When The Super FX Chip Brought 3D Gaming To The SNES, It Felt Like Actual Magic
One of the coolest things about the Super Nintendo was how its hardware was designed with the future in mind. The base specs were fixed, but developers could squeeze new technology into the games themselves. Certain cartridges had six extra gold pins, which meant that an enhancement was on board—the most impactful of which was undoubtedly the Super FX chip. This incredible little square of silicon, which famously powered SNES classic Star Fox, blew people's minds by bringing early 3D gaming to 16-bit consoles.
Related: The Super Nintendo Is 30 Years Old, And It's Still The Greatest Games Console Ever Made
In the early '90s, Argonaut Software was working on an air combat game for the SNES, but was frustrated by the limitations of the hardware. It approached Nintendo, offering to create a custom chip that would significantly boost the console's power. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takehiro Izushi liked the idea, much to the surprise of Argonaut founder Jez San. "Amazingly, even though I had never done any hardware before, they said yes," he said in an interview with Armchair Empire. "Then they gave me a million bucks to make it happen."
Flush with Nintendo's money, Argonaut hired a team of hardware designers from Cambridge University to create what would eventually become the Super FX chip. However, at this early stage the hardware was named MARIO—which stood for Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation, & I/O. You can see why they changed it. The first software to make use of the technology was the air combat game that inspired Argonaut to develop it in the first place. This was, of course, Star Fox, which wasn't just a graphics showcase, but a killer game in its own right.
Argonaut followed Star Fox up with Vortex, a Super FX-powered
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