Okay so why is SuperGNES taking so long and why aren’t we there yet? First let me say sorry of the lack of insight into what’s been going on. It’s been a bit heck-it lately for different reasons but we want to ensure you that SuperGNES will get done … no matter what. We want to put out the highest quality and competitive product we possibly can. Unfortunately we don’t have a venture capitalist to fund development 24/7. It’s just us and the time we commit to making things happen. All that said SuperGNES is making great progress. We welcome you to join the Beta testers using the contact form to help us squash all the bugs.

After working hard to development on screen controls we finally found a control configuration that is easy to use and allows for precise game control. The newest screen only phones have been in desperate need of better controls as most games have been modeled around the hard keyboard. What we have created is a controller pad using on screen buttons, combined with the track ball or D-Pad for directional controls. For the track ball you simply scroll in the direction you want to go, press the ball in to continue your path of travel and release it to stop. When you want to super speed and jump hold the speed button down and then slide your thumb down to the jump button to press both buttons at the same time. Theses controls have proven to be quite effective in kicking some koopa shell and we hope to add some more controller skins in the future. Checkout the in-game screen shot using the new touch controls.

Since we released the Beta of SuperGNES we’ve gotten great feedback and help from the SuperGNES Beta testers. We’ve been able to cut our testing cycles down, quality has gone up, speed has increased and we’re very happy to say that a majority of the SNES titles are now fully playable. We are also very happy with the quality of the sound as it is right on par with the original SNES. There is still a little bit of lag it but we are certain it will go away once we put some more APU optimizations in. Special chips for the Mega Man X series are working. For those with Android Generation 2 phones, not to worry we are saving the best for last and are working on on-screen controls unlike any other emulators for Android.

We are announcing a public beta of SuperGNES to everyone who has signed up for updates and is interested in participating. The beta will be available in a few days for everyone who has signed up on the contact page. We will send out an email with a download location on our website to install SuperGNES on your phone. This will allow everyone to get a preview of SuperGNES, squash any remaining bugs and get feedback on enhancements for a final release.

In designing SuperGNES we wanted to elevate the expected emulator standards and make a very fun and easy experience for you the gamer. Game Genie codes add new possibilities and make game play easier for the sometimes different phone controls. Also it’s a pain to find codes and enter them one by one in the middle of your game. That’s why we put together a Game Genie code database that is instantly available while playing your game. Just check the codes you want to use. We’ve painstakingly compiled a database for your favorite titles with 4,010 Game Genie codes currently. This database will grow as we get more entires from you.

The SuperGNES release is being pushed from June to July out of the main necessity of quality. With the changes we’ve had to make for our performance numbers, at this point we wouldn’t be doing anyone a favour by rushing to release. Anyway, this will allow us to put out a distinct and high quality product. Like the title of the blog says Schedule, Performance or Quality, pick two. We picked Performance and Quality so the Schedule will have to slide.

Okay now that’s over here is the good news. Sound is working great! We love some of the tunes the SNES games pumped out and it’s awesome to hear them working fully on SuperGNES.

So the end of June is coming up about as fast as we are writing code. We are regression testing the new CPU and APU cores and adding more speed tweaks. Configurable controls and selectable screen sizes are done. Also the graphics engine is getting what I will call for now some “special sauce”. Unfortunately we still are not at our target FPS but this new graphics enhancement should put the graphics performance problems to bed perminately. We’ve been getting alot of great feed back from everyone for new product features and we can’t wait to start cracking on them after to get through this performance cycle.