The Super FX is a coprocessor on the Graphics Support Unit (GSU) added to select

Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...

(SNES)

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

cartridge Cartridge may refer to: Objects * Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition * ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device * Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators Other uses * Cartridge (surname), a ...

s, primarily to facilitate advanced 2D and 3D graphics. The Super FX chip was designed by

Argonaut Games Argonaut Games PLC was a British video game developer founded in 1982, most notable for the development of the Super NES video game ''Star Fox'' and its supporting Super FX hardware, as well as for developing '' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos'' and ...

, who also co-developed the 3D space

rail shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a Video game genre, sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certai ...

Star Fox is an arcade style rail shooter and third person action-adventure video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto, produced and published by Nintendo. The games follow the Star Fox combat team of anthropomorphic animals, led by chief protagon ...

'' with

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

to demonstrate the additional

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rendering capabilities that the chip had introduced to the SNES.

History

The Super FX chip design team included engineers

Ben Cheese Ben Cheese (1955 – 21 January 2001) was a British engineer who worked on Sinclair's ZX Microdrives. Authors Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy, in their book ''Sinclair and the "Sunrise" Technology'', write that "it seems only fair to no ...

, Rob Macaulay, and James Hakewill. While in development, the Super FX chip was codenamed "Super Mario FX" and "

MARIO is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his cre ...

". "MARIO", a

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

for "Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation, & Input/Output", is printed on the face of the final production chip. Because of high manufacturing costs and increased development time, few Super FX based games were made compared to the rest of the SNES library. Due to these increased costs, Super FX games often retailed at a higher

MSRP The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which its manufacturer notionally recommends that a retailer ...

compared to other SNES games. According to

founder

Jez San Jeremy Elliott "Jez" San OBE (born 29 March 1966) is an English game programmer and entrepreneur who founded Argonaut Software as a teenager in the 1980s. He is best known for the 1986 Atari ST game ''Starglider'' and helping to design the Super ...

, Argonaut had initially intended to develop the Super FX chip for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...

. The team programmed an NES version of the first-person combat flight simulator ''

Starglider ''Starglider'' is a 3D video game published in 1986 by Rainbird. It was developed by Jez San under his company name Argonaut Software. The game is a fast-moving, first-person combat flight simulator, rendered with colourful wireframe vector g ...

'', which Argonaut had developed for PC systems a few years earlier, and showed it to Nintendo in 1990. The prototype impressed the company, but they suggested that they develop games for the then-unreleased Super Famicom due to the NES's hardware becoming outdated in light of newer systems such as the

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan a ...

and the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine. Shortly after the 1990 Consumer Electronics Show held in

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, Argonaut ported the NES version of ''Starglider'' to the Super Famicom, a process which took roughly one week according to San.

Function

The Super FX chip is used to render 3D

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and to assist the

SNES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in E ...

in rendering advanced 2D effects. This custom-made RISC processor is typically programmed to act like a graphics accelerator chip that draws polygons to a

frame buffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...

in the

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that sits adjacent to it. The data in this frame buffer is periodically transferred to the main video memory inside of the console using DMA in order to show up on the television display. The first version of the chip, commonly referred to as simply "Super FX", is clocked with a 21.4

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

signal, but an internal clock speed divider halves it to 10.7 MHz. Later on, the design was revised to become the Super FX GSU (Graphics Support Unit); this, unlike the first Super FX chip revision, is able to reach 21 MHz. All versions of the Super FX chip are functionally compatible in terms of their instruction set. The differences arise in how they are packaged, their pinout, and their internal clock speed. As a result of changing the package when creating the GSU-2, more external pins were available and assigned for addressing. As a result, a larger amount of external ROM or RAM can be accessed.

Usage

''Star Fox'' uses the chip for the rendering of hundreds of simultaneous 3D polygons. It uses scaled 2D bitmaps for lasers, asteroids, and other obstacles, but other objects such as ships are rendered with 3D polygons. '' Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island'' uses the chip for 2D graphics effects like sprite scaling and stretching. Game cartridges that contain a Super FX chip have additional contacts at the bottom of the cartridge that connect to the extra slots in the cartridge port that are not otherwise typically used. Therefore, Super FX games cannot be plugged into cartridge adapters which predate the release of Super FX games. This includes cheat devices, such as the

Game Genie Game Genie is a line of video game cheat cartridges originally designed by Codemasters, sold by Camerica and Galoob. The first device in the series was released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, with subsequent devices released for t ...

List of games

Unreleased games

* ''

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'' * ''

FX Fighter ''FX Fighter'' is a series of video games developed by Argonaut Games and published by GTE Entertainment. The two games in the series are ''FX Fighter'' (1995) for DOS CD-ROM and ''FX Fighter Turbo'' (1996) for Windows 95. ''FX Fighter'' The ...

'' * ''Powerslide'' (developed at the same time as ''Dirt Racer'') * ''

Star Fox 2 is a shooter game developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was completed in 1995 but did not see an official release until 2017 on the Super NES Classic Edition. Like the original ''Sta ...

'' (eventually released with the

Super NES Classic Edition The Super NES Classic Edition is a dedicated home video game console released by Nintendo, which emulates the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The console, a successor to the NES Classic Edition, comes with twenty-one Super NES titles pr ...

in 2017) * '' Transformers: Generation 2'' (abandoned during development) * ''Yoshi Racing'' (prototype that later evolved into '' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos'')

References

External links

* {{Nintendo hardware, SNES Coprocessors Graphics chips Nintendo chips Nintendo hardware Super Nintendo Entertainment System