Analogue's Super Nt Gets Its First Jailbroken Firmware

I wish you'd stop posting these Analogue Super Nt stories Damien, my willpower can't hold out much longer!

Cool

Of course any co-processor chip games are not gonna work

@ninchocolate depends how much space there is on the FPGA

Trying it out now, thanks, guys!

@PartlyAwesome Well it's confirmed already that Super FX games don't work.

Source - I tried it myself 2 days ago when it was released, also reported by many other users.

You can always just overwrite the jailbreak with the official firmware again to play an actual Super FX cart anyways

@Menchi187 Do you mean they don't work when using the jailbreak firmware/ROMs on SD card? Or from the cartridge directly?

I'll test mine out this evening. Haven't had any issues so far, but haven't tried a Super FX title yet. NL's review says they work fine: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/02/hardware_review_the_analogue_super_nt_is_the_ultimate_way_to_play_snes_games_in_2018

Also, if there is some sort of issue with them, the beautiful thing about FPGA is that functionality could come later. We may be able to launch Super FX titles directly from the SD card in the future. One can hope.

News like this is making me want to buy a Super Nt at PAX East if I come across one. I want to play fan translations like Seiken Densetsu 3 without paying up the butt for a repi cart

Received mine two days ago, and I couldn't be more happy. With the lowered price and plastic material, I had some concerns over build quality vs. the Analogue NT, but I don't find that's the case. The device is small, but weighty, and feels extremely well built. For a plastic device, I don't know how they could improve build quality. I'll gladly take this small sacrifice in material quality for the drastic price reduction.

All in all, fantastic device, highly recommended to any who love the SNES. The cost is still pretty high, but I find it to be well worth it - you'll be paying out the nose for similar image quality on original hardware (RGB mod, SCART cables, XRGB upscaler, etc...) I also notice my wireless 8bitdo controllers seem more responsive and have less connection issues than they did when using them on my SNES Jr.

EDIT: @GumbyX84 Looks like they're only about $20 on eBay. At that price, I'm half tempted to pick one up now...

I wish I hadn't read this. Willpower... Getting... Weaker...

@menchi187 i meant in the future, if there is enough space on the FPGA then it could be added possibly

**Sarcasm on**
Great! Now I can turn my $200 Super NT into my $80 SNES Classic.
**Sarcasm off**

I'm thinking of picking one of these up. But only because I feel that I detect a slight delay in input controls when playing my SNES Mini. Is that in my head or is this something other people truly experienced? Even with the wired controller that the SNES Mini comes with.

And if so, does this Super nt truly fix that problem? Can anyone attest? @Roadrunner343, is there a noticeable differemce in response time?

@AcesHigh Sorry, I can't comment on the NES Mini. What I can comment on, is my experience with the 8bitdo controllers in general. On both my Analogue NT Mini, as well as my original SNES, I've had issues with missed button presses, delayed presses, etc... when using the retro receiver.

In fairness, my systems are within a media cabinet behind a glass door, but I still wouldn't expect them to perform so poorly from 10ft away. I also got a new matching black SNES 8bitdo controller with my Super NT, but the controls felt MUCH better. No missed/delayed presses so far. I still need to test my older 8bitdo controllers on the Super NT to know for sure if it was the controller, or the systems fault. It's possible there's a new firmware for the retro receiver that fixed the issue, it's been a while since I updated them last. Sorry I can't be more specific - all I can say, is that currently, I have no issues with the Super NT or my new 8bitdo controller.

Well, it works.

The system won't run FX chip roms, but that's no surprise.
I wound up restoring the official firmware, this isn't an option I need. I'm running all my titles from an SD2SNES cart which still loads faster than the SD slot option. Still, if you don't already have a flash cart, this is a wonderful hack. And even if you do just want to run roms of games you have on carts, this could prevent some wear and tear.

@GumbyX84 Doing a playthrough next week of my SD3 EN patched repro cart from my Super NT next week, can't wait. It'll be on youtube so keep an eye out for it starting next week, not gonna share channel details publically~

@roadrunner343 Super FX carts work perfectly fine on normal firmware. I've heard reports that Super FX carts don't work on jailbroken firmware (didn't test this myself). Super FX ROMs don't seem to work properly on jailbroken firmware (confirmed myself)

@roadrunner343 They work fine... because they are on the cartridges. Without firmware support emulating those chips, the NT will not run any games with custom chips on their cartridge boards.

@Menchi187 Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. Havn't had a chance to look into the firmware too much yet, but it's not immediately apparent if this is put out by Kevtris himself. Not sure who else would be able to get something like this out so quickly, but until he releases his semi-official firmware, I'll likely hold off.

@Shiryu Right, that's what I assumed. Just got a bit confused by a previous post indicating that there may be issues with them on the new firmware.

Until it gets a Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx-16 jailbreak then will I be interested in this, since it's only just SNES/SFC right now my SNES EverDrive already got that cover so it's good but not exciting for me at the moment.

@roadrunner343 It is from kevtris, it was originally announced on his blog

I love this little system!! Super Turrican is awesome too. I’ll definitely do this update.

@Menchi187 Really? Got a link? I didn't see anything, and the only blog location of his that I know of has been inactive for quite some time. Additionally, unlike the NT Mini firmware, this one isn't distributed on his blog files site.

@sleepinglion You're right. As of now the ED w/DSP and SD2SNES(if you're in love with MMX2 and 3) are the better choice.

The firmware is bugged so SRAM fails. That takes so many games right out of contention from being used that aren't even chipped in the first place. Once a proper one is laid down, or advanced like the NES clone got that ran many systems it'll be a feeding frenzy.

@roadrunner343 Strange, the link in my history is dead now

@Menchi187 ha... conspiracy! Like I said, if I had to take a guess, I'd say it was Kevtris too. From what I've heard, the firmware itself is encrypted - so who else would have access and the know-how to have a jailbroken firmware out on launch day? Still, I find it a bit odd that Kevtris wouldn't just take credit if this was hit doing, considering Analogue seemed fairly supportive of the NT Mini firmware releases. Out of an abundance of caution (And because I have no real need to do it) I'll hold off until we hear a bit more from the man himself.

@roadrunner343 I remember being unsure of it at first, but then when I noticed the author/creator, I gave it a go to see if it was gonna be FPGA supporting the ROMs, which it turned out not to be so I went back to 4.1. I'm a physical media guy so I wanted to see if they finally managed to beat the Super FX chips for emulation properly

@NinChocolate No, but it's an alternative to those who don't want to fork out $100 to $200 for a flashcart. Buuuuuuut, given the SRAM issue (which I assume is serious), may get a flashcart.

@tanookisuit The Everdrive for Snes has voltage issues and could damage hardware; the SD2SNES doesn't have such issues. As for the SRAM issue, if you look on GitHub not everyone has the issue, only certain SD cards and how they're formatted seems to be the cause. Best to wait for an update.

@Shiryu I don't see GSU-1/2 chips ever being read of the SD card I'm afraid.

@Hordak Hardware emulation > software emulation

Sees comment section devoid of people accusing NL of supporting piracy on an article about a product which involves ROM usage

News like this is making me want to buy a Super Nt at PAX . But is expensive

I'm in the cautious camp. I'll hold off until we get something official from Kevtris. In the meantime I'm enjoying playing my SNES games without roms or save states. The Super NT is amazing.

By the way @Damo according to the GitHub page the firmware will support more than 300-500 roms. That's just the limit per folder. I assume that sub-folders could hold more, although I haven't confirmed that myself.

No need for a Switch VC now. Very safe to say Nintendo UK in full support on users downloading ROMs, if yet another of those articles are live.

@tanookisuit I'm excited, anything to help this great library stay relevant and possibly expose many of these oldies to a new generation. The Super Nt is beautiful, just a great piece of hardware.

How similar were the SNES and GBA? Is it ridiculous to think official hacked firmware could introduce GBA rom loading at a later date?

Let's be real, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it was one of the guys at the company who made the firmware. They can't package it with the machine, but they can totally "leak" it themselves.

@sleepinglion The SNES and GBA aren't very similar internally. The general output you see with your standard 2D games are much the same and basic polygonal stuff too (Star Fox SNES vs Star-X GBA) but that's about it. The hardware inside are dramatically different.

The SuperNT uses a FPGA and depending on the one inside of the console a whole lot of stuff could be possible how powerful that chip and supporting hardware are too. FPGA is a field programmable gate array — a swiss army knife of a chip basically that you can code for telling it to mimic the processes of another totally unrelated piece of hardware. Go do some research on the original Analog NT (NES) device and you'll find the firmware made for that can handle all sorts of stuff so the potential is there. I don't recall if that one did GBA but I wouldn't think it impossible.

@tanookisuit Thanks for the reply, amigo! I hadn't considered the SuperNT's internals. I didn't grab the NT, a bit out of my price range, but I have been very happy with the AVS. I'll look into their firmware extras to get an idea of what we might see on the SuperNT.

@mikegamer STOP spreading that bull about the Super Everdrive. That isn't true at all and I and many other people have been playing with their Everdrives for YEARS and not had any issue what so ever. That was a RUMOR that it destroyed it, not FACT! There was no test/experiments done. It's a joke, I can tell you are really into Simulation and hardware, but actually GO on Krikzz forums and you will see that that guy who posted that bullpoo didn't know what the nibelsnarf he was talking about.

@DEZn00ts This is your last warning, enough with the profanity. I'm tired of telling you over and over again.

@DEZn00ts Calm down, dude, and lay off the Adderall already, sheesh. I bet you're the kind of person who would defend companies like Retron5 and RetroBit's unscrupulous source code theft.

@AcesHigh Its true. The SNES mini does have more lag. Thats why i decided on the Super NT. Lon Seidman did some input lag tests on his Youtube channel to prove it. Go to 15:00 of this Youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v0PWiIfvcU