone made a new FMV game that ran on the SNES. Although, either drawing the frames of the video or shooting it with actors would be prohibitive towards anyone actually taking on such a project. It would either cost a lot of money or time, more than most would be willing to devote.

I couldn't afford a Doom capable PC and Doom for the SNES is how a played it. I still have the cartridge.

flashbacks to hard driving on the atari lynx here haha

For April Fools you should do 5 SNES games that looks like it should belong on NES.

Is it fair to add to the lineup two homebrews, one that used pre-rendered graphics to look like a DS game and one that used a homebrew coprocessor?

Remember the Guy's in my Computer club in High School swearing that Doom wouldnt work on the SNES Enhanced 6502 designed 3.5mhz CPU amd anemic 128k of ram (by PC standards). But i must admit that I was blown away by how well it played on that system and wasn't even close to the worst Console port! Consoles with infinitly better hardware specs didn't make it work as well!

You could probably get Žižek to talk about retro games lol

As much as I enjoy your channel, for your excellent presentation, research, editing, general good vibes.... My favourite thing is thinking about Yanks, trying to parse your accent.

I wish I was learned enough to follow the technical explanations, but suffice it to say the first real FPS on the SNES had to make their coders work very hard just to chug along is a decent enough take-away.

7:12, girl this is a fangame. I thought this was uploaded on April 1st

I really liked the topic of this video.

I admit, it totally lost it at: "I'm sure the correct pronunciation in Transsylvanian-Saxonist is "Frumfrem!"". :D

Cool stuff

I love MSU1 games. Its like finally having the SNES CD.

Sometimes if the original target hardware was not the SNES then you might easily tell its non-SNES origins. I would cite very different beasts like Drakkhen (PC), Gods (Amiga) and Ys III (PC-98).

Rip Near/byuu

Omg I LOVED seeing Žižek!!!

Now you mention it, W in german is a V, and V is a F (ish). So 'Volfenstein', and 'FolksVagen' 😊 (now its an american game so... whatever right?) Just discovered your channel, I like it - followed!

This may have already been listed in the comments, but the game Out of this World should have made this list.

very interesting!]

Was pretty good spelled, Wolfenstein.

Forget the Wolfenstein pronunciation. The way you say kudos is bonkers,friend.

I don't care what anyone else says he said Wolfenstein correctly

There are some "to good looking" games on SNES, like the damn impressive Rendering Ranger R2, it looks rather like a Neo Geo title.Kirby's Dreamland 3 is an example of a different looking game as well, bc it runs in the rarely used hi-res mode.

_I never had a SNES but when I first saw my friend playing it back then..._ _...I still till this day will say, "STAR FOX 1993" does not look a Nintendo Game !_

Road blasters compression artifacts would proberly not look bad at all on a CRT with SCART

Super Smash TV didn’t look like a SNES game, it looked exactly like the arcade game

"Sort of exists, but doesn't quite, and might have existed at one time, but not quite as good."

Žižek commenting on Star Wars, but not on SNES 😑, he is just not in touch with the times....

Out of This World is another fine example. Not a particularly good game, but it doesn't look anything like what was on the Super NES at the time.

The anonymous author of that Mario hack is probably staying anonymous because Big N are known to be EXTREMELY litigious and they would come after him for past royalties and trademark infringement. I don't think those crimes prescribe under Japanese law.