Ray tracing, currently the big thing in video game visuals, is a perk for those running bleeding edge hardware on PC or next-gen consoles. Or, conversely, anyone who owns a SNES.
This demo for SuperRT shows real-time ray tracing running on a Super Nintendo—a console first released in 1991—thanks to the use of a modified cartridge.
“What I wanted to try and do was something akin to the Super FX chip used in titles such as Star Fox,” says creator Shironeko Labs, “where the SNES runs the game logic and hands off a scene description to a chip in the cartridge to generate the visuals.”
You can check out a breakdown of how it all came together here, or just soak up the video below, which is definitely a “this is how I actually remember SNES games looking in the foggiest recesses of my mind” kind of deal.