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VitorVilela7 / SA1-Root

Project for accelerating SNES games using the SA-1 chip.
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    Version 1.8              by Vitor Vilela

SA-1 Root is a project for enabling and accelerating games using the SA-1 chip. It's a pack of patches that optimizes the game to the maximum possible keeping high hardware compatibility and keeping most of the game aspects intact.

So far the following games are available:

What is it?

SA-1 (Super Accelerator) is a co-processor included on some SNES games cartridges. It is made to work together with the Super NES CPU and used to enhance its processing speed, graphics and memory.

With its 10.74 MHz clock, the SA-1 CPU is four times faster than the normal SNES CPU processing. The SA-1 CPU and SNES CPU also runs simultaneously, which can result in up to five times faster processing over a game with no enhancement chips. Using that power, the Super Accelerator System (SAS) can be used to process game engines much faster than the normal, allowing more sprites to be processed at once, more in-game effects, faster loading and much more.

SA-1 Root 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.

System Features

Differences with SA-1 Pack

SA-1 Root is intended to be the base pack for enabling SA-1 on the games and optimizing it. SA-1 Pack is intended to be a full featured pack that not just enables SA-1 and accelerate the game, but also improve the game engine and provide additional tools for ROM hacking.

For example, Super Mario World's SA-1 Pack doubles the maximum physical amount of allowed enemies on screen and includes different shared routines for additional SA-1 features.

Compatibility

SA-1 Root is warranted to work with real hardware, including SA-1 carts plus the most up-to-date SNES emulators including bsnes and Snes9x.

ZSNES is not compatible with the SA-1 Root patches.

Credits

SA-1 Root wouldn't be that awesome without help from these people:

Special thanks also for all my patrons from https://www.patreon.com/vitorvilela, specially for:

Useful Links

Technical documents

Useful documents for understanding SA-1:

Contacting me

You can contact me though the following links: