Skip to content
0:00 / 0:00

#nes#raspberrypi#reverseemulation

Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!

suckerpinch

202K subscribers • 15 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 14 people: 12 on Hacker News and 2 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2025.
  • Presented by Tom Murphy VII, computer scientist
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 8 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.

1M views8 years ago14 recommendations

HardwareGame developmentRetro computingEmbedded systemsGame programming

Tom Murphy VII explains how he used a Raspberry Pi inside an NES cartridge to co-process and render SNES games on an unmodified NES.

The video begins in a strange way and gets stranger, but then, ideally, you understand why. See the "making of" video for more technical information: youtu.be/hTlNVUmBA28

Why it's here

14 people recommend this

What people say. Widely celebrated as a brilliant, highly creative, and entertaining exploration of retro hardware hacking and reverse emulation.

Screwtapeon Lobsters • Recommends

Reverse emulating the NES

technomancyon Lobsters • Recommends

Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS

sdenton4on Hacker News • Recommends

On “SNES Cartridges and Enhancement Chips”

Along these lines, Tom7 invented* 'reverse emulation' which effectively uses a Raspberry Pi as a co-processor, allowing him to run spoilers ahoy!an SNES emulator on an NES./spoilers The talk is brilliant: link to this video * - as far as I know...

sgroveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “SuperRT – Realtime Raytracing on the SNES”

In that case, you might like one of tom7's many wonnderful videos 0, "Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!" where he hacks a real NES cartridge with a raspberry pi with an emulator, then figures out how to map all of the data into NES sprites, etc. As usual for his videos, it's absolutely wonderful. 0 link to this video

GuestHNUseron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]”

Tom7 is brilliant for anyone that hasn't seen him before. His Reverse Emulation video ( link to this video ) and Weird Chess Algorithms ( link ) are a must watch. His dead pan delivery coupled with the ridiculous amount of effort he puts into things that don't _really_ matter is honestly inspiring.

anyfooon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The Floppotron 3.0”

You will love Tom7/suckerpinch's stuff then, if you don't know him already. Here's a good one for the start, though really, they are all fantastic: link to this video

pinkmuffinereon Hacker News • Recommends

On “First convex polyhedron found that can't pass through itself”

Tom7 is one of my favorite people, he is hilarious, has an amazing technical depth, and so much whimsy to go along with it. I'll proselytize for him all day! relevant video: link less relevant, but I think my favorite: link to this video

rrherron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”

From Deconstruct: Nabil Hassein: Computing, Climate Change, and All Our Relationships link Tom 7: Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS! link to this video

progvalon Hacker News • Recommends

On “RaSCSI: SCSI Interface for Raspberry Pi (2019)”

This reminds me of this video of a "reverse-emulated" NES using a raspberry-pi: link to this video (you can skip to 3:35 if you're not interested in the jokes). The author further explains how he did it in this "making of" video: link

jerfon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Installing Linux into a 286 laptop from the year 1989”

Well, then do I have the video for you: link to this video Bit of a spoiler to post it in this context, but still worth it.

bla3on Hacker News • Recommends

On “What made the NES so interesting?”

What a great article. If you liked this, you'll likely also enjoy link to this video I'm not giving a summary since that video is most fun to watch if you don't know the punchline in advance. (No relationship to the video other than that I liked it.)

jabbanyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pcmcia Pico W Card”

Heh, it reminds me of this gem: link to this video which does something similar... using a modern device to give old devices essentially capabilities beyond what they should be able to do.

NotYourLawyeron Hacker News • Recommends

On “I ran the length of every street in Pittsburgh: PAC TOM [video]”

Great YouTube channel. Here’s a fun video where he integrates a raspberry pi into a NES cartridge to do all kinds of crazy things using the NES’s native hardware. Spoiler alert: full-motion video of the rickroll video is not the craziest thing he manages to pull off. link to this video

iamevnon Hacker News • Recommends

On “GradIEEEnt half decent: The hidden power of imprecise lines [video]”

Anything that catches your eye is good but my favorites are: 30 Weird Chess Algorithms: ELO World link Reverse Emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS! link to this video

djsumdogon Hacker News • Mentions

On “All Chromebooks will also be Linux laptops going forward”

People still run Commodore 64s. There are demo scenes, old hardware enthusiasts that squeeze crazy performance out of old hardware, even a guy who use a Raspberry Pi to emulate an NES cartridge and get his unmodified NES to play SNES games: link to this video Old hardware can often be repaired. If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years, he or she wouldn't shell out the $$ on it, but today people buy $400~$800 cellphones that turn into garbage.

mrobon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Tutorial series for simulating NES Graphics (2018)”

…to simulate having a bitmapped display with 8x1 attribute blocks (the PPU only reads attribute memory once every 8 pixels, so that's a hard limit). Tom Murphy implemented this with a Raspberry Pi (which isn't ideally suited to the task, so there are timing imperfections causing graphical glitches, but theoretically it could be done without them): link to this video…