16-bit Heaven

The jump to 16-bit was no real surprise. Originally Nintendo wanted the Famicom to be 16-bit, but resources at the time were too expensive. The Super Famicom was released in November 1989, and basically took over 80 percent of the Japanese market once established. They still had a lot of ground to cover to catch up with the other 16-bit systems. The system itself was quite impressive introducing scaling and rotation effects (the famous Mode 7) that could not be duplicated on the other systems. Nintendo knew they also needed more 3rd Party support. They learned their lesson of placing restrictions on developers who wished to make games for other platforms. This attracted developers who created games for other systems to make games also for the Super Famicom. Actually, this was the only way Nintendo could guarantee a large number of quality games since most major developers had already signed on with Sega. Nintendo was still slow to release the system overseas. A shortage of supplies, and the fact that the NES was still making money in the US delayed the Super Famicom’s release. The system was finally released in the US on September 1st 1991, and called the SuperNES. The UK released followed a year later in April 1992. The SuperNES soon amassed a large library competing toe to toe with Sega. Their popular character franchises and exclusive games kept them in a heated rivalry. Arcade games played a strong role in the competition. SuperNES got the jump on Sega by releasing the popular arcade title ‘Street Fighter 2’ with temporary exclusivity. Soon after they lost the edge when they chose to censor another popular arcade fighter ‘Mortal Kombat’, which Sega released unedited.

The SuperNES remained popular for the next few years. Sega began introducing game enhancing add-ons such as the Sega CD, and 3D gaming was growing in popularity. Nintendo refused to fall behind the times, and also began working on a CD based add-on. With numerous disagreements with Sony and later Phillips, and with production delays, Nintendo scrapped the project. They approached A new developer named Argonaut Software who produced a chip that could be added to game carts. This chip would allow the SuperNES to produce 3D graphics. The SuperFX chip gave the SuperNES new life, and produced popular games such as Star Fox which was released in 1993. Nintendo continued to use chip enhanced cartridges to maintain the SuperNES’s popularity. Even as 32-bit consoles began to surface, Nintendo continued to surprise gamers. In 1994, Nintendo teamed with a 3rd party developer named RARE. Together both companies produced Donkey Kong Country which used rendered graphics. The game looked as good as first generation 32-bit titles, and kept the SuperNES selling even in a 32-bit generation.

In March 27th of 1998 Nintendo decided to release a scaled down cheaper model Super Famicom. It was called Super Famicom Jr and retailed for 7,800 Yen. Not only did Nintendo cut the size of the console, they also cut out the A/V out port and the expansion port. The redesigned model was also released in the US shortly after the debut of Nintendo 64, and called SNES2.

Super NES/Super Famicom Technical Specifications

CPU: 16-bit Custom 65C816 running at 1.79, 2.68 or 3.58 MHz (changeable) RAM: 1 Mbit (128 Kbyte)
Memory Cycle Time: 279 ms
Picture Proccessor Unit: 16-bit
Video RAM: 0.5 Mbit (64 Kbyte)
Resolution: 256x224, 512 x 448 pixels max hi res and interlaced modes Colours Available: 32,768 colours
Max colours on screen: 256 colours
Max sprite size: 64 x 64 pixels
Max sprites: 128 (32 per line)
Min/Max Cart Size: 2 Mbit - 48 Mbit
Audio RAM: 512 Kbit
Sound chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700
Sound channels: 8, uses compressed wave samples
Controller Response: 16 ms
Pulse Code Modulator: 16-bit
Power Input: 120V AC, 60Hz, 17 Watts
Power Output: 10V DC, 850 mA (NTSC), 9V AC (PAL)

SuperNES Enhancing Chips

SuperFX - Developed by Argonaut. The Super FX chip is a RISC type mathprocessor and a supplemental CPU to the real SNES CPU. The chip was primarily created to create 3D worlds made by shaded polygons and texture mapping and light source shading.
The chip however could also be used to enhance 2D games such as the mist in Donkey Kong Country 2.
A few games the chip can be found in are Vortex, Winter Gold, Dirt Trax FX, StarFox, Starfox 2, Stunt Race FX.
A SuperFX2 chip was also created that used two chips each with a speed of 10.5Mhz that works together in tandem. Many of the games designed to use it were never released.

SA-1 - 65c816 8/16-bit processor, clocked at 10Mhz. It also contains some extra circuits developed by Nintendo which includes some very fast RAM, a memory mapper, DMA, several real-time timers, and the region lock-out chip. A multipurpose chip that could be found in games such as Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever With Me, from Konami (Japan only), Kirby Superstars, DragonballZ Hyper Dimension, Kirby Dreamland 3, and of course the popular Super Mario RPG.

DSP1 - Supposedly created by Japanese developer NEC (Turbografix / PC-Engine).
The DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip was created to generate more enhanced Mode 7 rotation and scaling effects using floating-point processing. The chip can be found in Pilot Wings, Super Mario Kart, Armored Trooper Votoms, Ballz, F1 ROC II, and Dungeon Master.

DSP2 - A more advanced DSP chip developed by Seta that increases the SNES´s speed from 3.58 Mhz to 8 Mhz.
The chip was created for Seta's own F1 Race of Champions. It was later also used in the Japan game Ace no Nerae (Aim for the Ace) and Top Gear 3000 from Kemco.

C4 - A chip created by Capcom. This chip was used to create enhanced transparency effects such as rain and water. The effects were used in Capcom's Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3 games.

SDD1- One of the more amazing chips. Other then it's normal processing and copy protection duties, this chip was primarily a memory compression chip. This allowed games to be bigger than normal by compressing the data. Games that used this chip were Street Fighter 2 Alpha and Star Ocean.

Emulators

Snes9x - One of the best emulators available.
ZSNES - Another great snes emulator
xSnes9x - Snes9x for the Xbox