The Super FX is a supplementary graphics chip used in some Super Nintendo (SNES) video game cartridges. It is a RISC processor mounted onboard the game cartridge's PCB and ran at 10.74Mhz. Later on, it was superceded by the Super FX2, a chip that is equivalent to 2 Super FX chips (each with a 10.5Mhz clock speed) running in tandem. Game cartridges that have a Super FX chip had additional pins at the bottom of the cartridge that connects to slots on the SNES cartridge port not used by most game cartridges. Cartridge adapters such as cheat devices made before the release of Super FX games like the Game Genie did not have a connection to these previously unused slots, so Super FX games do not work when plugged into these devices. Games that included additional hardware such as the Super FX chips were retailed at a higher MSRP than the average SNES game.
The chip was designed by Argonaut Software in the UK, who also co-developed (with Nintendo) the pseudo-3D space scrolling shootervideo gameStar Fox to demonstrate the additional polygon rendering capabilities the chip brought to the SNES. With the release of Star Fox in 1993, the Super FX became the best selling RISC-based processor at that time.
In addition to rendering polygons, the chip can also be used for advanced 2D effects. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island used it for advanced graphics effects like sprite scaling, huge sprites that allowed for boss characters to take up the whole screen, and multiple foreground and background parallax layers to give a greater illusion of depth.
SuperFX: Developed by Argonaut Software, the SuperFXchip is a supplemental RISC CPU that was included in certain game cartridges to perform functions that the main CPU could not feasibly do.
Finally, the design was tweaked to become the SuperFX GSU-2 chip, which had a larger address bus and was manufactured with an improved semiconductor process to allow it to reach its target clock speed of 21 MHz.
Although this chip does handle graphics decompression and bitplane conversion, a large portion of memory inside this chip is dedicated to rendering a very complicated title screen, leading one to the likely conclusion that its inclusion was more intended to prevent the game from being easily pirated.
The SuperFXchip was designed by Argonaut Games, who also co-developed (with Nintendo) the 3D space scrolling shooter video game Star Fox to demonstrate the additional polygon rendering capabilities the chip brought to the SNES.
The first version of the chip, commonly called the SuperFX (no number), is clocked with a 21 MHz signal, but an internal clock speed divider halved it to 10.5 MHz.
Game cartridges that contain a SuperFXchip have additional contacts at the bottom of the cartridge that connect to the extra slots in the cartridge port that were not normally used.
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