Road Blaster/Road Avenger Super Famicom edition

Pyongyang

Not sure if this has been discussed, but unbelievably, Road Blaster/Road Avenger has been ported to the Super Famicom by a homebrew team.

Even more impressive is it actually looks a lot better than the Mega CD version you may be familiar with. Of course the best version is the 1985 Laserdisc.

I'm still trying to fathom quite how this was achieved on the Super Famicom.

Here's the project home page:

http://www.dforce3000.de/?uid=44

And here is a video of it running, there's better videos out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJvsIezXrQ

Steve X2

Pyongyang wrote: »

Not sure if this has been discussed, but unbelievably, Road Blaster/Road Avenger has been ported to the Super Famicom by a homebrew team.

Even more impressive is it actually looks a lot better than the Mega CD version you may be familiar with. Of course the best version is the 1985 Laserdisc.

I'm still trying to fathom quite how this was achieved on the Super Famicom.

Here's the project home page:

http://www.dforce3000.de/?uid=44

And here is a video of it running, there's better videos out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJvsIezXrQ

Yeah, it was mentioned before alright.
I think it uses that new snes flash cart to manage it.

Pyongyang

Steve SI wrote: »

Pyongyang wrote: »

Not sure if this has been discussed, but unbelievably, Road Blaster/Road Avenger has been ported to the Super Famicom by a homebrew team.

Even more impressive is it actually looks a lot better than the Mega CD version you may be familiar with. Of course the best version is the 1985 Laserdisc.

I'm still trying to fathom quite how this was achieved on the Super Famicom.

Here's the project home page:

http://www.dforce3000.de/?uid=44

And here is a video of it running, there's better videos out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJvsIezXrQ

Yeah, it was mentioned before alright.
I think it uses that new snes flash cart to manage it.

Interesting. So it wouldn't run off of a standard board? I wonder what was used for the video codec. Didn't the Mega CD use Mpeg 1?

Myrddin

Pretty impressive feat, but if it can't run without additional assistance...isn't that kinda cheating?

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

Pretty impressive feat, but if it can't run without additional assistance...isn't that kinda cheating?

I think it just uses the additional storage allowed by the new snes flash cart. I dont think it uses any additional processing power or chip mods.
But I could be wrong on that.
I'm downloading the included 500MB file to try it on an emulator to see how it goes.

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

I think it just uses the additional storage allowed by the new snes flash cart. I dont think it uses any additional processing power or chip mods.
But I could be wrong on that.
I'm downloading the included 500MB file to try it on an emulator to see how it goes.

Ah I see. Hard to imagine a Snes running that game...it seems to smooth to be the real thing.

o1s1n

Isn't there an image of that floating about which you can play if you have the flash cart?

All it does really is use the flash cart space to fit a giant FMV game. The SNES does the rest.

Think of it as what a Snes CD add on may have been like

Steve X2

o1s1n wrote: »

Isn't there an image of that floating about which you can play if you have the flash cart?

All it does really is use the flash cart space to fit a giant FMV game. The SNES does the rest.

Think of it as what a Snes CD add on may have been like

Yep, thats it. I'm downloading now to see how/if it runs in bsnes

Myrddin

I suppose really the whole game is already pre-rendered, it's essentially playing a video with QTE's dictating what the video plays next

Steve X2

Playing it on bsnes now. It's a little flaky to run on the emu.

Here's a bit from the pdf included in the zip file.

Introduction
Welcome to Super Road Blaster.
This is an unlicensed SNES port of the 1986 Laserdisc arcade game by Data East, making it the first interactive movie game and the biggest game on the system yet (6320 Mbit).
You assume the role of a vigilante who drives a customized sports car in order to bring the biker gang responsible for your wife's death to justice.

Super Road Blaster is the first game to use the MSU-1, an enhancement device comparable to special chips such as the Super FX included in certain SNES cartridges.
This game shows what titles on the ill-fated SNES CD-ROM drive might have looked like.

The primary reason why this port has been created:
I've been in love with this game since childhood.
I sincerely hope that you'll have as much fun playing this game as I had developing it.
-Matthias “d4s” Nagler, 2012-05-14

Requirements
This game uses the MSU-1 enhancement chip.
Due to this, a MSU-1-enabled device is required to play this game.
At the time of writing, this is:
• bsnes , an SNES emulator developed by byuu
• sd2snes, an SD-card adaptor cartridge for the SNES developed by ikari01
In order to play this game, unzip all of the game archive content into a single folder on your hard disk or SD-card.
Open the file SuperRoadBlaster.sfc.

You can play in either NTSC (60Hz) or PAL (50Hz) video modes.
The game will adjust to the required speed automatically and run just the same in any of
these two modes.
This game is provided as-is and free-of-charge, without any express or implied warranty.
Use at your own risk.

Most of the files in the zip (click to view full size):


I assume that "SuperRoadBlaster.msu" file is like a CD image/ISO of the disc animations and all the .pcm files are the audio.

Quick vid of it running on bsnes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ohK6fb1inQ

Relikk

I have it for my SD2SNES. It uses a chip called the MSU1 that has various enhancements such as lossless audio, FMV and 4GB of potential file space to play around with. There's also a Mario hack that uses the audio capabilities floating around.

Myrddin

Relikk wrote: »

I have it for my SD2SNES. It uses a chip called the MSU1 that has various enhancements such as lossless audio, FMV and 4GB of potential file space to play around with. There's also a Mario hack that uses the audio capabilities floating around.

So there is additional processing going on, outside of the SNES?

Pyongyang

Afaik it's like the equivalent of a Super FX chip, ergo a board mounted chip (that's the vision anyway) that points towards what the Super Famicom CD drive could have been like.

The Super FX chip is the same thing more or less in that it offers enhancements to a game and the console on board the cart that still use the console to operate. So in a roundabout sort of oddball way, it is a genuine Super Famicom game...sort of.

Basically, what Relikk said.

Myrddin

Pyongyang wrote: »

Afaik it's like the equivalent of a Super FX chip, ergo a board mounted chip (that's the vision anyway) that points towards what the Super Famicom CD drive could have been like.

The Super FX chip is the same thing more or less in that it offers enhancements to a game and the console on board the cart that still use the console to operate. So in a roundabout sort of oddball way, it is a genuine Super Famicom game...sort of.

Basically, what Relikk said.

Hmm, true enough I guess. But where do you draw the line? I'm sure with enough juice on an external board you could get Crysis running on a Snes. To me, this isn't a demonstration of what the Snes can really do, it's a demonstration of what the MSU1 chip can do.

Pyongyang

True, to a point. But your still limiting the chip potential within the boundaries of the cart and console. Essentially if something won't run, it won't run.

An example that springs to mind is the divx player for the C64, you can play a movie on it but it's still displayed within the confines of what a C64 can output so it still looks bad, but it works and that's the point, I guess.

This project is designed to show you what the Super Famicom could do if the Super Famicom CD drive wasn't scrapped.

Myrddin

Pyongyang wrote: »

This project is designed to show you what the Super Famicom could do if the Super Famicom CD drive wasn't scrapped.

But when you boil this down, the SNES is playing a 500MB video cartoon with the assistance of a chip that real carts never had. The Super FX at least had to confine itself to the real life cart size

Pyongyang

But the Super FX is still doing the same thing. Plus who defines the cart size? Look at the size of Satellaview carts? Or Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive?

Myrddin

Pyongyang wrote: »

But the Super FX is still doing the same thing. Plus who defines the cart size? Look at the size of Satellaview carts? Or Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive?

But the SuperFX is there to provide assistance/support really in number crunching. This other chip, gives the Snes abilities it never actually had...

Pyongyang

So does the Super FX chip...?

Myrddin

Pyongyang wrote: »

So does the Super FX chip...?

The Super FX is a coprocessor chip used in select Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) video game cartridges. This custom-made RISC processor was typically programmed to act like a graphics accelerator chip

Source

The Super FX is a co-processor, basically like putting a tiny graphics card into a snes cart. It's crunching numbers, not giving new abilities the way I see it. It's enhancing whats already there, not adding to it.

MSU1 is a special enhancement chip for the SNES that grants a full 4GB of additional storage space, and allows for the playback of full motion video at 240x144x256 colors @ 30fps and lossless 44.1KHz 16-bit stereo PCM audio.

Source

There's kind of a difference man...

Pyongyang

The Super FX chip is still giving the Super Famicom abilities it didn't have, regardless of whether it's extra processing power, or, in the case of the MSU1, the video playback etc.

In my own opinion I'd class them as one and the same, regardless of what each of them does.

Regardless, the MSU1 is still an excellent achievement.

Myrddin

Pyongyang wrote: »

The Super FX chip is still giving the Super Famicom abilities it didn't have, regardless of whether it's extra processing power, or, in the case of the MSU1, the video playback etc.

In my own opinion I'd class them as one and the same, regardless of what each of them does.

To me, the Super FX is enhancing the already present abilities of the Snes. The MSU1, is giving it entirely new ones. To me again, it lessens the impact of the claims this rom makes.

Regardless, the MSU1 is still an excellent achievement.

True, it's technically quite ingenious

Steve X2

Anyone overclocked a fx chip yet? Or swapped in a fx 2 where an fx 1 should be like on star fox.

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Or swapped in a fx 2 where an fx 1 should be like on star fox.

Can that be done? What benefits are there?

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

Can that be done? What benefits are there?

It can and has been done. Better frame rate on games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOU2GikRRY8

Steve X2

And its worth it 100 percent just to have that switch on the cart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdYj5iGmL0

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

And its worth it 100 percent just to have that switch on the cart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdYj5iGmL0

Actually the SFX2 was never released, or was it? How, if it wasn't, are they able to make repro's of it??

Pyongyang

I 'think' the SuperFX 2 was used with Vortex. Again, I think it was...

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

Actually the SFX2 was never released, or was it? How, if it wasn't, are they able to make repro's of it??

I think they're super fx 1 chips but revision 2 which doubled the speed (is this not just the fx 2?). FX 1 was 21mhz but actually really only 10.5mhz with the clock speed divider and the later revision allowed it to really run at 21mhz.

Edit:
FX 1-


FX 2 (FX 1 revision 2)-