A few weeks ago we broke the news that the fabled Nintendo PlayStation / SNES-CD’s BIOS had leaked onto the internet. After sparking plenty of interest and leaving many wondering about its legitimacy, the brains behind the emulation scene have managed to reverse engineer its very core. As a result we’re impressed to say that the first playable game for the system will be hitting your emulators soon.
As it stands we’re yet to see an authentic SNES-CD game disc surface, nevermind actually obtaining any playable code. While there are plenty of rumoured titles out there and even suggestions that a game disc could be in collector’s hands, the whole SNES-CD saga to date has been focused on the hardware alone. While this has left homebrew developers in a tricky situation, the creator of the NOCASH emulators has somehow managed to decipher how the hardware’s BIOS/system cart was supposed to work.
According to the most recent post from Martin Korth on the NESDev forums, the upcoming release of NO$SNS (The NOCASH Super Nintendo emulator) will feature support for the long lost hardware. This includes being able to simulate discs being inserted and ejected, along with access to what appears to be a built in memory management – similar to PlayStation memory cards.
Following on from this research, the NOCASH developer has further proved that the prototype system found is the real deal by porting his homebrew release Magic Floor to the SNES-CD. Although this version of the game can now be downloaded, the updated version of NO$SNS is yet to be released, leaving Magic Floor CD currently unplayable. At the same time, it’s worth noting that this homebrew release is very much a proof of concept to show that the BIOS/system cartridge for the SNES-CD is indeed authentic and working just fine.
While we may never know how powerful the system could have been, this homebrew release is potentially the start of something bigger… and something hopefully backed up by the arrival of those long lost game discs. In the meantime, there’s always the fantastic MSU-1 development scene which also offers ‘CD quality’ Super Nintendo enhancements.
Source RetroCollect