Talk:Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Archive 1

message: Anyone know how many titles were released for the SNES? The Playstation entry lists its number of titles, it'd be nice to have the snes's for comparison.
The user WhisperToMe is moving all videogame systems to their Japanese rather than English title. I checked on Google "Super Nintendo" returns 373,000 hits, while "Super Famicom" returns 32,700. I think they should stop and return the pages to where they were originally to avoid creating confusion. M123 16:50, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the English language wikipedia. The names he is using are the correct international names used in most of the English speaking world. For example, I'm English and I am used to the names he is using (in most cases). CGS 17:02, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: I've followed the video game market a little, and have heard of Super Famicom. I'm fairly certain that in Japan, only, was the SNES marketed as the Super Famicom; almost everywhere else in the world, it was marketed as the Super NES. I think it should stay at its old title, with perhaps a mention of the Super Famicom name. Same for Famicom and NES, and any others that had different Japanese market names. -- Wapcaplet 17:58, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Since almost the entire world (except Japan) calls the system SNES, the article should be Super Nintendo Entertainment System and not Super Famicom. Marknew 19:25, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

text: One of the problems created by these moves is that throughout the entire article it apparently becomes necessary to say "Mega Man/Rock Man" or "NES/Famicom", which makes it pretty hard to read. I don't have a problem with articles being moved to a new name as long as the majority of the English-speaking population knows it by that name, but I disagree with moving Mega Man to Rock Man. Every gamer I have ever met, and even a lot of non-gamers, are familiar with Mega Man. Only the more dedicated gamers are aware of the name Rock Man. -- Wapcaplet 19:37, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

text: That's gamers that you have met. Unless you have travelled a lot, that's just your neck of the woods. CGS 20:35, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: From the VillagePump:

message: "The redesigned model was never released outside of North America."
This is incorrect, as a similar redesigned "Super Famicom Jr." was sold in Japan, and was still for sale possibly as late as 2001. It used to be on Nintendo's official (Japanese) site up until around then anyway. 
I have also noted how the PAL SNES looks identical to the Super Famicom, and how the SNES was released in Ireland the same time as the UK (though I don't know how much the price was here). I changed the part saying how the MD/Genesis was cheaper to say how the games were also cheaper - this was certainly the case over here anyway, as new SNES games were often £10-20 more than MD games.--Zilog Jones 10:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction 

message: I want to explain why I removed the statement that the SNES's CPU "could process instructions twice as fast as the Sega Megadrive". The SNES has a 3.58Mhz 65C816. The Mega Drive has a 7.67MHz 68000. The Mega Drive therefore has more than twice the clock speed, which isn't in any way determinative of the issue but is an important thing to note.
For comparison's sake, let's consider the most trivial operation - the addition of two numbers. In its fastest addressing mode, the 65816 can add two 16bit numbers in 2 cycles. Conversely the 68000 can add two 32bit numbers in 4 cycles. Other operations end up with similar comparisons.
I therefore believe the comment was based simply on comparing the number 4 to the number 2. However, as the Mega Drive's clock speed is more than double that of the SNES, it's 4 cycles are shorter than the SNES's 2. In addition, the SNES takes at least 4 cycles to do the same amount of work as the 68000 - i.e. a 32bit add and probably more because the 68000 has many more registers than the 65816 so much more commonly gets its minimum number of cycles.
Of course the SNES is in many ways streets ahead in its other components and graphically surpasses the Mega Drive in most areas but that doesn't mean that asserting as the article did that the SNES can process instructions twice as quickly as the Mega Drive is correct.
ThomasHarte 20:22, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  CPU speed vs Mega Drive 

message: i had heard that they had made and produced 200,000 systems and i want to know more about it
it had happened to be made to create the snes i heard
You mean the PlayStation? =D  Btw, please sign comments on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~) 132.162.213.109 04:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  the failed system between sony and nintendo 

message: There seems to be two different sources of how many units the SNES sold.
The older edit says 49 Million units 
The newer edit says 36 Million units 
The nintendo site seems to be a lot more credible, as the other site seems to opinion based as well as having a very reoccuring anti-gamecube theme.
If no-one objects I'll change it back. 
FlyHigh 22:59, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would trust the Nintendo link too. -- ReyBrujo 23:31, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Market Share. 

message: I have removed an incorrect remark stating that the SNES is capable of displaying a 320x224 resolution. The SNES can only display 256x240, 256x480, 512x224, 512x480.(VIG) Feb 7th, 2006
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.141.247.108 (talk • contribs) .
:Actually the number of lines in PAL mode is 239, or 478 when interlaced. 84.182.111.203 22:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  SNES gfx resolution 

message: References to a variable speed bus and different system clock speeds are mentioned. In reality the entire memory system runs at a constant clock speed, and wait states are inserted depending on the address ranges accessed and the ROM speed control register bit setting. I think it would be less confusing to clarify this statement.
This isn't anything new, Z80 and 68000 based systems commonly had different wait states inserted to use fast RAMs, slow ROMs, and even slower periperhals while running at 4/8 MHz or faster. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.110.43.23 (talk • contribs) .
:Any documents relating to the wait state generation always talk in terms of frequency. I understand the need to clarify, but there is no article or datasheet stating how many wait states are inserted for a particular access. Would it be more understandable to specify the bus cycle times in nanoseconds than as 1/T (frequency)? --Whicker 17:36, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All the discussion I've encountered regarding SNES variable memory access speed refers to "CPU Master Cycles" at 21.477MHz (21.28137MHz for PAL systems). This clock signal is also exposed on pad 1 of the cartridge connector. Depending on the memory region accessed, a memory access cycle could last 6, 8, or 12 of these master cycles. "Internal Operation" cycles always use 6 master cycles. DMA/HDMA accesses always use 8 master cycles. --Anomie 01:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Timing

message: Will the NES power adaptor work with the SNES? They basically have connectors of the same shape, but I don't know if they output the same amount of power.... --Plainnym 20:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NES power adaptor

message: Both because I'm not a very good introductory-level writer, and because I'm too likely to contribute original research, I'll just make some comments here and let someone else make the changes to the article. A good deal of this information is really only published in discussions on the snes9x and zsnes forums, emulator source code, and documents I've written myself. So let's see..
The GPIO port only actually makes use of the high 2 bits (one bit connected to a pin in  each controller ports, with bit 7 additionally connected to the PPU Latch (which is why guns must be in Port 2 to correctly function)), the other 6 pins are not connected to anything besides the S-CPU access registers. Also, interestingly, there are pins available on the S-CPU chip to handle up to 7 standard joypads: two are connected to each of the two controller ports physically present, and three are simply not connected to anything and are not included in the SNES-style automatic joypad polling. Regarding the variable bus access speeds, most accesses use 3.58MHz or 2.68MHz. There is only a small region making use of 1.79MHz, which contains only the two NES-style controller access registers and 510 unmapped addresses -- this speed was unknown until relatively recently. All PPU register access, BTW, uses 3.58MHz for non-[H]DMA accesses.
I'm not sure the "S-SMP" should really be described as "Polyphony of 8 notes per voice", rather it has 8 independant monophonic voices plus the mentioned echo feedback. The console also has the ability to mix analog stereo audio data received from the cartridge and/or expansion port. Also, the audio output is really only 15 bits (bit 0 of the 16-bit word is always clear), but the internal calculations seem to be carried out with a higher number of available bits.
The Video RAM is not neatly divided into two 64K chunks as described; while the console has two separate 64K VRAM chips they are striped byte-wise. Theory is that this is to allow for fast 16-bit reads with 8-bit chips. An individual sprite can have only 15 colors plus 'transparent', all sprites combined share 128 palette indices (120 colors, 8 'transparent'). Games can make use of 256x224, 256x239, 512x224, 512x239, 512x448, and 512x478 resolutions; fine details are lost in 512-width modes due to television color signal limitations, and the 448/478 height modes make use of the dual-field interlaced television signal (thus the mentioned 'flicker'). There is no slowdown related to the resolution, and memory bandwidth restrictions only affect Modes 5 and 6 (so-called "pseudo-hires" in other modes has no restrictions beyond those for the normal 256-width variations). The comment on maximum sprite pixels per line is misleading: yes, the limit is 256 only because there are only 256 pixels per line. The SNES actually loads up to 272 sprite pixels per scanline. Mode 1 actually has only 2 4-bit layers; the third layer is 2-bit.
The SNES could actually map up to 95 Mbits of ROM into its memory spaces without using bank switching (slightly more if the SRAM areas and a few other corners were used for ROM), however only 48 Mbit (again, slighly more if corners are filled) of that could be accessed at FastROM speed (3.58MHz). The standard memory mapping chips mirror portions of the ROM in multiple portions of the memory space, leading to 32 Mbit figure commonly cited. The SNES has 256 64K memory banks: 128 (0x00-0x3F and 0x80-0xBF) with 32K commonly available for ROM and 126 (0x40-0x7D and 0xC0-0xFF) with 64K. I'm not familiar with SO or ToP's specific mappings, but I believe they do use bank switching to access all their data via banks 0xC0-0xFF only. --Anomie 02:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All this is interesting, but isn't it a little too technical for an encyclopedia?--Anss123 11:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that the sprite pixel limit would be 272, as you don't seem to have considered the possibility of sprites overlapping each other at any given time. Personally, I think perhaps a page with the more technical side of the SNES might not be a bad idea to consider.Sukasa 21:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some proofreading 

message: There seems to be quite a bit of debate about the North American launch date of the SNES.
For one interesting account of the debate, see .  While this is "merely" an internet forum discussion, there are interesting pieces of information introduced, and the entire thread should be read.
Now, "Anthony1", perhaps the most prominent poster in the thread, and the poster responsible for the thread title, has concluded that the SNES was definitively released on August 21, 1991.  From what I can tell, this date was chosen out of thin air.  I see absolutely no references in the entire thread to that particular date aside from his own assertions.  I see references to August 22 and August 23, but not August 21.
It was reported in EGM that August 23 was the earliest date of availability; however, this should be taken with a grain of salt.  The SNES's launch was pretty uncoordinated, and magazines like EGM have botched up similar dates and facts on many occasions.
So what do we conclude?
Consider:
*It's well established that Nintendo's "official" launch date was September 9, 1991.  No one seems to doubt this, nor can I imagine any reason why we should.
*It's equally well established that the SNES was widely available in the United States in late August.  A fair number of accounts of people acquiring SNESes around August 22-24 have surfaced.  Clearly the SNES was available in at least some parts of the US as early as August 22-24.
*The question now becomes this: does that mean that August 22, 23, or 24 was the FIRST day the SNES was being sold?  Does it even indicate that?  The answer would be "yes" if there were an avalanche of evidence of August 22-24 sales, and NO evidence of prior sales.  But that's not the case.  There's only a fairly small trickle of evidence for August 22-24, which indicates that the likelihood of an even more limited release a few days prior is substantial.
*So a release of the SNES on August 16, or August 19, or August 15, etc., is far from out of the question.  There is clearly no damning evidence against the possibility of a MID-August initial release.  After all, the SNES's release was haphazard and uncoordinated.  There are excellent sources showing that specific regions of the US did NOT get the SNES until after August 21, but that doesn't matter.  Even if the only store selling SNES on August 15 was in Iowa, it was out on August 15!!!  Now we turn to the specific date of August 13.
*A wide variety of Internet sources claim August 13, 1991 as the release date for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.  I've cited two reputable ones in the article.  No other date in August has more internet support than August 13.
*However, the internet is not infallible.  What if August 13 is a piece of misinformation that has simply spread enough to become the internet consensus?  While this is a possibility, a single issue of the often-fallible EGM does not trump dozens of internet sources.
*Another interesting fact is that a claim earlier than August 13 has never surfaced.  August 13, 1991 is the earliest claimed date for a US release.  Due to the market circumstances (i.e. very irregular scheduling of retail shipments for video game systems during that era), it is safest to err towards an earlier date.
Therefore, I believe I have thoroughly shown that while there is some doubt over the date, the date of August 13, 1991 has the least doubt.  However, I have indicated in the article that it is impossible to be absolutely certain of the date.  It really is.  Retail releases of the time were just too uncoordinated.  --Ecksemmess 06:01, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  North American release date 

message: Dear Friends:
Recently, the article titled Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis was renamed simply Sega Mega Drive with the reasoning that Sega Mega Drive is the correct name because it was the name that came 'first' and any other branding that came later should simply be a redirect to the initial name, regardless of which name is better known or more popular (Google Searches come up with more results for "Sega Genesis" than "Sega Mega Drive").
Therefore, I am making the proposal to move Nintendo Entertainment System to the name of origin, Famicom; the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to the name of origin, Super Famicom; and Resident Evil to the name of origin, Biohazard.  Please comment on this below.  Thank you. 71.244.180.131 23:02, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. From wikipedia's naming policy: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." Dlong 00:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for a Proposed Move 

message: I've submitted a request for a peer review so that this article can get closer to featured article status.  Pay some attention to this as it will have suggestions to improve this article. Lumaga 21:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Peer Review 

message: I contacted ReyBrujo about this subject, and we both agreed that this discussion page would be the best place to discuss this...
I was wondering if it would be possible to add a sort of 'FAN site external link' to the Super Nintendo page. The external link I added few days ago was removed (which I totally understand, my site not being official or anything of the sort). But I really would like Super Nintendo fans to know a bit more about obscure japanese games and maybe help them discover hidden gems. My site ( www.vgden.com/vgden_sfc.htm ) is not a blog, not a shop, not a forum, just a database covering several video games systems including the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom. Thanks for your time, my initial intentions were not to spam the page, far from it. thanks :) 
--Lkermel 21:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, it looks like nobody's interested by this idea. Oh well. I hope you know what you are doing. I only hoped 'Fan Gaming' had a place on Wikipedia, but it doesn't look like it has anymore. This is a shame, a lot of great information comes from such places and not from 'more flashy' but content-less sites. Good luck :) --Lkermel 17:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  fan external links for the Super Nintendo page 

message: This article is fairly  long, but I could find little of this information in the cited references.
ReaperRob 13:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Research and References