Vitor Vitela is a Brazilian coder most well known for his FastROM and SA-1 Root projects that reduce slowdown in SNES games. The SA-1 is a co-processor included in some SNES cartridges that can run four times faster than the SNES CPU, and when run in tandem together can result in processing times up to five times faster than for games without the enhancement chip. According to his GitHub pabe, Vitela's SA-1 Root project "not just activates the co-processor, but also modifies a good part of the game engine to use and explore the chip features, which gives an extreme boost to the overall performance of the game." The FastROM hacks are an equivalent for games with no SA-1 chip, and generally have better compatibility than the SA-1 packs.

Currently, the two FastROM games available are Axelay and Super Castlevania IV, while the games with SA-1 packs include Contra III, Gradius III, Race Drivin', Super R-Type and Super Mario World.



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[Reploid]

So... those a romhacks that enables emulation of some cool mapper?

 

[J-Machine]

So... those a romhacks that enables emulation of some cool mapper?

not mappers. some are bug fixed. other's have instructions that use processing chips like the sa-1 if you had a snes rom flasher you could make these run on og hardware

 

[MaxiBash]

So... those a romhacks that enables emulation of some cool mapper?

The best example I can give is for Super Mario World. You know how the game zooms out focussed on Mario when you finish a stage? Turns out that actually lags the game, and this patch fixes that.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I may be wrong but I believe that more than 90% of snes official releases do not rely in any special chip. So there is an ocean of games ready to be improved with those SA patches.

Aside of that, this same developer is working in awesome stuff for emulators too, like the wide screen Super Mario World.

 

[Vila_]

Very cool

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

lol imagine if they used this for the sonic 1 snes port. it'd be blast-processing for real

 

[lordgoober]

Gradius 3 played with the SA-1 chip patch is a completely different experience compared to the stock experience. Just try the bubble stage on it.

 

[HarveyHouston]

I guess Nintendo and developers never really considered collaborating on modifying their code to boost performance on several of the SNES titles. So the rest of the world has broken, slow games that were officially released, while this guy has made his games run fast.

 

[Xzi]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't mind a bit of slowdown in most SNES games. For that matter, it's saved my ass more than a few times when things get hectic on screen.

Still a neat project regardless.

 

[anhminh]

So 120fps snes mod when?

 

[CaptainHIT]

That guy is a top notch coder, he doesn't patch only, he rewrites a huge portion of the disassembled code of the game, for bugfixing and adapting to SA-1.

He keeps up his update on his Twitter accound.

 

[PatrickD85]

Very neat to see

 

[yuyuyup]

Since the devs were aware of the slowdowns, they most likely crafted stages with slowdown in mind, so this "fix" actually removes the intended gameplay, for better and for worse. But either way it's great that the roms get attention and these optional fixes

 

[raxadian]

Contra and Gradius are the kind of games you only run faster if you like to punish yourself.

 

[stüssy]

Parodius also would be nice

 

[almmiron]

Since the devs were aware of the slowdowns, they most likely crafted stages with slowdown in mind, so this "fix" actually removes the intended gameplay, for better and for worse. But either way it's great that the roms get attention and these optional fixes

Yep. But I like the option to play without the slowdown. I like for example what capcom did with megaman x collection. they removed a lot of unnintended slowdown.

There's a lot of games that can benefit with this kind of coding.

 

[XDel]

This guy is a god send

 

[raxadian]

I like for example what capcom did with megaman x collection. they removed a lot of unnintended slowdown.

Yet they actually didn't fix the bug of X DISAPPEARING for like a second when he takes damage.

 

[MetoMeto]

I didn't know there WHERE slowdowns...