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Two original developers of the Nintendo emulator ZSNES have returned with a new project, SUPER ZSNES - a fitting name don't you think? I remember way back, ZSNES was pretty much the go-to when it came to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Fun to see a return for the classic.

With a main selling point here being their "Super Enhancement Engine" that adds in a bunch of modern enhancements to various games. There's a limited selection it supports, with more to be added for that special feature over time, because they have to tailor all the changes to each game individually - which sounds like a lot of work.

Main features:

  • Far more accurate CPU and Audio cores than the original ZSNES
  • GPU-powered PPU core to allow for hi-res Mode 7 and special per-game enhancement features
  • Classic UI with falling snow, modernized with higher definition and improved UX
  • Fast forward, rewind, save states, auto save history, save bookmarks, cheat codes, quick load, and more
  • No Vibe Coding. Classic development style.
  • Super Enhancement Engine, where the ZSNES developers are enhancing the games one at a time

Super Enhancement Engine

Currently implemented with support for 7 popular games. Support for more games will keep increasing as this emulator is in development.

  • High Resolution - Not just an auto upscalar, but an internal drawing program is used to make sure that the higher resolution details can be manually drawn to look nice and crisp.
  • Texture/Normal Map - Adds some nice details to the backgrounds to give them a higher resolution look.
  • Overclock - Select games often filled with slowdown are overclocked.
  • Wide Screen (where available) - We enable widescreen whenever the game is internally coded to support partial or full widescreen.
  • Uncompressed Audio Replacement - We curate and pick uncompressed audio samples to replace original highly compressed audio samples.
  • 3D - Currently only supported on perspective-style Mode 7, replaces tiles with 3D height mapped data.
  • All enhancements can be individually disabled to suit your play style.

You can see a bit of an overview by Modern Vintage Gamer on YouTube:

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As far as I can tell, it is not open source and they have mentioned no plans for open sourcing it that I can see. It's builty with Unity too, so either way it relies on a proprietary game engine. Nice to see it has a Linux build available at least.

See more on the website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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1 comment

TrainDoc 50 minutes ago
Hell yeah, I'll be checking this out over the weekend.
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