Modified game cartridge makes ray tracing possible on the SNES

Ray tracing, which allows for more realistic lighting, only really started to find prominence over the past few years. When you hear the technical term, you tend to think of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and high-end PCs. But one fan has now made ray tracing possible on the SNES with a modified cartridge.

Ben Carter of Shironeko Labs says he “wanted to try and do was something akin to the Super FX chip used in titles such as Star Fox”. The SuperRT demo works “where the SNES runs the game logic and hands off a scene description to a chip in the cartridge to generate the visuals.”

Here’s a look at it in action:

There’s a much more comprehensive breakdown from Carter in a new blog post. You can read the full thing here.