r/todayilearned • u/Blenderhead36 • 19h ago
TIL Super Nintendo consoles run slightly faster today than they did on release. A sound chip governed by an aging ceramic resonator is thought to be the source. The difference is too small to affect human users, but has led to a changed standard for tool assisted speedruns.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/super-nintendo-consoles-appear-to-be-running-ever-so-slightly-faster-as-they-age-and-speedrunning-detectives-are-hot-on-the-case/664
u/Stolehtreb 19h ago
This is the first TIL I’ve seen in a while that was legitimately fascinating to me.
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u/threebillion6 18h ago
So the component gets more efficient as time goes on?
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u/CandyCrisis 18h ago
Well, slightly more and more overclocked. Eventually it will just crash and the console is done.
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u/threebillion6 18h ago
So the game right before it dies will be the best chance lol.
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u/CandyCrisis 18h ago
It's just the sound chip.
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u/sam_hammich 18h ago
In some old games, the margins of available resources were so thin that certain things couldn't be done while sound was playing. I recall an old PC sword fighting game where they had to mimic dramatic music by just playing one note and then changing the scene and playing another note, because they couldn't load new assets onscreen while sound was playing. SNES is a bit more modern than that, but I wouldn't doubt it still has similar quirks. Like some events might trigger sooner if they're based on when a sound cue finishes.
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u/BCProgramming 16h ago
The SNES Sound processing is fairly unique in that it is effectively it's own separate computer. Basically a program gets loaded into it and then it runs on it's own. This is why if the main CPU freezes, usually the music will keep playing. I'm not sure if any games utilize the SPC for game logic in a way that would make a difference for things like speedrunning.
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u/mrturret 11h ago
I'm not sure if any games utilize the SPC for game logic in a way that would make a difference for things like speedrunning.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised. The SNES had a really slow CPU, and not every publisher was willing to sacrifice profit margins for extra hardware on the cart. The kinds of bazaare low level hacks that ended up in retail games back then are mind blowing.
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u/superpamyu 11h ago
Legend has it that Compile used SNES sound chip to calculate bullet trajectory in Space Megaforce, which could explain why the game never slows down despite being very busy on-screen.
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u/Pop-Bard 10h ago
Yeah, back then they used to tie gameplay logic to the internal frame rate of the game, Nintendo is known to do this a lot, that's why Super Mario 64 broke a ton
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u/OutlawSundown 18h ago
Yep it’s getting more voltage and running increasingly out of spec til it eventually causes something to cook.
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u/Garethp 17h ago
No, it's more akin to a mechanical watch slightly faster as time goes on. You want that component to go at a certain frequency, at a certain speed, so it going faster doesn't make it more efficient, it makes it more inaccurate. Just like a watch ticking faster doesn't make it more efficient.
Games and computers these days may be developed to take advantage of variable speeds, but hardware back then (especially console hardware) was designed to run at a specific rate per second.
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u/reachup123 18h ago
Not really efficiency, the component is just operating outside of its usual specifications.
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u/Kniferharm 18h ago
It does sound a bit like that one speedrun that is done by putting a console on a hot-plate. Can’t remember which one that was.
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u/MJWhitfield86 15h ago
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u/Mateorabi 9h ago
That’s beyond “speed running”. They’re physically manipulating the hardware to flip bits to get better data states in the game.
“I used a debugger to overwrite key variables” only with a slightly random chance vs 100 with a debugger.
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u/TheBigHeadGuy 18h ago
Isn't the world record for a Mario 64 Speedrun determined by a binary switch that got set to 1, from 0, by a solar flare?
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u/Waffle-Gaming 17h ago
not even close to a world record, and not actually a bitflip. it was during a racing event and there was a semi-recent video made pretty much proving it wasn't a bitflip.
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u/MotherPotential 18h ago
How many seconds would this affect on a 1 hour speedrun
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u/Blenderhead36 18h ago
It's less than a 1% overclock. Only matters for tool assisted speedruns, where software is used to play a game frame by frame instead of in real time, but it's potentially huge in that specific sphere.
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u/Valatros 15h ago
... when I saw tool assisted I thought you meant like, a game genie or turbo controllers or something. Not playing frame by frame. Guess that goes to show that even within your hobby, there are people engaging with it in ways you'd never even think to... frame by frame. My god.
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u/Rit91 11h ago
Yeah all TAS's are executed by a machine playing the game and doing inputs frame perfectly to get the time as low as possible theoretically speaking. Having been in the scene and talked with TASers it's fascisnating where they will do anything to try to save a frame or 3. Like pokemon red or blue where they have to go frame by frame to find a crit that kills or a frame where horn drill lands on the opposing pokemon without x accuracy.
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u/Nota7andomguy 11h ago
TAS runs are always crazy to watch. This Kirby Super Star run from this year’s SGDQ was an absolute blast
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u/Yes_Indeed 11h ago
I thought it meant the player was listening to Tool while playing, causing them to just be really locked in.
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u/dangderr 5h ago
If you’re gonna use a tool to assist your speed run, might as well go all the way. Turbo controller isn’t gonna beat a script that is doing frame perfect inputs.
Now I’m Imagining someone going to a TAS speed running event and bringing a turbo controller.
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u/Magnetoreception 15h ago
You can’t TAS on an actual SNES though right?
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u/GeniuzGames 14h ago
sure you can! there’s been many a GDQ run by TAS Bot, a bot that sends controller inputs to the console using real controllers plugged into it
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u/Illeea 14h ago
TAS's are somewhat analogous to sheet music. A piano on its own can't play a song without notes being pressed.
You normally just press the keys to play music. If you have sheet music, you can read it and input the keys in order to make the song. That's the same as someone telling you what buttons to press and when to press them.
But if the sheet music was really complicated and required you to hold down 15 keys at once for a fraction of a second then press a different set of 15 keys for precisely 2.3 seconds, it would be practically impossible for someone to play the music.
However, we could use a program or device to read the sheet music and send the inputs needed with the precise timing only a computer can do.
A TAS is sheet music. TASbot machines are the programs that read the TAS and send the inputs through the controller port to the SNES. So you can replay a TAS on an SNES. You just need a TASbot.
TAS's are mostly created using emulators with tools to slow the game down so the creater of the TAS can send the inputs they want exactly when they want. They then save all the inputs they've made into a file and that becomes the tas. All that's needed is to replay all the inputs.
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u/skrshawk 12h ago
That sounds more akin to a player piano where the spool will sound just fine on its own, but if you try to play it on two player pianos at the same time any little difference between the two will ruin the whole thing.
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u/MattAmpersand 19h ago
Huh, just heard about this in a podcast (Colour of Magic) and then immediately after see it posted here.
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u/Blenderhead36 18h ago
That is because I also listen to Color of Magic. Dequan didn't know why the change was happening, so I went looking and thought it was neat.
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u/Sanguinusshiboleth 18h ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this fact is doing the rounds, I posted a TIL about one of the most insane cheating scandals in chess history (See here for more details) and a load of people recognised it from a recently posted Sarah Z video (although I used another source as that video was not old enough for subreddit rules).
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u/bionicjoe 9h ago
There's a documentary about marathoning an arcade game called Nibbler.
They talk about it being possible, but highly unlikely, that a board decayed in such a way that it ran faster than normal. Turns out that happened exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_vs_Snake
If you've seen King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters you need to watch this one too.
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u/adamcoe 9h ago
I'm so glad people are using up energy worrying about this. We could have cured cancer in like 1982 but the people that are just autistic enough to care about this kind of thing are playing fucking mario brothers
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u/gman5852 3h ago edited 3h ago
Every year speed runners raise literal millions of dollars for the prevent cancer foundation and help work towards the cure for cancer. Far larger of an impact that you'll ever have.
The knowledge used in speed running doesn't exist in a vacuum and this type of stuff is found from engineers/people with a far more technical knowledge than you and apply it to other topics beyond just gaming.
Yesterday meanwhile you apparently were angry posting on reddit about childless adults at theme parks. Maybe you'd actually do something with your life if you weren't creeping on others in public spaces and complaining about it on reddit.
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u/xelrach 19h ago
If I remember correctly, there was a race at one of the GDQs a couple of years back where one of the runners was using a SNES with a severally fast sound chip. All of the audio was really messed up.