SNES hacker ShiryuGL has just released a video showing progress of a true 16:9 hack for A Link To The Past. This hack doesn’t stretch the screen, but renders a wider playing view. Sometimes this is able to present a perfect and fully playable 16:9 screen area like shown below:
Other times….at least in this beta…you’ll have images drawn where there’s supposed to be nothing (the rooms ‘next’ to Link’s house), or the play area will be cut off (see the extra trees on the right where the path should be):
I really hope ShiryuGL is able to share tips on how this was done and more people are able to create patches for games that might truly benefit from it. I’d love to see it branch out to fighting games as well, as having a wider angle of the fight arena on-screen might change some of the tactics and strategies used!
Overall, it’s my opinion that patches like this, as well as things like the Mode 7 HD rendering are some rare advantages where emulation could potentially offer a “better” experience than real hardware. SNES creator byuu agrees and hopefully more romhackers can get on board!
So the thing is … the concept of widescreen SNES games really can work. It's just going to need ROM hackers to create lots of tricky patches for games. (video: https://t.co/XWGSX4OFKf) pic.twitter.com/to2npFNL8H
— byuu (@byuu_san) May 15, 2019
