Analogue announces the Super Nt for $189 (SNES)

[copy]

This is awesome news. Pre-ordered! I'm especially glad this is coming after discovering my new TV doesn't like the OSSC+SNES.

I remember Kevtris saying in interviews that he wasn't working on anything like this because had no interest in 16-bit systems. That was some pretty effective secret-keeping.

[RGBSource]

It's confirmed to be the work of Kevtris! Now to decide which case style to order.

Super Famicom all the way!!!

Would have been interested in the original US SNES color, but it reminds me too much of the Old Skool Classiq 2. Ordered the transparent model as it's more distinguished looking, especially given that the PCB is black.

Holding off on a SD2SNES until more details emerge.

Kevtris has a SD2SNES and been using it for SNt development, so there's no reason he'd disable support. Take the Nt mini - used PowerPak during development and shipped with support just fine. Also, wouldn't be surprised if custom/JB firmware gets released that supports more enhancement chips than what the SD2SNES offers (SA-1, maybe SuperFX as well). So, a SD2SNES might not be needed down the road - unless you want to play MSU-1 hacks and homebrews.

I still don't anticipate that they would literally pay Kevtris to implement a feature they can't advertise, instead of selling other consoles.

Exactly. I don't think we will see other cores on this SNES. They have gotten the price point low enough to where people will be able to keep buying other full consoles.

Kevtris released the cores for the NTM because he wanted to! Besides, the SNt only has a SNES cart slot, and there are those who want to insert retail carts. Sure, he made cart adapter protos, but hasn't put them into production (yet?), nor made the core updates to support them.

If Kevtris (and Analogue) decide to venture into Motorola 68k territory, I want a machine that not only runs Mega Drive, but X68000 and Amiga as well

Apparently he hasn't gotten to x68k yet, but is interested in doing so. I'd imagine it won't be too tough for him, along with the Yamaha synth and Sega VDP.

========

Finally, anyone else see this tweet from Analogue?!

oh and huge props to @PHIL_FISH for the Super Nt's UI and @SQUAREPUSHER for the Super Nt's boot audio!!

The fabled Fez designer working on the UI, and Squarepusher made a boot jingle!

[Lawfer]

I just noticed these don't have an eject button like the original consoles, won't pulling them out by hand wear out the cartridge slot in the long run?

[Ryoandr]

I just noticed these don't have an eject button like the original consoles, won't pulling them out by hand wear out the cartridge slot in the long run?

I've read a decent amount of reports that the eject mechanism on the original consoles can actually damage the cart slot, because the motion isn't straight.

[bobrocks95]

I just noticed these don't have an eject button like the original consoles, won't pulling them out by hand wear out the cartridge slot in the long run?

N64, Neo-Geo, NES, Genesis, SMS, etc. etc. didn't have an eject button and seem to have done fine (sans NES but that's not because of the lack of an eject button).

[Guspaz]

The SNES Mini didn't have an eject button either. Not sure how it would wear anything out, it's the same motion, just applying force from the bottom instead of pulling from the top.

[bigbadboaz]

I believe the designer of the original Famicom stated that N knew their eject buttons were completely unnecessary, but thought they would be entertaining for kids to use. And I do like pounding on the Super NES'.

[Wolf_]

To anyone saying "How can they say it isnt an emulator when it isn't the actual hardware" - Because it isn't using any emulators. Fpgas mimic the original hardware so they can run the exact same code as the originals except massively improved.

"Why own one" - Because it is a frame accurate, native hdmi, 1080p upscaled, lagless, masturbation machine with built in everdrive support for everything it covers up to and probably including the snes at under $200! Try getting hdmi mods and everdrives for everything it supports, you'll spend thousands and some of them don't even have hdmi mods or everdrives.

"I don't like roms" - don't use them, Kevtris is working on cart adapters for the jailbroken cores. Even if you don't use them for everything they are an excellent way to play super expensive rare games without being rich or emulation.

"It won't/will be jailbroken" - Kevtris has said he can't comment on it so we won't know until the product comes out. What we do know is that Kevtris released the previous jailbreak for free and even if he wasn't paid for it porting the existing cores over would be minimal work as they are already written. Even if Analogue doesn't pay him for it he may very well still write them. If Analogue does pay him for it though that is completely fine and legal as he doesn't include any bios in the jailbreak.

"It won't support fx chips even if it does get jailbroken" - we know the a4 chip is considerably more powerful than the resources needed for snes replication. If it gets jailbroken fx chips should be possible. If not Krikzz has said he will cover the sa01 chip next so I would just pick up a super fx chip cart in addition to the sd2snes for the complete library.
http://www.retrocircuits.com/product/su ... ll-in-one/

"It doesn't support 240p" or "It slightly adjusts the clock speed to run at 60hz so it can work on sensitive tvs" - those are software things and can be changed if feedback is strong enough. Turns out the clock speed issue has already been addressed and it will offer native clock speed over hdmi so you can test that out and see if it works with your display. (Thanks for the heads up @Guspaz)

[orange808]

"It doesn't support 240p" or "It slightly adjusts the clock speed to run at 60hz so it can work on sensitive tvs" - those are software things and can be changed if feedback is strong enough.

I like turtles.

[Guspaz]

The Super Nt will have at least two modes with the native clockspeed. From what Kevtris, it appears to have three modes:

1) Direct output but unknown if at 60Hz or 60.08Hz (this mode exists but we don't know at what clockspeed/output rate)
2) 1 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with tearing to normalize framerate
3) 4 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with frame drops to normalize framerate

This comes from the following statement by Kevtris:

Like before, it has a "zero lag" mode but it has two new modes as well- single buffered and full buffered. These two modes run at the exact SNES clock rate, and use either 1 or 4 buffers, so you can either have minimum latency with tearing, or best quality picture with no tearing but an occasional dropped frame. The latter mode has a maximum of 16ms of lag (1 frame) similar to the Frame Meister. I hope these satisfy the speed runners .

[tomwhite2004]

To anyone saying "How can they say it isnt an emulator when it isn't the actual hardware" - Because it isn't using any emulators. Fpgas mimic the original hardware so they can run the exact same code as the originals except massively improved.

https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1840#p48000

[Guspaz]

To be fair, Byuu is being difficult on the subject because he's quite upset that the work is closed source.

[tomwhite2004]

But it is technically still emulation, just hardware rather than software based.

"Direct output but unknown if at 60Hz or 60.08Hz (this mode exists but we don't know at what clockspeed/output rate)"

Its pretty critical to know which it is doing, this stuff should be crystal clear on the press release before pre-orders are taken in my opinion. After all a 60.08hz output will cause stuttering on an hdtv (just like Higan does) and if this is the only way to get a lagless experience then it would be pretty disappointing. I would expect it to be 60hz but without official confirmation who knows?

[Wolf_]

The Super Nt will have at least two modes with the native clockspeed. From what Kevtris, it appears to have three modes:

1) Direct output but unknown if at 60Hz or 60.08Hz (this mode exists but we don't know at what clockspeed/output rate)
2) 1 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with tearing to normalize framerate
3) 4 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with frame drops to normalize framerate

This comes from the following statement by Kevtris:

Like before, it has a "zero lag" mode but it has two new modes as well- single buffered and full buffered. These two modes run at the exact SNES clock rate, and use either 1 or 4 buffers, so you can either have minimum latency with tearing, or best quality picture with no tearing but an occasional dropped frame. The latter mode has a maximum of 16ms of lag (1 frame) similar to the Frame Meister. I hope these satisfy the speed runners .

That's awesome! I was hoping to try the native clock speed on my display to see if it would run it or not. (Going to edit my initial post to reflect this new info)

To anyone saying "How can they say it isnt an emulator when it isn't the actual hardware" - Because it isn't using any emulators. Fpgas mimic the original hardware so they can run the exact same code as the originals except massively improved.

https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1840#p48000

Yea, this guy is just being pissy. Everything he says is just a pointless technicality and doesn't contribute anything of actual use to the conversation.

1) "Verilog is emulation" Okay it is emulating the HARDWARE so it can run the software exactly the same. End result = it runs exactly the same as the original snes except for the improvements made by Kevtris.

2) "Zero lag is impossible" Now he is crying because Analogue's marketing didn't explain your display still adds lag or the literally imperceptible amount that still gets added by sending data from wired controllers and the console which is the same or less than the original snes.

3) Analogue said "You'll experience video quality so extraordinary - it's like playing SNES for the first time." So he's just picking apart the wording of the ad here by pointing out the upon release the snes had poor video quality by today's standards making it sound like they were trying to say the video quality sucks when all they meant was it will live up to your nostalgia for seeing these amazing games for the first time all over again.

4) Analogue said "You can finally play SNES wirelessly and lag-free" so he's freaking out because wireless controllers will add delay... okay use wired controllers then, the controller port is the exact same. See what I mean? There is literally no point to anything he brings up.

5) He wants to know what "reference quality video game system with reference quality control" means. "Reference quality" simply means "the best/most accurate". Because this is a native hdmi out situation that means that no quality is lost via analogue transmission of data. A fuzzy 0 or a fuzzy 1 still gets read as a 0 or a 1 so the picture data will always be exactly what a snes would generate with no quality loss at all.

6) Analogue said "The Super Nt outputs the highest quality digital audio: 48KHz 16 bit stereo. 16 bit music has never sounded better." and he is pointing out that it is just 32KHz resampled to 48KHz and that will not improve the audio in any way. And he's right. Dun Dun Dun! Except... the audio is now digital, which will improve the quality. (See #5 for why digital transmission of data is better) For reference compare the analogue audio out of a snes against one with a Spdif mod:
https://youtu.be/oQcfaWjiiX8
Also see: https://youtu.be/bPkJgiVb_C4 (tl;dw having analogue output built into a device that does a bunch of other things like computing or gaming contaminates the signal with noise from all the internal workings of the device. By keeping the signal entirely digital this noise can not bleed into your audio)

7) He claims that because it is closed source they're not preserving history. There are a million reasons this isn't true:
1) These consoles will survive longer than original snes consoles so that alone is preserving history.
2) When Analogue is done selling them they could always change the license.
3) Crts won't be around forever, nor will analogue video. Certainly not at prices the general public can afford. By putting out more devices running the code of the original, at prices most people can afford, and that can easily interface with modern tech; they are increasing the odds that all the systems it supports will continue to be relevant and available to the present and future.

Literally everything he said was just an attempt to find fault with something Analogue said and all of it was either a completely off topic nitpick or just straight out wrong.

[bigbadboaz]

I don't see anything in that post that can be deemed "pissy". He's making factual corrections in rapid succession - no attitude implied or to be inferred. And he happens to be right.

It comes down to how sensitive you are to these so-called technicalities. Many will be very happy with this new machine. Right, however, is right - and no one should be surprised that the creator of bSNES is paying attention to details.

[Wolf_]

I don't see anything in that post that can be deemed "pissy". He's making factual corrections in rapid succession - no attitude implied or to be inferred. And he happens to be right.

It comes down to how sensitive you are to these so-called technicalities. Many will be very happy with this new machine. Right, however, is right - and no one should be surprised that the creator of bSNES is paying attention to details.

No he's not right in some instances, in others he's complaining about stuff that has nothing to do with the Super Nt as a product, and also he's being deliberately obtuse just for the sake of commenting on some things. One of his "corrections" was literally "I don't know what reference quality means and I am too dumb to google search a definition evidently", and another was "If it looks as good as the snes did when it came out that means they are saying it is going to look bad" when they were clearly simply saying that it will live up to everything you remember the snes being.

Based on the fact that he is picking a fight about nothing to make it seem like he has more legitimate reasons to complain about (in fact he has none, see my rebuttal) you can infer his tone and intentions from that. Namely that he is pissy.

[lettuce]

For games that don't rely on text, Super Famicom carts are a great, cheaper alternative thankfully. I Picked up boxed SFC copies of Super Metroid, Super Castlevania 4 and Street Fighter 2 Turbo for between $20 and $40 each. Way more reasonable than their US counterparts!

Not gonna bother collecting SNES boxed games though. lol

Im just glad i did 80% of my SNES collecting back in 2004 time, my best haul was a 40 game lot on eBay from the USA, included such titles as Sunset Riders, Hagane, Demons crest, Wild Guns, Knights Of The Round, Captain Commando, Batman The Animated Series etc all CIB for like £170 shipped to the UK.....good times

[lettuce]

The Super Nt will have at least two modes with the native clockspeed. From what Kevtris, it appears to have three modes:

1) Direct output but unknown if at 60Hz or 60.08Hz (this mode exists but we don't know at what clockspeed/output rate)
2) 1 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with tearing to normalize framerate
3) 4 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with frame drops to normalize framerate

This comes from the following statement by Kevtris:

Like before, it has a "zero lag" mode but it has two new modes as well- single buffered and full buffered. These two modes run at the exact SNES clock rate, and use either 1 or 4 buffers, so you can either have minimum latency with tearing, or best quality picture with no tearing but an occasional dropped frame. The latter mode has a maximum of 16ms of lag (1 frame) similar to the Frame Meister. I hope these satisfy the speed runners .

Why would you use anything but Direct Mode then, if the other modes introduce screen tearing or input lag at which point you might as well just use a SNES and OSSC

[Wolf_]

The Super Nt will have at least two modes with the native clockspeed. From what Kevtris, it appears to have three modes:

1) Direct output but unknown if at 60Hz or 60.08Hz (this mode exists but we don't know at what clockspeed/output rate)
2) 1 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with tearing to normalize framerate
3) 4 framebuffer mode, native clockspeed with output at 60Hz with frame drops to normalize framerate

This comes from the following statement by Kevtris:

Like before, it has a "zero lag" mode but it has two new modes as well- single buffered and full buffered. These two modes run at the exact SNES clock rate, and use either 1 or 4 buffers, so you can either have minimum latency with tearing, or best quality picture with no tearing but an occasional dropped frame. The latter mode has a maximum of 16ms of lag (1 frame) similar to the Frame Meister. I hope these satisfy the speed runners .

Why would you use anything but Direct Mode then, if the other modes introduce screen tearing or input lag at which point you might as well just use a SNES and OSSC

Obviously the best method for playing would be to use direct mode at the native clock speed but if your screen doesn't work with that then direct mode with rounded clock speed would be best, but that wouldn't be acceptable for speed runners or fighting tournaments so you would have to pick your poison of native clock speed with screen tearing or frame drops to compensate.

I don't think tournament fighters or speed runners would find that acceptable though so they are probably just going to be options that never get used but hey, they exist if you want em.

[Lawfer]

To anyone saying "How can they say it isnt an emulator when it isn't the actual hardware" - Because it isn't using any emulators. Fpgas mimic the original hardware so they can run the exact same code as the originals except massively improved.

"Mimic", one could argue that the act of "mimicking" could still fall in the realm of "emulation", "simulation", "replication" whatever you prefer to call it. True it is better than the run-of-the-mil emulation, but as citrus mentioned it's still cycle accurate emulation.

http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki ... &section=6

Also as byuu pointed out:

https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1840#p48000

There is alot of problematic statements thrown in by Analogue Nt for the sake of sale pitching their "mimicker", the Super Nt.

[Wolf_]

To anyone saying "How can they say it isnt an emulator when it isn't the actual hardware" - Because it isn't using any emulators. Fpgas mimic the original hardware so they can run the exact same code as the originals except massively improved.

"Mimic", one could argue that the act of "mimicking" could still fall in the realm of "emulation", "simulation", "replication" whatever you prefer to call it. True it is better than the run-of-the-mil emulation, but as citrus mentioned it's still cycle accurate emulation.

http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki ... &section=6

Also as byuu pointed out:

https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1840#p48000

There is alot of problematic statements thrown in by Analogue Nt for the sake of sale pitching their "mimicker", the Super Nt.

It mimics the hardware, so it can run the exact same software and the bottom line is that it runs exactly like a snes except for the things they changed on purpose. Emulation is defined as "In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system to behave like another computer system." This is not the case because it is running the actual code of that computer system. As for Byuu, I've already addressed his post.

[Lawfer]

It mimics the hardware, so...

Analogue Nt saying "it's not emulation" when it relies on cycle accurate emulation is inaccurate as it's technically still emulation.

[Wolf_]

It mimics the hardware, so...

Analogue Nt saying "it's not emulation" when it relies on cycle accurate emulation is inaccurate as it's technically still emulation.

It isn't emulation. Its hardware uses a program to alter the way it functions on a mechanical level to perform the same functions with the same code, in exactly the same way as the original. "Cycle accurate emulation" would be an emulator that can run a program that behaves enough like the original code to perform in the exact same way, this runs the exact same code in the exact same way as the original.

[Lawfer]

It mimics the hardware, so...

Analogue Nt saying "it's not emulation" when it relies on cycle accurate emulation is inaccurate as it's technically still emulation.

It isn't emulation. Its hardware uses a program to perform the same functions with the same code, in exactly the same way as the original. "Cycle accurate emulation" would be an emulator that can run a program that behaves enough like the original code to perform in the exact same way, this runs the exact same code in the exact same way as the original.

So verilog is not hardware emulation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_emulation

[Wolf_]

Analogue Nt saying "it's not emulation" when it relies on cycle accurate emulation is inaccurate as it's technically still emulation.

It isn't emulation. Its hardware uses a program to perform the same functions with the same code, in exactly the same way as the original. "Cycle accurate emulation" would be an emulator that can run a program that behaves enough like the original code to perform in the exact same way, this runs the exact same code in the exact same way as the original.

So verilog is not hardware emulation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_emulation

It is hardware emulation, but the general public doesn't understand the difference between hardware and software emulation. They don't understand you get a 100% authentic and flawless experience via hardware emulation because the software is the exact same. The second you say something is emulation most people would assume that makes it the same as the retron5 (flaming dumpster fire) or at best the nintendo classic line (over-priced niche item) when what it actually is would be an authentic snes released with 2017 video quality standards.

The difference is night and day and the average consumer simply isn't going to be able to grasp what that means.

Edit: To be more specific I should say that "hardware emulation" isn't "emulation" as "software emulation" is considered to be the only thing the word "emulation" by itself refers to. For example the wikipedia definition of emulation only specifically refers to software emulation.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emulation&t=hs&ia=about

[jayde6]

The purpose of marketing is to sell the product, pure and simple.

It makes sense to be hyper critical of marketing claims when it is something like medication, or something where the risk of fraud or harm is high. This is a video game console, one that isn't even out yet so really there's no way to even prove 100% that they are using incorrect terminology. Terminology that the community can't even agree on.

Again all this for a game console from the same industry that gave us bullshots and vertical slices.
It would be a bigger shock if a marketing team didn't sugarcoat the product.

It also seems that it is less about what Analogue has said, and more about what Byuu has said. It's like the Krikkz thing all over again.

I would be surprised if any amount of complaining over dictionary definitions cause Analogue to change their marketing strategy, and I'd be disappointed if they did, it would be pandering to inaneness.

The average consumer isn't going to care how they used the word emulation, and anyone able to argue for or against it is knowledgeable enough to know the type of product it is.

The way it works is, if you don't like their product / message / marketing technique, don't buy it. No need to argue over it.

[Guspaz]

Doesn't matter if you call it emulation or simulation, it's still an implementation based on reverse engineering. It still has the same accuracy limitations of Higan in that it's based on observation of behaviour and not knowledge of the actual chip layouts. It isn't 100% accurate, just really close.

[Wolf_]

Doesn't matter if you call it emulation or simulation, it's still an implementation based on reverse engineering. It still has the same accuracy limitations of Higan in that it's based on observation of behaviour and not knowledge of the actual chip layouts. It isn't 100% accurate, just really close.

I wouldn't say the limitations are the same, just that the concept is similar. Given Kevtris' skill I'm confident he will get the behaviors down 100% accurately and as a result the console will effectively become a snes. It will be a long time before Higan can boast that kind of accuracy, if ever.

[bigbadboaz]

It is hardware emulation, but the general public doesn't understand the difference between hardware and software emulation. They don't understand you get a 100% authentic and flawless experience via hardware emulation because the software is the exact same.

..but how is it you're not understanding that hardware emulation can be flawed at the hardware level in the same way software emulation is often flawed at the software level?

It's the same problem moved to a different abstraction layer. In theory, a perfect software emulator could be written and you would get a 100% authentic and flawless experience because, just as you said above, the software is the exact same. In practice, it's often not that close because the emulator is not perfect.

It doesn't matter that the Super Nt's "emulator" is hardware and not software. At some level, it cannot by definition be IDENTICAL to original Super NES chips. It's a different piece of hardware programmed by KevTris to act like original Super NES chips. It will, in some ways, behave differently to an original Super NES when running the same software. It's the exact same conceptual issue.

You can trust in KevTris, the final experience may well be perceptually the same to the majority of users - though none of us knows until the product is actually out in the wild - and, again, this product definitely has a proper niche. But this clean dividing line of hardware emulation>software, by definition/bar none simply doesn't exist. It will always - just as with software - come down to the implementation.

[Wolf_]

It is hardware emulation, but the general public doesn't understand the difference between hardware and software emulation. They don't understand you get a 100% authentic and flawless experience via hardware emulation because the software is the exact same.

..but how is it you're not understanding that hardware emulation can be flawed at the hardware level in the same way software emulation is often flawed at the software level?

It's the same problem moved to a different abstraction layer. In theory, a perfect software emulator could be written and you would get a 100% authentic and flawless experience because, just as you said above, the software is the exact same. In practice, it's often not that close because the emulator is not perfect.

It doesn't matter that the Super Nt's "emulator" is hardware and not software. At some level, it cannot by definition be IDENTICAL to original Super NES chips. It's a different piece of hardware programmed by KevTris to act like original Super NES chips. It will, in some ways, behave differently to an original Super NES when running the same software. It's the exact same conceptual issue.

You can trust in KevTris, the final experience may well be perceptually the same to the majority of users - though none of us knows until the product is actually out in the wild - and, again, this product definitely has a proper niche. But this clean dividing line of hardware emulation>software, by definition/bar none simply doesn't exist. It will always - just as with software - come down to the implementation.

There is a clear difference between hardware and software emulation despite your claims to the contrary. For example a fpga console runs the same code as the original, and if properly programmed behaves the same way; so if a new homebrew game were to be released it would work on the fpga console. An emulator on the other hand even if it is 100% accurate to the cycle with existing games just uses a collection of shortcuts and hacks to achieve this and there is no guarantee it would properly run new games, and that is assuming it ever got to be that compatible with existing games which would be a small miracle because patching one glitch caused by a shortcut in one game creates potential problems in any number of other areas.

Overall emulation is just a mess and it has only progressed as far as it has because of massive effort by a ton of skilled programmers for decades. Meanwhile one guy was able to perfectly replicate multiple systems via fpga on his own.

They are entirely different methods and the results speak for themselves as to which is more accurate. On release the Super Nt will have a level of accuracy that Higan may never achieve, certainly not in the next several years.