What if the Super NES had a function (either in the hardware itself or via a converter) that allowed play of NES games on the system? Now granted, the SNES was already huge, but would this have prolonged the lifespan of the NES, or just caused it to die out sooner? One consequence is no Super Mario All-Stars, meaning the Japanese SMB2 possibly never gets released here (as The Lost Levels).
WI: The Super NES had backwards compatibility?
- Thread starter Hadley
- Start date
Nintendo considered it and rejected it because it would have added $$ to production cost.
So would the SNES be successful if it launched for $50 more than OTL?
So would the SNES be successful if it launched for $50 more than OTL?
Probably not, although maybe a snes deluxe for an extra $50 might have been able to find success on a limited run.
IIRC the SNES we got wasn't the same ueda was planning, ueda was planning an SNES with the 68K at 13-14mhz to make arcade port easier but Miyamoto and Takeda found the 68K very incompatible with the DSP they were working on for enchantment chips. Maybe here like SEGA they found a possible breakthrough? The original idea was to use the NES CPU as a Audio co-processor( reminder this was pre Sony) so that way backwards compatibility was possible
Another thing that changed everything was both the Custom GPU and APU, as Yamauchi loved the idea of the multimode GPU and the more advanced APU(More advance using an old CPU or anything Yamaha or JVS were offering) so they decided to move the money on that regard, and realize...was cheaper keeping manufacturing the old Famicom, as already was popular and not needed to be integrated in the SNES
For this, I'd recommend a Western adoption of disc/floppy drives that were already in existence as an attachment for the NES/SNES in Japan
The disk system? That was already dead when the Famicom successor was being planned, plus in the west never stood a chance as higher capacity cartridge and the MMC chips enter in the fray.
And SNES never had one to begin with