There are a wide variety of ways that you can play your favorite classic Super Nintendo titles in the modern world. Of course, you can still own your original console that you got in the nineties, and have your pick of games available on eBay or a local retro game store. Or perhaps emulation is your thing. It’s easy, quick, extremely cheap, and doesn’t take up much room. But if you long for the early days of computing, where you got the see the nuts and bolts (or the bits and bytes) of the operation, there is a new way of looking at things. One who calls themselves Waterbury on the Hack-A-Day forums discovered a way of building an SNES, with the help of the newly released computer which is known as the Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi was a concept that goes as far back as 2006, and was inspired by Acorn’s BBC Micro of 1981.. Foundation trustee Eben Upton assembled a group of teachers, academics and computer enthusiasts to devise a computer to inspire children. The entire concept of the system was to make a very inexpensive computer, that could run modern software, mostly for mass production for use in such outlets as schools, and large businesses, that would require a large number of computers, thus saving a lot of money. (How much money? The high end model of Raspberry Pi costs just $35.) The final product was a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. Of course, don’t expect killer specifications with the system however. The high end model contains only about a half a gigabyte of RAM, and the computer system uses SD flash cards for storage.

When Waterbury was creating the system in his mind (back in 2004, even before the Raspberry Pi was thought of), his vision was to have seven key points:

Have both of the case’s controller ports functional to all standard SNES peripherals. Have a fully functioning cartridge port to read game ROMS, and game saves, and to have the ability to write new game saves back to the cartridges. Minimize the cosmetic changes to the case, so that viewing the modified SNES next to a stock console would not throw off an untrained eye. Keep the hardware as simple, and solid state as possible. Utilize the Power and Reset buttons as one would intend. Set up an intuitive gaming interface. Attempt to fully emulate the speed, and functionality of the original hardware.

After re-soldering the cartridge connector from original Super Nintendo hardware, he plugged it in to a piece of perforated board, and attempted to discover how to get the Raspberry Pi to read the cartridge slot. This was done with the help of a unique input/output expander, and various level converters. Waterbury says on his page:

“A couple of other advantages of using a Raspberry Pi is it’s absolutely small size, and minimal power requirements. Not only could I fit it inside of an SNES case, I could theoretically also power it using a stock SNES wall wart. Not to mention it also had analog video and stereo audio. Both are AV sources I could simply wire to a stock SNES AV port.. Also, with the Pi’s HDMI port, the thought was with not too much modification, I could add it to the back, fulfilling my desire to expand the features of the console.”

Below we have the links so you can take a look at the project in action, as well as learn more about the project from the Hack-A-Day webpage itself. We also threw in the official website of the Raspberry Pi project, in case you have your own ideas for a future development!

Waterbury’s Project Page: http://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/turning-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-snes/

Raspberry Pi Official Webpage: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJuDdjkVSc]