Like for the N64 everdrive it can do NES games...could the SNES everdrive emulate NES games or older/etc.?
What about something like a Chip-8 emulator? I don't have the skill to make anything, but if I understand right, Chip-8 is fairly simple.
No, it's not going to happen. There is no way the SNES can emulate the NES in the way you are hoping. For example the only way the SNES could run Gameboy games is because the Super Gameboy contains actual Gameboy hardware, and the SNES is only used for audio/video output, and controller input.
He can probably hack a supergameboy, and substitute game boy hardware for nes hardware. Or get a nes??
Wasn't there actually a NES adapter for SNES? I don't think it worked very well, though. There wouldn't be much of a point, because you would need a significant amount of hardware that it would be easier to have a separate NES.
Actually, here's what I understand.. The CPU in the SNES, can be brought back into the 8-bit mode that would allow it to play the NES games (being it's just a 16-bit variant of the 6502), and I believe it actually has the original sound generating somewhere.. But, as far as the PPU is concerned, I don't think it has those capabilities. I may be wrong on the sound part though, but I'm pretty sure the CPU part is true. I base all this on the fact, that the SNES was originally going to BE backwards compatible.
by the way, snes memory map very similar to nes memory map, i guess it was not a chance coincidence. may be back compatibility was in plans of developers, but was not implemented by some reasons
The SNES is not compatible with the NES software at all. The only similarities are the controller communication and the cpu is of the same 65xx family. But the SNES does not have NES audio components or a NES graphics chip, nor any compatibility mode to do so. Any NES game running on the SNES must be rewritten to run on the SNES. This is the case of all such games like Ninja Gaiden and Super Mario Brothers. So there is no way to play NES roms on your SNES. There never will be. The closest thing you could do is get the Super-8 aka Tristar which plays NES games while leeching the SNES for controller input and maybe using a PowerPAK to load roms. Backwards compatibility was atleast rumored to be planned for the SNES but likely dropped due to design and/or cost concerns.
Inx64, CPU and controllers are compatible, and the graphics are somewhat similar. But the sound is totally unrelated hardware wise.
The graphics aren't similar though. If they are then so is the Sega Master System's graphics because it uses tiled background and sprites too. And NES doesn't use RGB either, SNES does. While BC may have been planned, the SNES that exists today is far too different. For one thing NES carts have direct graphics bus access. SNES games must use the built in 64 kilobytes of VRAM.
Lol SNES doesn't have enough CPU to run SNES let alone emulate other systems. NES was programmed in assembly. Since there are no libraries, APIs, etc, to "wrap", high level emulation would be impossible, leaving only binary level emulation. General rule of thumb for binary level emulation is you need about 10 times the processing power and memory of the machine you want to emulate. The SNES CPU is only 1.01 times more powerful than the NES CPU Also a system like N64 has programmable general purpose graphics hardware similar to the PC. eg: pixel level access, general purpose hardware accelerated blitting/texturing, etc. SNES graphics chips are very specialized and fixed function for specific tiled modes, it would be impossible to emulate anything that wasn't identical in architecture. There is always mode 7 bitmap mode but there is no way the SNES has enough CPU power to software render 256x224 bytes in real time alone, let alone emulate the graphics hardware that it gets the final frame info from, let alone emulate the rest of the system. A couple real time voxel and raytrace demos barely get by 64x64 at 1 fps (or maybe it was 32x32...) The SPC700 blows away the 65816 lol. SNES is all about dedicated hardware. All the CPU is there for is reading controller values, basic AI and collision detection, and stuffing hardware registers as often as once per scanline.
Or maybe NES was just horrible to program for and they didn't want to limit SNES by having the architecture follow NES :lol:
It wasn't necessarily that. One problem would be the cartridge pinout. But if they have a second port that could be avoided. The real problem is if it shared the same CPU, you'd have to add the NES audio and other customizations into it. And then you'd have to have a NES PPU or add its functions into the SNES PPU. Basically you're talking about building a NES into the SNES hardware which SNES games would get no real benefit out of. Atleast on Genesis the Z80 for Master System was used for handling generally the sound driver as I recall.
