
The Super FX chip was a groundbreaking piece of tech; a "console on a chip" which massively enhanced the SNES, allowing it to push polygons with aplomb.
Created by Argonaut Software, a small UK-based firm, the chip was created when Nintendo enlisted the help of Argonaut's Jez San to assist the company in making 3D games.
It's already known that, at one stage, there were discussions within Nintendo about building the Super FX chip into the North American version of the SNES. That ultimately didn't happen, but Jez San reveals that there was a later plan to put a version of the chip into the unreleased SNES PlayStation, a joint venture by Sony and Nintendo which was canned when the latter got cold feet and left the former standing at the altar.
San told us:
When we designed the Super FX chip for Nintendo, It was too late to make it into the Japanese version of the SNES. But with the American version, they were contemplating having it built in, which would have made the games cartridges much cheaper, and would have also meant that 3D was a standard in the console. In the end, we missed out on that. But then, initially, Nintendo and Sony were going to do a PlayStation with a CD attached to a SNES, with our chip in it – ours was going to be the 3D chip inside the original PlayStation. Then Sony and Nintendo fell out.
Could the Super FX have given the SNES PlayStation the power to mix it up with the likes of the 3DO and Jaguar? We'll never know, but it's interesting to know that it almost made it into not one, but two consoles.
Comments 28
imagine a world where the Nintendo Play Station (not PlayStation, the space was removed when they left Nintendo) was a thing and my boy PaRappa is in Smash...
@Noid Being pedantic here but I’d say we’d have missed out on a whole lot of great games. A lot of more mature games wouldn’t have been published by Nintendo and those Sony first party games likely wouldn’t have happened either due to there being Nintendo exclusives instead. Still, it would have been interesting to see!
Corporate partnerships proved near impossible in the early eras of gaming, but they may be coming around now. Because of the connected nature of games nowadays, there’s profit in cooperation and possibly collaboration as technologies are brought together. But companies have to get over the insecurities of competition and past competitiveness.
Stuff like this is always pretty funny in retrospect because of what could've been, ha.
Considering the SNES' ability to have helper chips in the cartridges, I think it would have been possible to release RAM/chip carts for the machine. The PC Engine had a few different system cards for their CD games. They just had RAM, but the RAM upgrades allowed for some significant improvements over time. Had they actually released the CD add on for the SNES, it likely would have needed more RAM down the line. They could have included the Super FX and/or the SA-1 in the RAM cart as well, depending on the cost of such things. But the consumer would only have to buy it once to play any CD games that would use it. It's an interesting thing to think about.
"a joint venture by Sony and Nintendo which was canned when the latter got cold feet and left the former standing at the altar."
Hasn't this been gone over a million times by now? Nintendo embarrassed Sony only because Sony was greedy and demanded too much for a "partnership". It was not cold feet, but rather to protect their own interests. Two wrongs don't make a right, but at least state it for what it was, a bad deal that fell through.
As for the topic at hand, it would have opened up possibilities for studios at the time to take advantage of it. Back then it would have been a big deal, but looking at it now, technology progressed vastly since that time where the FX chip would have been mainly used for a lone generation. However with all the great games back then, it could have made some of them possibly even better.
@NinChocolate but Sony is still stubborn to cooperate with its rivals. As a former Sony fanboy, it's frustrating to see over 75% of its library only be exclusives.
It's an interesting question, but I think things worked out for the best. There's no indication a CD expansion for the SNES would have worked out any better than the SegaCD did and that failure would have cost us the entire PlayStation brand and all the games that wouldn't exist without it.
Dang. Just imagine the differences these consoles may have had back then if this happened. It would have been pretty sweet.
I am sad there wasn't a collaboration between Play Station and Nintendo but at the same time, I am happy. Mainly because by having Playstation seperate from Nintendo meant we had more competition. It's good to make sure companies are competitive and not have most of the market. That way prices stay more competitive.
I like building and upgrading my computer every couple of years to play the graphic heavy games while I love Nintendo for their main character games like Mario Kart and Zelda games. Plus having the Switch to take with me into my bedroom or travelling is just awesome. Ya, the Switch may not have the best graphics but I like Nintendo more for gameplay and fun games. I wonder if we'll hit a point where console hardware is advanced enough, where upgrading won't matter as much vs developers just coding better and more efficiently.
Everything worked out for the best. Sony had no intention in keeping a partnership with Nintendo and were using them to get into the business with less effort. Sony were going to ditch them eventually only this time have the rights to make Mario etc games.
Nintendo made the best choice.
Ultimately this was a good thing to have never happened. Sony catered to the more mature audiences and brought the medium forward.
Sometimes we win when we lose.
Idk why people obsess about this tag teaming so much.
It all worked out in the end.
We now have one company making the best power console, and one company making the beat portable console. And they paired up we would only have one of the two.
Nice job Nintendo, you turned down Sony. BAD CHOICE
@badboy9 Giving up 100% of the profits and rights? Yeah, real bad choice.
@nessisonett Moreso than that, those games wouldn't be Nintendo exclusives, they probably just wouldn't exist at all. Sony would have likely just continued with the Sony Imagesoft name and publishing not-so-great titles as they would never had to try to build an exclusive library like they did with PS1.
I'm glad things worked out the way they did. Both companies bring something unique and vital to the industry. Case in point, the mid-90s creative wellspring of game development that resulted from Sony going solo and needing to scrap for IP would have likely been impossible to replicate under different circumstances. I also would hate to think what Sony would have done with unfettered access to Nintendo's IP. Those CDi games were punishment enough.
@sdelfin That's exactly the idea. The system cartridge was intended to be swappable. The first one (the one found in the prototype in someone's house a few years ago) had nothing but a pittance of RAM. It was silly.
Then came this Super FX system cartridge, before it was even christened "Super FX". It's nice, and I would've wanted it badly.
However, the final system cartridge circa 1993 dropped the Super FX entirely for the NEC V810 and more RAM.
The CD-ROM unit architecture changed several times! This Super FX era was the middle of the road model, but still much better (both processing and RAM size) than Sega CD. SA-1 happened later than either of these and is really an inexpensive stopgap not more powerful than the V-810.
Sony came strong with the first PlayStation. Nintendo have proven they can stand on their own. Good to see Nintendo still showing Sony and Microsoft how to have strong first party games and that innovation is not always just about graphics.
Are these worth any money now as found one in carboot sale in 2013? They only wanted £50 and luckily I had a bag of 100 Kew gardens 50p coins with me that my girlfriend collected that year.
@USWITCH64 lmfao
So one coin is all you needed right?
I have 1 in my collection. One WWF one as well.
Always remember certain importers back in the taking preorders for this amazing system that unfortunately never happened. Was so disappointed when Nintendo pulled the plug. To this day I still believe this would of been one of the best systems ever. SNES with CD tech=dream machine in my eyes. Going off topic the Mega CD could of done so much more if developers had used to tech properly.
I’m still sceptical of San’s claim that the Super FX chip could ever have shipped built into the SNES. The US model was released mid-1991 and Starfox didn’t arrive until early 1993. Even if we assume the chips were ready in mid ‘92 that’s still a full year late for the US launch and they didn’t take that long to develop Starfox.
Argonaut were busy making X for the GameBoy in 1991 for a Q2 1992 release and they had to reverse engineer the hardware; they didn’t have any dev kits so I don’t think they were working officially with Nintendo at that point. The timeline just doesn’t make sense to me.
@NinChocolate yes, I hope this for all areas of life in general. Wouldn't it be wonderful if instead of competing we saw each other as brothers and sisters and helped each other.
Arsenal vs Spurs wouldn't be about hating each other but would be about wanting to push each other to be the best they can be and then congratulating the winner either way.
@Averagewriter
I've heard this story before. Given how amazing the SPC soundtrack ended up being, I can't imagine what Hiroki Kikuta might have done with redbook audio. The remake of SoM doesn't really tell us much as for the most part it wasn't arranged by HK.
I think if the SuperFX chip could have been internalized, other chips could have been as well, especially the SA-1 CoCPU which was an overclocked 65c816 CPU. We already have seen the abilities of that CPU at work with the upgrade made to Gradius III in a romhack and Voltaire's projects on Twitter and YouTube.
A lot of people have said the SNES-CD wouldn't have been that powerful, but I really beg to differ. If the SA-1 could have been utilized properly, it would have effectively doubled the power of the SNES itself, and even then, games could have actually been patched via the CD-ROM system using either a sideload method like using ips files without attaching them to a ROM, or they could have inserted a program to rewrite a ROM with a patch code applied. The system was flexible if it was utilized properly.
By the time the nextgen console would have appeared from Nintendo and Sony, what would have been the N64 would have been more like the PSOne and would have had a staggering success.
3DO and Jaguar were both commercial failures! Sure, not as big a failure as the Wii U was, but both were massive failures themselves!
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...