Brand new Doom for... SNES?

[Dark Jaguar]

So, apparently the Pi processor is basically emulating a Super FX3 virtual chip.  I kind of knew that, but to have it spelled out while reminding us all that the actual specs of this virtual chip haven't been released puts things in perspective.  It's not a chip running at 150mhz, it's just running on a chip at that speed.  Once those specs are announced, it'll be simple enough to do something similar on an FPGA core, which will operate much closer to the "real" thing.  While it's weird it can do all this without the additional pins most expansion chip games used on the SNES, it does appear to be exactly as described, an enhanced version running with specs closer to what Nintendo actually would have done if they'd not burned bridges with Argonaut and had them make a third revision.

With all that said, I do hate that Limited Run is involved.  They're big enough they can afford to back a project like this, so I get it, but then I read this article:

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/...ae-advance

This is rather sickening from a game preservation perspective.  Those "harvested" chips came from other GBA games, and knowing how China harvests them, by mass buying up stuff that Gamestop and the like throw out, means that by being a customer FOR these Chinese fly by nights, they're directly funding their continued destruction of existing GBA (and other) games.

If I wanted to harvest chips from existing games to make a working GBA cart, I can do that MYSELF.  Alright, I admit most people don't have access to the tools or have the experience to do such things, but it's what I did to make a fully functional Starfox 2 cart using the board from a copy of Winter Gold.  The difference?  I've kept both the Winter Gold cart shell and ROM chip so that it can be reversed in the future by whoever inherits my game collection.  These Chinese fly by nights are absolutely not doing that, and they're doing it in MASS NUMBERS.

But, here's the thing


What LR COULD do is use one of the MANY knockoff chips being produced right now to make replicas of GBA pokemon games, and just a ROM or FLASH chip in there, depending on design.  It's a rather disappointing corner cutting measure they've gone into which is frankly worse than when they reprinted some games on CD-R, a format known to degrade in the span of 5 years or so.

What WE could do is just use a GBA Everdrive or other such flash cart to run a ROM of this game, and so, while I did preorder it way back when, finding out how the sausage was made makes my stomach turn.

Back to Doom, I'm impressed, but it's worth noting some caveats.

https://www.timeextension.com/previews/h...p-and-tear

It's more polished and plays better, but still has some issues.  While it has better mouse support, XBand keyboard support wasn't added after all.  It still doesn't show the backs of enemy sprites, so just as with many ports with that limitation, enemies are always facing towards the player and the gameplay is designed to make them "see" the player no matter what angle they're approached from.  That's going to make Perfect Hatred even more hateful, now that that level's a part of the game.  No more using the shotgunners to take out a few enemies early on.  EVERYTHING is going to be aiming at you from the start!  Perfect Hatred on Ultra-Violence is already actual hell, so good luck everyone!