SNES Star Fox now runs at a silky 60 fps thanks to a new hack
A demonstration of the hacked, 60 fps version of Star Fox released this week (though this demo doesn't get much above 30 fps, as noted in the bottom-left corner).
If you were a Nintendo kid in the '90s, you were probably blown away by how Star Fox and its SuperFX chip could render full 3D worlds on 1993-era SNES hardware. If you go back to play the game today, though, you'll probably be let down by the game's choppy frame rate, which maxes out at a halting 20 fps.
Enter longtime Star Fox ROM hacker kandowontu, who's responsible for the feature-packed Star Fox Exploration Showcase hack. This week, kando released a patch that unlocks 30 or even 60 fps modes in an emulated Star Fox (or Star Fox 2em) ROM. The result is an extremely smooth experience that probably comes closer to matching the rose-colored memories you have of early '90s Star Fox than the original game ever could.
A problem of designAttempts to speed up Star Fox are nothing new in the hacking and emulation communities. For years players have overclocked SuperFX chips or run emulators at higher speeds to try to up the game's frame rate.