This SNES clone is BETTER than the ORIGINAL!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,555 words · ~7 min read
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four the number of super nintendo's that i own that's also technically the number
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of super nintendo's that i own that are also broken but we won't talk about that
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four the number of snes hardware revisions recommended by purists for
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optimal RGB output four the number of
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available colors for the super nt a hardware reverse engineering of the
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original super nintendo and four the number of seconds before i
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tell you this video is brought to you by us
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check out the LTT merch store at the link in the video description we've got
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shirts mugs stickers hats and more
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the super nt is the latest retro console from analog built by enthusiasts for
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enthusiasts right off the bat it appears to be quite a bit less premium than
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their original reverse engineered nes the nt it ditches the usb charging port
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for its included wireless controller and it's made entirely of plastic instead of
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6061 aluminium but that's actually okay
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because in return we get a selection of classic and modern designs for both the
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console and its controllers we get a price tag that's dramatically lower than
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anything analog has produced to date a
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mere 189 dollars including two built-in
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games putting the super nt within the reach at least of mere mortals unlike
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first party snes classics which have gone for as high as 400 dollars on ebay
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thanks for limiting your production nintendo anyway what else do we get here it's
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still got an sd card slot for firmware updates with the possibility of a
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jailbreak firmware that would enable you to run games off of it and we have a
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single universally compatible snes cartridge slot thanks mainly to 1990s
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nintendo and their curious implementation of cartridge region
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locking move around back there's micro b usb for power a single HDMI port and
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that's actually it no fancy outputs this time but we do still have real snes
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controller ports compatible with every single snes accessory
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outside of the super scope and again with the downgrades where the nt and nt
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mini had four here we only get two
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thankfully multi-taps worked just fine though and that's it aside from power
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and reset buttons they really simplify the outside this time around so have the
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internals been cost down to
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absolutely not we've got the same altera cyclone v and all its companion
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circuitry on the top side of its beautiful pcb programmed again by kevin
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horton aka kevtris the same legend who did the reverse engineering for the
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analog nt minis fpga though he didn't go
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it alone this whole thing has actually been something of a community effort
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with input from people like bu the author of the super accurate hegan
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emulator intro sound effects by electronic musician square pusher and a
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shiny new user interface designed by indie developer phil fish
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yes that phil fish complete with a super slick optional animated intro that
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randomizes each and every time you power on the console within the menu you'll
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find a ton of options to customize the experience from adding and controlling
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the depth of scan lines to enabling more sprites on screen than the real snes
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could handle to adjusting hotkeys audio volume and even the skin of the user
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interface it allows you to add filters like the previous consoles or remove
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filtering entirely if you just want those beautiful chunky pixels in all
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their unaltered glory as for what it's like to actually game
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on to answer that question i brought in my framemeister to test out an og
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nintendo adapted to HDMI alongside our
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super nt with an sd2 snes so we could
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test as many games as possible let's start with compatibility testing analog
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claims it's 100 because they're actually simulating the
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chips in a real super nintendo and from what we've been able to tell they've hit
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the mark dead on believe it or not not only does the super nt handle edge cases
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that were only recently discovered and patched in emulators the way they've
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done it allows them to improve upon the
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original without sacrificing that compatibility in particular with the
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sound so after spending some time with it to say that it's a great experience
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would be a huge understatement it handled literally everything we could
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throw at it including enhanced msu-1 games with cd audio tracks and fmv
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the picture is sharper the audio is clearer the input lag is non-existent
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every box is so thoroughly checked for this little thing that people around the
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office are already competing for their pick of the sample units with others
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saying they're just gonna buy one themselves if they miss out which is
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probably the boat i will be in if you spend any significant amount of your
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childhood playing super nintendo games and you want the real experience on
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modern hardware this is
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it i mentioned this already but the sound is one of the best things about
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the super nt although i would personally like a toggle to put it back to 100
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original they won't tell us how they improved things exactly but knowing a
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little about the super nintendo's audio processor helped us kind of piece it
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together the snes mixed together individual sounds like a drum or a
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guitar to make music or sound effects and these small sounds were usually
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somewhere between 8 and 22 kilohertz the og super nintendo just mixed them
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together at 32 kilohertz with a gaussian
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gaussian goosen gauchon filter that basically muffled it to hide the
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resulting noise meanwhile the super nt mixes them at 44.1 kilohertz along with
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modern cubic or sink filtering so everything sounds much sharper and truer
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to the artist's intent pretty cool stuff there are some dilemmas with the console
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like this if you're a new collector and want to support the original developers of the
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games you're playing the only real way to do this is ironically via
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virtual console and the classic series which are emulators that don't give you
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the original experience and the only way to get the classic series anyway is on
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ebay making your purchase less meaningful to developers and more
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meaningful to opportunistic scalpers
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and what if you already have some games is it worse to buy unofficial hardware
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or is it worse to pay scalpers who buy up all the
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official stuff is it just as bad to download all your games and throw them
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onto sd2 snes or a
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raspberry pi for that matter well no i can't answer that i'm going to bail hard
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so anyways then if what you're after is a no frills easy to use experience with
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full compatibility with all your favorite snes games and as close to real
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hardware as possible all while having
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full compatibility with modern displays
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there's really no contest this is your go-to
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it's super inexpensive compared to getting a framemeister and potentially
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modding your snes it's well built it's
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feature-rich and it's clearly a labor of love
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just like your squarespace site will be
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squarespace lets you pick one of their gorgeous templates and get a website up
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and running basically right away they've got 24 7 support via
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live chat and email it's just 12 bucks a month and you get a free domain if you
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buy squarespace for the year the best part about squarespace for us has been
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it just freaking works and you can make changes
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building your website today we've got the link below when you decide to sign
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up for squarespace make sure that you head over to squarespace.com forward
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slash LTT and use offer code LTT to get
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10 off your first purchase thanks for watching guys this video
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sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button do all that fun stuff check out
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the link below to see where you can buy some of the stuff that we talked about
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in this video also links in the description is our merch store where you
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can buy cool shirts like this one i'm actually wearing one this time there we go you can also check out our community
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forum which you should totally join and hey i'm here i guess so check out
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Floatplane as well um yeah i know this video won't necessarily
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be for everyone but i loved it so i thought i'd uh come in and talk about
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it have a good time guys i'll see you next time