(While I originally didn't plan on making an update for the Japanese SNES-CD launch, I wanted to be able to fully explain the hardware and the CD-i "platform" without an update becoming too long.)
A Different Kind of Disc System (Mid 1992)
All About the Super Nintendo Entertainment System CD
Also Known As: Super Famicom Disc System (Japan), Hyundai Super Comboy CD (South Korea)
CPU: Motorola 68030 @ 25 MHz
Main RAM: 1 MB
GPU: Argonaut SuperFX chip codenamed "MARIO" @ 21 MHz - capable of rudimentary 3D polygon graphics
VRAM: 256 KB
Audio: Philips MCD221 - 8-bit ADPCM, 16-bit stereo, Red Book CD Digital Audio playback
Audio RAM: 128 KB
Drive Speed: 1x/2x modes
SRAM: External Memory Pak that plugs into SNES cartridge slot - a 64 KB version is available at launch and bundled with the system, 128 KB and 256 KB versions made available later on as a separate purchase
Other Hardware: Real time clock
Operating System: CD-RTOS (Compact Disc Real Time Operating System) - based on Microware OS-9
Released: June 27th, 1992 (Japan); March 13th, 1993 (North America); September 11th, 1993 (Europe)
Launch Price: ¥40,000, $270 USD, £219.99
The Super Famicom Disc System logo.
The SNES-CD is an add-on for the Super Nintendo that greatly expands the console’s hardware capabilities and allows for the use of Compact Discs. It plugs into the bottom of the SNES, approximately doubling its height, and uses a tray-loading disc drive. The design of the add-on is much blockier in the US compared to how it looks elsewhere in order to match the North American Super Nintendo design. While it does have a separate power adapter, the brick isn’t at the wall socket, looking more like a modern laptop charger so that it doesn’t take up so much space on a power strip. All of the additional RAM is inside the add-on itself due to the way the expansion port was designed in this timeline, so no HANDS cartridge is necessary. However, you will more than likely have a cartridge inserted into the cartridge slot: a Memory Pak, used for storing game save data. At launch, one 64kb Memory Pak is included with every system, and can also be purchased separately. A 128kb version appears in 1993 in Japan/1994 internationally, and a 256kb option is made available in 1995. While only one Memory Pak can be inserted at a time, it is possible to transfer data between two of them: the system will load whatever data needs to be transferred into work RAM, prompt the user to remove the first Memory Pak and insert the second one, and then write whatever data is being transferred to the new Memory Pak.
The add-on was developed as a joint venture between Nintendo, Philips, and Argonaut Games. Philips was incredibly impressed by Argonaut’s 3D cartridge enhancement chip prototype, and believed that a stand-alone GPU version of the chip would be perfect for the SNES-CD. The SuperFX chip was then split into two variants: a more powerful GPU version that doesn’t share a nametable with the SNES codenamed “MARIO,” and the original cartridge enhancement chip version, codenamed “LUIGI.” The MARIO chip has 256 kilobytes worth of VRAM - 4x more than the maximum VRAM the SuperFX chip ever employed in OTL (and 8x the amount most SuperFX games had). This means that games like Star Fox would be able to run at a smooth 30 frames per second, and not sharing a nametable with the base SNES hardware means that some interesting combined 2D and 3D effects could be pulled off. So while the SNES-CD is capable of some rudimentary 3D graphics, it can also produce some really beautiful 2D games.
The add-on is capable of reading music CD’s and CD+G discs. Games and software for the SNES-CD is stored in the Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i) format, codified in the Green Book in 1986, rather than the CD-ROM Yellow Book specification. CD-i discs also conform to the CD-DA Red Book standard, and can have both CD-DA and CD-i tracks on one disc. CD-i tracks are structured in the same way as CD-ROM XA tracks are, with multiple classes based on their contents (data, video, audio, empty, and “message,” which plays a warning message when a CD-DA player attempts to read a CD-i disc.) Additionally, the CD-i format can interleave audio and video data on a single track, something that a Yellow Book CD-ROM can’t do. It also uses a file system similar to, but not compatible with, ISO 9660 (which you’re likely familiar with as the .iso file format.) For this reason, CD-i discs can only be read on CD-i players, meaning a standard PC disc drive will be unable to read the disc. Since the CD-i format had to be licensed from Philips, this was the system’s main deterrent against piracy[1].
The base Super Nintendo hardware combined with the SNES-CD forms the basis for the CD-i player platform, leading to multiple hardware variations made by different manufacturers. Here is a list of the most notable models:
- Philips Super CD-i: A Super Nintendo with the CD add-on built in, the Super CD-i is considered the “standard” combo unit. Two different versions of it were produced: the first iteration, released in 1992, looks fairly similar to the Philips CDI 220 from our timeline, though it features a cartridge port on top. An updated model, released in 1995, slimmed down the size of the console and resembles the OTL Philips CD-i 450 with a Super Nintendo cartridge slot.
- Philips Edu CD-i: A variant of the Super CD-i made specifically in partnership with the education sector, like schools and libraries. Implements BIOS and disc header checks[2] to prevent non-educational games from being played on the system, so that students can’t bring in their copy of Super Mario All-Stars into class and avoid doing work.
- Philips Net CD-i: Another variant of the Super CD-i that features a built-in Modem Pak[3], released in 1994.
- Sharp Twin Super Famicom (Japan)/Hyundai Twin Super ComBoy (South Korea)/Sharp i-Twin (International): Combo unit produced by Sharp, and considered a successor to the Twin Famicom (a Famicom with the Famicom Disk System built-in.) Was licensed out to Hyundai in South Korea due to laws against Japanese imports. Sold the best in Japan.
- Sharp SF-2 TV: A TV with an SNES and SNES-CD built-in, succeeding the SF-1 TV (which only includes a base SNES). Having only been released in Japan, it’s quite rare and is considered a collector’s item in the modern day.
The SNES-CD launched with two games in Japan, those being
Super Mario Collection (the Japanese name for
Super Mario All-Stars) and
Ys I & II. The latter game was a port from the PC Engine CD-ROM2 to the SNES-CD, and would start a trend that would last throughout the rest of 1992. In Japan, most early SNES-CD releases were simply PC Engine CD ports, and that resulted in Japanese adoption of the add-on to be slow. The peripheral wouldn’t really start picking up steam until 1993, when new games that were designed with the hardware in mind would start getting released for it. Still, it is a fairly cheap CD player, so there's incentive for people to buy it.
All About Super Mario All-Stars
Platform: SNES-CD
Also Known As:
Super Mario Collection (Japan)
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: June 27th, 1992 (Japan); March 13th, 1993 (North America); September 11th, 1993 (Europe)
Super Mario All-Stars is a compilation of the 8-bit Mario platformers, remade for the 32-bit[4] SNES-CD, which it is a launch title for. It features
Super Mario Bros.,
Super Mario Bros. 2,
Super Mario Bros. 3, and, released for the first time ever in the West, the Japanese
Super Mario Bros. 2 - now renamed
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. And they really were remade - because the OTL SNES and NES shared the same architecture, the OTL game was mostly a port of the original games’ code, with the main changes being made to graphics routines, the quality-of-life features, and certain bug fixes (like the Minus World.)[5] However, in this timeline, the differing architectures between the NES and SNES(-CD) meant that reusing code wasn’t really possible.
All-Stars is still incredibly faithful to the 8-bit originals, however, playing nearly identically to them.
The graphics in
Super Mario All-Stars are a bit better than they were in OTL. Nothing too crazy, though, as this was an early SNES-CD game and the developers weren't as experienced with it yet. There are also several quality of life improvements just like in OTL, such as being able to save your progress in each of the games, the requirements to go to
Lost Levels’s secret “letter worlds” being reduced (beat the game once without warps rather than eight times,) and infinite continues across all games. Naturally, the biggest improvement to the game now that it’s on CD is to the music. All of the game’s samples are now uncompressed, and it’s an absolute treat to listen to.
A restoration of the SMB1 overworld theme from MaryStrawberry, made by searching through synthesizers and keyboards to find the original samples that were used by the game. This should give you a good idea of what All-Stars sounds like in this timeline!
One other major addition to the game in this timeline was The Museum. Located in-between SMB1 and SMB3 on the game select screen, The Museum lets you watch a few short FMV interviews with figures like Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and Koji Kondo about the development of the NES games, as well as view some digitized versions of artwork made in the 80’s. The idea for The Museum came from the developers wanting to implement FMV’s in some way, but they couldn’t come up with something that could be achieved in a short enough time for the game’s release. That’s when Shigeru Miyamoto thought about filming short developer interviews about how the Mario platformers came to be.
“
Super Mario All-Stars felt like this celebration of Mario up to that point, and what better way to celebrate Mario than to talk about how he got his start!” said Miyamoto in an interview about the game. “But it also let us shine a light on all the different people who work on video games. Games were an emerging type of media at the time, and not a lot of people knew what went into making one. So we were hoping to not just educate people about the art of video game development, but also inspire the younger generation into one day making games of their own.”
All-Stars would ultimately achieve that goal, being bundled with every SNES-CD and most combo units internationally. Plenty of curious kids would view the interviews found in The Museum, and gain an interest in learning how to program video games from them.
Super Mario All-Stars is received with critical acclaim. It’s considered a “director’s cut” of the NES platformers, with the improved graphics and CD-quality audio go a long way to improving the experience. All-Stars makes for a pretty good pack-in, too; it takes something people are familiar with, and enhances it with the additional power of the SNES-CD, while keeping everything that made those games great in the first place. However, outside of those updates, the save feature,
The Lost Levels, and The Museum,
All-Stars doesn’t really innovate much. While the FMV interviews and digitized artwork are technically impressive, since they’re limited to a side mode instead of the main games, The Museum is more of a bonus than anything. Still,
Super Mario All-Stars does very well in terms of sales, and for those who are looking for a new 2D Mario game that really innovates, they won’t have to wait very long until
Super Mario Vortex.
Footnotes:
[1] Though if you did manage to copy a CD-i disc, the system wouldn’t know any better. The process was just so frustratingly difficult to do in the 90’s that it worked as an anti-piracy measure.
[2] This disc header includes a game title, region info, a developer ID, disc number (only ever used by multi-disc games), and a “genre” flag. Genre 0 is “game,” genre 1 is “education,” genre 2 is “productivity,” genre 3 is “reference” (so encyclopedias and such,) genre 4 is “video,” genre 5 is “audio,” genre 6 is “development” (which can only be read on dev kits,) and genre 7 is “other.”
[3] More on the Modem Pak later on.
[4] Well, mostly 32-bit. While the Motorola 68030 is a true 32-bit processor, the 68000 in the base SNES hardware is still a weird 16/32-bit hybrid.
[5] This is a fact that was discovered not just through the source code found in the Gigaleak, but also certain bugs and some unused content left over from the NES games. SMB1’s Bullet Bill glitch (used in NES speedruns but will softlock the All-Stars version) and SMB3’s debug mode are the most notable examples.
We've got yet another hardware launch to cover in the next update, where we'll see how the Sega CD does in North America and delve into its pack-in title, Sonic 2. I can't wait to see you then!