GRADIUS III SHIP SPRITE PATCH
As if that wasn't enough, the patch even slashes the game's loading times, cutting a full 3.25 seconds from the notably slow startup animation. That's even true in the game's notorious, bubble-filled Stage 2, which is transformed from a jittery slide show to an amazing showcase of the SNES' enhanced power. It also keeps its silky smooth frame rate no matter how many detailed, screen-filling sprites clutter the scene. The result, as is apparent in the comparison videos embedded here, is a version of Gradius III that Vilela says runs two to three times faster than the original. The patch "changes most of the data structures pointers and finally creates an intermediate system for calling SA-1 for most intensive routines and the SNES for the PPU/APU interaction routines and V-blank refreshing." Vilela writes that it took "three months of researchment, disassembly, code analysis, memory remapping, and code editing" to get to this point. But that doesn't mean you can just add the chip to any game ROM and get an instant speed boost.
GRADIUS III SHIP SPRITE MOD
As of this week, Vilela says that work on Gradius III can now be considered "stable" and that "the new SA-1 era" can begin.įurther Reading HD emulation mod makes “Mode 7” SNES games look like newUnlike specialty chips such as the well-known Super FX, the SA-1 has the same architecture as the core SNES CPU, which makes porting code written for the base system easier. Vilela has been working for months with old SA-1 development hardware and modern development tools to document that chip's inner workings and mappings. Besides sporting a faster clock speed than the standard SNES CPU (up to 10.74 Mhz versus 3.58 Mhz for the CPU), SA-1 also opens up faster mathematical functions, improved graphics manipulation, and parallel processing capabilities for SNES programmers. The key to Vilela's efforts is the SA-1 chip, an enhancement co-processor that was found in some late-era SNES cartridges like Super Mario RPG and Kirby Super Star.
Now, Brazilian ROM hacker Vitor Vilela has righted this nearly three-decade-old wrong with a ROM patch that creates a new, slowdown-free version of the game for play on SNES emulators and standard hardware. In action, though, any scene with more than a handful of enemies would slow to a nearly unplayable crawl on the underpowered SNES hardware. In magazine screenshots, the game's huge, colorful sprites were a sight to behold, comparable to the 1989 arcade original. Many gamers of a certain age (this author included) remember the early '90s disappointment of buying the SNES version of hit arcade shmup Gradius III.
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