{"id":1083,"date":"2023-12-19T17:34:46","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T22:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2023-12-19T17:34:46","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T22:34:46","slug":"note-for-later-overclock-the-nes-to-stop-it-from-slowing-down-due-to-too-many-sprites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/2023\/12\/note-for-later-overclock-the-nes-to-stop-it-from-slowing-down-due-to-too-many-sprites\/","title":{"rendered":"note for later: overclock the NES to stop it from slowing down due to too many sprites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-no-bit-left-behind wp-block-embed-no-bit-left-behind\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"y3MFl8u9g5\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nobitleftbehind.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/28\/how-to-overclock-the-nes\/\">How To Overclock the&nbsp;NES<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;How To Overclock the&nbsp;NES&#8221; &#8212; no bit left behind\" src=\"https:\/\/nobitleftbehind.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/28\/how-to-overclock-the-nes\/embed\/#?secret=gq6jLMPbPN#?secret=y3MFl8u9g5\" data-secret=\"y3MFl8u9g5\" width=\"525\" height=\"296\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ve been playing the NES we purchased earlier this year <em>a lot<\/em> lately. While we do have an <a href=\"https:\/\/krikzz.com\/our-products\/cartridges\/everdrive-n8-pro-72pin.html\">Everdrive<\/a> ready to help us get some homebrew going later (I&#8217;ve worked through a fair few of the <a href=\"https:\/\/famicom.party\/\">famicom.party tutorials<\/a> so far) and to play some harder-to-find titles, it&#8217;s all been retro-game-store-bought original cartridges so far, which is why it was a little concerning when the wicked music of The Legend of Zelda noticeably pitched down a few times during gameplay last night. The sprite animations all got a bit gooey and molasses-like, and it felt like the system was really struggling. Once would be spooky enough, but this happened repeatedly!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It turns out, that&#8217;s apparently normal when the system is showing a lot of sprites. I&#8217;m surprised I&#8217;ve never noticed \/ didn&#8217;t know this already, but then, how much time have I spent playing sprite-heavy NES games on the original hardware? I&#8217;m doing it now, and it&#8217;s happening now. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/retrogaming\/comments\/xqp0dc\/nes_seems_to_slow_down_significantly\/\">People on reddit<\/a> mentioned that not having this happen is one of the best aspects of using an emulator, but one poster linked to the above post: how to avoid it on the original hardware by modding your NES to run at a higher frequency! I don&#8217;t want to go messing with our dear grey friend, but someday this might be a very fun project. We&#8217;ve already disassembled it to clean and pull the pins, so what&#8217;s left but to start adding components and resoldering things!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I&#8217;m near the topic, here&#8217;s an obligatory link to Tom 7&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0\">Reverse Emulation<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JcJSW7Rprio\">Harder Drive<\/a> videos, some of the <em>best<\/em> nintendo-related nerd content I have ever seen. Or will ever see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been playing the NES we purchased earlier this year a lot lately. While we do have an Everdrive ready to help us get some homebrew going later (I&#8217;ve worked through a fair few of the famicom.party tutorials so far) and to play some harder-to-find titles, it&#8217;s all been retro-game-store-bought original cartridges so far, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1084,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wcarss.ca\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}