SNES Star Fox now runs at a silky 60 fps thanks to a new hack - Ars Technica

If you go back to play the game today, though, you'll probably be let down by the game's choppy frame rate, which maxes out at a halting 20 fps.

The result is an extremely smooth experience that probably comes closer to matching the rose-colored memories you have of early '90s Star Fox than the original game ever could.

In a game like Star Fox, the SuperFX chip can take two entire frame cycles to transfer its 3D images to the system's video RAM (that's despite using only 75 percent of the available screen real estate).

Add in calculation time for game logic, enemy movement, etc., and the game displays a new frame at just one-third of the SNES' standard 60 fps rate.

To get around this issue, kando's hack first reprograms the game to run three frames' worth of instructions (as measured in IRQ routines) in the space of one frame cycle (or two game cycles for 30 fps mode).

But to prevent the gameplay itself from speeding up, kando programmed his version to only recalculate the game logic (or "strats") every third frame (or every other frame for 30 fps mode).