As one of the earliest shmups to hit the Super Nintendo along with Super R-Type, it was hard not to love Konami's Gradius III. It remains an absolute luxury to have such a great exclusive home port, but reviewers at the time were unanimous in pointing out a single flaw which was somewhat common among earlier SNES releases.
The issue in question was an intense slowdown when the action got a little too hot to handle on screen due to both programmer inexperience with the system and the console's own limited clock speed. Not the best of qualities to showcase when you were fighting for playground video game supremacy against your shmup-crazed Megadrive owning mates.
Fast forward to 2019 and that issue is on its way to being fixed in a very clever way indeed. Vitor Valela is working on a hack to add SA1 chip support to the game, routing all the calculations that used to go to the SNES's CPU and PPU to the SA1 instead. Despite still needing to tackle several issues regarding stability and keeping a correct overall clock speed when the game is running, the initial work on this is already quite promising.
The SA1 (or Super Accelerator 1) graced such games as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Kirby's Dreamland 3 and even Konami's very own Japanese exclusive Parodius 3: Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius. It had several different uses within each game, but the fact that it had a clock speed of 10.74 MHz compared to the SNES's internal 3.58 MHz certainly helps to explain the technical wizardry Vilela is getting out of Gradius III.
Adding custom chips inside cartridges did allow Nintendo to pull off some amazing feats well beyond the Super Nintendo's vanilla hardware capabilities, but it also raised cartridge production costs - challenges from a not so distant technological past which may seem trivial nowadays when we carry around super micro-computers in our pockets. We tip our hat to Vilela for such an out-of-the-box approach to tackling this one.
Do you still own Gradius III? More importantly, have you ever finished it without cheat codes? What other SNES games would you like to see accelerated in the future? Overclock your answers in the comment section.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 36
The slowdown is the only reason I ever could make it anywhere in that game.
@Expa0 You and everyone else. x)
AMAZING!!! This game is ugly when it sloooooooows.,
I love this. This guy is good.
I always thought it was a brilliant little confluence of tech limitations and player accessibility for older console shmups to slow down when the screen was filled with bullets so that you could actually dodge the things.
This is a nice technical acheivement, but honestly, i think i'd stick with the slowdown because it makes the game easier.
Gradius III is my least favourite Gradius anyway.
That's a fascinating prospect, hacking many unsupported SNES titles to feature SA1 support. Then you can play the game on any flash cart that supports SA1 titles and enjoy the game with reduced or eliminated slowdown on real hardware.
I have to wonder how challenging that task is though.
@RupeeClock It is quite trial and error so far, but the worst part is already conquered.
My favourite Gradius title, despite the missing levels and the slowdown. The soundtrack is arguably better than the arcade version which also suffers from loads of slowdown too.
Just watched the new footage and it looks impressive.........only thing they didn’t show was full options plus laser.....that really slows the game down to a few FPS
@Shiryu
I'd love to see the SA1 support implemented for Link to the Past, that game can suffer some occasional frustrating slowdown which does screw up your own inputs.
And then by extension for the randomizer hacks, which are ever so fun.
Good now fix the NeoGeo slowdown on Metal Slug too.
@retro_player_22 ...that is a bit out of reach for the SA1. :x
I'm not the most knowledgeable on the SNES/Super Famicom, but I recall reading that another issue it had was ROM speed. Specifically, slower ROMs would require the CPU to run in a slower mode. I don't know if that was the case here and how the SA-1 deals with that. I'm fascinated by the SA-1 and the possibilities for it had it seen more widespread use. In theory, it could have solved the bigger issues I had with the system as I always preferred fast, action-oriented games. Having played a lot of PC Engine, I could see Nintendo using similar methods had Nintendo actually released a CD add on. Much like the NEC System 3 and Arcade cards, Nintendo could have released CD-system carts with more memory and, possibly, an SA-1 inside. That would mean, for CD games, players would only have to buy the SA-1 once and Nintendo wouldn't have to include one with every single game cart that needed one. But that was a dream I had.
Next, fix Mega Man 3's...everything. Maybe even MMX entire Armored Armadillo Stage?
Why break what's already fixed?
I love Gradius III, but without that slowdown, I probably couldn't beat it.
I never used to mind the slow down. As others have already said, seemed like my good ol chum Mr SNES was giving a helping hand when the action hotted up
What slowdown? Must be subtle
It’s cool to know this is possible. It’s long been my goal to try and improve Final Fight using the SA-1 to allow more than three enemies on screen at once, but I’ve never had the time to dig into it.
Incidentally there’s a ROM hack for Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts that removes most of the slow down (although it doesn’t use the SA-1 for it).
The slowdown may not have been intentional, but it's as much a part of the nostalgia as anything else. If anything, it made the game feel more dramatic.
Exquisite. I simply need this.
Very impressive! That SA1 chip really helps the game out, especially in the bubble stage!
I just wish I like Gradius 3. Sure, I respect the game, but Gradius 1, 2 and 5 are better Gradius games than 3 IMO. But it's very nice to see the game get a much needed upgrade to make it much smoother!
@Mr_Pepperami The video is me playing the 'fixed' version. Here is the game running in its original state.
@Shiryu I was joking😂. It’s notorious bad. I had it on the SNES and it slows to a crawl. Sarcasm doesn’t work in text sometimes. Video looks great 👍🏻
@Shiryu if I remember rightly it’s especially bad if you get the laser.
@Mr_Pepperami Sorry , it does not translate in text indeed. Yep, the ripple laser was a massive lag-exploitable weapon to ensure you actually had a fighting chance in the later levels.
@Shiryu yeah that’s the one. As soon as you shoot it the screen goes into slow motion it’s unbelievable. I actually don’t think I’ve ever played this game without any slowdown. Would be great to get a full gradius collection with all that fixed.
@Mr_Pepperami I was sad to see Konami skipping on bundling all the *Gradius*es as a collection instead of putting just a few on their Anniversary Collection. I do believe the PSP has a great compilation of the whole series except V.
@Shiryu that is a bizarre collection. Why haunted castle is on what is basically a shooters collection is just baffling. Also the region changes to each title are so significant in some cases that there should be an option to switch between the two. I hope we get additional collections from Konami as such a small numbers of titles doesn’t really show the scope of konami’s fantastic back catalogue.
@Shiryu gradius V is phenomenal. Such a great title
@Mr_Pepperami Indeed, if only they got a hold of Treasure and just remastered it to fit in 16:9 aspect... one can dream.
The newer versions of SNES9x include an option to remove slowdown in games. You can even load it onto the SNES/NES classic edition via Retroarch as an alternative to the built-in emulator.
It causes problems with certain titles but I tried it with Castlevania IV and the difference is...jarring. Fighting the twin headed dragon was suddenly difficult.
If this can be done successfully then I'd basically want them to do it for all SNES games that suffer from slowdown (and hopefully we can apply this to the ROM versions so I can update all the games on my SNES Classic to remove the slowdown). Because let's be honest, this was basically the only area where the SNES lacked compared to the Mega Drive.
Kinda wish Nintendo had gone the extra mile and added this kind of thing as an option on the SNES Classic so you could turn it on/off for each game and totally remove the slowdown if you wanted or keep it if you preferred it the original way. I mean it's obvious the developers never really wanted the slowdown as a feature so allowing us to turn it off in 20XX would still be totally in-keeping with the original vision but just tweak it a little and fix these unnecessary issues for play in modern times. That would have been sooo cool.
Right on. I think almost any SNES game could use this.
Love Gradius 3 have the original game on SNES, and arcade version. Personally prefer the SNES version. With regards to slow down, the SNES is so good it doesn’t matter the sheer quality outweighs that. Play Rendering rangers, super Aleste no slow Down at all. I think a lot of it boiled down to lazy optimisation. But I must say Thunder spirits compared to Thunder force 3 is terrible, again bad programming.
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