The Games That Upgraded The NES 

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256 bytes was the TOTAL RAM directly accessible by the 16 bit processor in a TI-99/4A. The 16k used for programs data was shared VDP memory on the 8 bit bus.

Pitfall 2 being the big one.

Wow, a tiny head start on racing the beam!

Thats ridiculous who the hell needs an EXTRA 256 bytes.

Aye, the I believe they are called the "Big eye" or "Big Core" archtype. There are an entire seires of cards based on them. (but they aren't that good due to how modern yugioh has power crept.) And of course their field spell is called Boss Rush, for obvious reasons. xD

Koonami has a lot of yugioh cards based on their other games.

I mean this as a compliment, nerds like you move the world forward 🙋‍♂️🐢🐢 It took me a week to understand how to install retroarch

The thing is not many games used the MMC5 and the ones that did didn't really put the chip to good use, so in reality it didn't upgrade the NES as it could have and as other chips did. I think the video did fine not to mention it and several other mappers. Otherwise the video would be so lengthy. Also, hello Michael! ^^

@@greenkoopa you're a genius as we vould make it. I didn't even try. 😂

And enhanced audio on Famicom carts

MMC5 was used by more games then you might have thought according to Wikipedia. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Just Breed, Metal Slader Glory, Laser Invasion, Uchuu Keibitai SDF, Nobunaga's Ambition II, Nobunaga no Yabou - Sengoku Gunyuu Den, Bandit Kings of Ancient China, Romance of the Three Kingdoms II, Uncharted Waters, Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf, Gemfire, L'Empereur, Ishin no Arashi, Shin 4 Nin Uchi Mahjong - Yakuman Tengoku

Good to know. I much prefer the Japanese version. So glad it was included on the Contra collection. Famicom disks versions of games were also superior.

@@davedavies8968 Rondo of Blood also releases on the SNES as a downgraded Version called *Dracula X".

Early polygon games like Starfox and even Final Fantasy 7 were far uglier then many NES games. Starfox really felt like a downgrade to me back in the day.

@@EsotericBibleSecrets Starfox still aged better than OG FF7 imo due to the fact that there are only "blocky Alien Space ships" and Not "blocky human characters"

Im 35 so I came in more in the snes ages, but i noticed the big disparity in nes games but never understood why

Yeah but the SA-1 was probably used more often, giving iirc 4x (more actually factoring in its other addtions) the CPU for the system vs the built-in one. Stuff like Mario Kart and SMRPG used it. Well, one source said 33 games used it. IIRC the FX chip was used in like, 4 games?

Thanks, I will!

I would love to see that, that would have been amazing!

Hellraiser as in the horror film?!

@@JayOnTheBay yup, the very same

That's cool. Where can I learn more on this?

Ahhh that was a great analogy

That's how cartridges on the earlier consoles (mostly 4th gen and older) were. These could be thought of as removable SOCs (system-on-chip) that interface directly with the CPU, and include self-contained hardware upgrades as well as the game software.

its just a extension, its not different to the pcie slots in your pc

@@mystsnake not so much different in function, but these kind of cartridges would be more like "a pcie card that not only has the game on it but also part of the graphics hardware and some extra RAM" ... imagine if PC games came on pcie cards that you just plug into a PC (thunderbolt, expresscard) and then you can play the game with highest details, raytracing and everything even if you only have a potato PC (Pentium N5030, iGPU only) ... because all the graphics hardware is on the same pcie card that the game is on ... games would be terribly expensive tho, and you would have to buy the games on physical media again instead of downloading everything from steam or the likes

@@KenjiUmino The Commodore 64 had such a function. It too had a cartridge slot on it's side. Though disks were far more economical at the time.

I think he did a video on Punch Out which explains how the technique works, but there are so few MMC2/4 games on the market (even localized) its not that amazing to talk about.

Yeah it had a GameBoy in it. I think that uses some kind of Z80.

@@customsongmaker GB-Z80, a scaled-down version of the Z80.

Wow. RU-vid removing my comments again... Why ? Sega actually thought about add on chips. Virtua racing had the SVP chip that allowed the system to do early 3d like the SuperFX did with StarFox. Why they chose to go the 32x route I have no idea, I think prices of carts came into factor. Those SuperFX SNES games were pretty expensive at the time. Sega definitely made some bad choices.

@@Gatorade69 The thing is, the SNES actually had around 100 games that used enhancement chips, and only a couple were more expensive than normal game prices, so it really was a smart move on Nintendo's part. If Sega had done the same in the Genesis' early life, it probably would have beat the SNES in the console wars, but it didn't. So, yeah, Sega definitely made some bad choices.

@@inceptional Hundreds of games sounded a bit too much. I did a quick count and it was more like 73 (worldwide) give or take not including a handful of games that were never released. Also looking at the prices in 1993 a majority of SNES games were 60-70$ compared to the Genesis which had games priced 50-60$. Accounting for inflation that's about 120-140$ for a SNES game. So they were on average a bit pricier. Reading about SEGAs SVP chip it increased the price of the carts to 100$. With Virtua racing being the only game produced because of that. So I guess it just wasn't worth it for SEGA to pursue. It's kind of hard selling 100$ games, especially back then. I also notice some SNES enhancement chips weren't really on the same level as the SUPERFX chip more so being made by the developer/production company with some only having 1 or two special functions. I wonder why a company were not able to add an enhancement chip on their Genesis carts ? Did the Genesis just not support it or was it SEGA who didn't want companies doing that?

@@Gatorade69 Well, 73 (+4 unreleased) is pretty close to a "around 100", give or take. And, while the SNES games may have been more expensive in general, they cost that price with or without enhancement chips in the vast majority of cases, so the point that they weren't more expensive than normal [SNES] games if they had the chips in them still stands. For SNES owners, the chip-enhanced games (outside of a couple extreme examples like Star Fox) were basically just like buying any other game for their system, which really made things simple/elegant/frictionless. Yeah, none of us will ever truly know the exact reasoning behind why Sega did what it did, suffice to say that outside of Virtua Racing, it didn't use enhancement chips in the carts and instead went for very expensive and bulky add-ons. Personally, I would have preferred them going down the enhancement chips in carts route. It's possible there was some technical and/or legal reason Sega couldn't just copy Nintendo or something. Maybe that's why it took so long for Sega to eventually do the chip on a cartridge thing. I dunno. I think I read somewhere the Genesis wasn't designed with this in mind though, unlike the SNES, so it just wasn't anywhere near as practical for the most part. This is why Nintendo deserves kudos for such as smart idea, which it clearly envisioned/planned before the SNES was even released and indeed had implemented in some games from literally day one (see Pilotwings).

The genesis CPU was nearly 3x as fast as the SNES, that's why the SNES had the need to invest more in special chips. It was always said that gunstar heroes didn't release on SNES because it couldn't run it.

I don't know why but I watch these types of videos when I'm stoned, and even sober I don't understand the technical stuff but I find the verbiage amusing. To be clear I'm 35 and when I see a new word I look it up, but blitting puts a smile on my face.

That’s actually really interesting and clever. Did that give it advantages over the Genesis too?

@@borby4584 The genesis used the same way to do graphics, but better.

@@dan_loup so it did what Ninten-didn’t?

@@borby4584 yes, two layers, more colors, an stupid amount of data copying time, massive sprites..

Not only that, I don't think Mario 3 could run at all on stock NES because of diagonal scrolling. Wasn't possible without these enhancement chips.

@@davedavies8968 Castlevania III is the classic example.

I agree, I've always thought that the NES design seemed heavily influenced by the 6502 based micro computers that were on the market prior it. Something that is generally ignored or dismissed these days.

@@amerigocosta7452 well Nintendo wanted atari to sell it originally, derivative work is easier

I also noticed the similarities with a stripped down Atari 8-bt. It has a fraction of the RAM and lacks the built-in scan line counter. What it does do well is the tiling, the sprites and the colour graphics resolution.

@@chockablock34839 get an MBC3 on the cartridge iirc and you'll get the scanline counter

Heck, IIRC, even the NES version sounds nice. I think sometimes, it's not about what you have, it's about how you use what you have. Yeah, some of the Famicom's audio enhancements were all nice and all, but there are still games like Blaster Master that didn't have those that still managed to produce some of the most memorable tunes I heard as a kid.

that was my favorite NES game.

Yeah, technically it should be even possible to create an cartridge that has a cable to connect it to PC that would then use NES to output graphics and sounds and read the controllers, but run the game itself in the PC. Of course you could also stuff a single-board computer, like Raspberry Pi inside the cartridge to do the same thing. Hell, with USB port in the cartridge you could easily update it's content - maybe it could be even made to run whatever games or software in virtual machine with virtual screen and have it read the screens contents and convert it to NES tilemap in the fly. Of course it would still need to scale the resolution down and limit yourself to the colours NES can use - same with sound, unless you want to output the sound from the cartridge instead of TV, in which case you could just use the sound chip in the single board computer. It's a super neat idea that I would love to see and even more to have one, and a totally absurd and useless one at that just as well :D

Pretty much what Nintendo did with Super Gameboy. It is Gameboy hardware in a game card. The SNES is pretty much just a box for controllers and to output the picture on the TV

Someone did this!! I'll try to find it. I love the idea of playing Crysis on a Super Nintendo

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The Atari has great flexibility in what it can do with the built in scan line counter, massively more RAM and that 0.01MHz extra speed :) . If only the highest resolution colour graphics mode (not gr.8 with PMG's) was of a higher resolution and more PMGs were available, then the Atari could have done better than the NES.

I don't think any N64 games had extra chips, though the system did have an expansion slot to double system RAM from 4 to 8MB, it went in the console itself.

@@xeridea - Given the abilities of N64 Flash carts? I wouldn't be surprised if enhancement chips were at least technically possible for the N64

IIRC, the only one to do so on N64 was Animal Forest, which used a real-time clock. Everything you saw (expansion pak included) was all hardware without chip add-ons.

@@roberthanthonymartinezrive7383 - Thanks for pointing it out :)

I actually haven't. Is it here on RU-vid? The damn algorithm should definitely have recommended it to me, as I actively follow retro tech channels and those about original DooM and all the rest of games built on idtech1 engine (Ultimate DooM, DooM ][, Final DooM, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Chex Quest) and various source ports, add-on's, new games that depend on one of these (use same engine, but redefine all graphics, sounds, enemies, maps, not just how they look and sound but what they do as well), etc. Could you give a link or video name to search for? I'd love to see it!

If you have a flash cart for the NES you only have to solder one resistor in the NES to connect two pins on the hidden expansion connector to the bottomn, If Nintendo wanted they could easily give out some kind of very cheap dongle for the expansion port, only problem is that the plastic tabs had to be broken, i have the extra sound for Famicom Disk Games and also for special chip games like Castlevania 3 jp. Version

Consoles only started to shift in big numbers in the UK in 1990.

@@Halbared The Genesis was a monster in the UK

@@zk0rned The Megadrive sold well when it was released in the 90's, yes.

@@Halbared it basically outperformed everything in the UK gaming wise

@@zk0rned Until the Playstation, yes.

I doubt the CPU (or mmc3) would overheat - surely not the CPU. For example, the SuperCPU cartridge for C-64 (which uses 6502 CPU, same as NES) can go up to >20Mhz IIRC, which is over 20 times the clockspeed C-64 runs at - the cartridge uses the same 6502 CPU that's inside the C-64, and I've never heard them overheat even when ran at maximum clockspeed the cartridge allows (it's adjustable from a knob, and some cartridges also allow going _lower_ than default clockspeed). But while it wouldn't risk damaging the CPU, it could still end up being too demanding for the CPU to run fast enough to update the screen 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) times per second. You could always halve the FPS, update only 25 or 30 times per second, and you would have at least twice the time to do all the necessary data processing per frame, but the graphics wouldn't be as smooth and it would affect the gameplay significantly. Even if 25fps was considered fast enough for early FPS games - DooM for example was hardcoded to max fps of 24 or 25 IIRC, and it doesn't even feel choppy unless you're running on old hardware where the refresh rate will drop below that - but I imagine you would definitely notice the difference in a fast-paced side-scroller (or even in the original Mario Brothers - without "Super" - game, which was not side-scroller [you could say it was side-static, lol]).

It just goes to show how the littlest things can make a big difference. Who knew memory banking was such an old trick. Makes me wish I was able to make NES games that cool.

sourced from another video most likely.

suckerpinch put a Raspberry Pi inside a NES cartridge and uses it to update the tiles.

I think you could - but not sure if any single board computer exists that could run on the power NES provides the cartridge with, so I doubt you could fit enough in a cartridge that could perform actual realtime ray tracing. You could always make a cartridge that has a USB interface to communicate with a PC and let the PC basically use the NES as I/O device (reading controller inputs and outputting graphics and sound), in which case you could pretty much render anything the PC can render - limited to resolution and colours the NES can produce, a fairly simple realtime conversion routine could be used to scale down and apply dithering to any truecolor graphics to be rendered via the NES.

@@robsku1 hhmmmm good point and one I didn't fully consider. Any idea what those specs are? I am pretty familiar with SoCs and embedded computers but don't know about the NES

Not sure I understand what you mean by hardware? Sega certainly put chips in their cartridges to enhance the console - such as the SVP that went into their Mega Drive games with enhanced 3D graphics.

Yeah, but why do that when they can make you buy a new game system?