Since the early development of SA-1 Pack one of the biggest issues were, along the ZSNES emulation limitations and resource compatibility (mostly patches and tools), there was no known way of getting SA-1 ROM hacks (not just SMW hacks) running on the console.
Because the SA-1 itself was a programmable chip, that is, there was an actual microprocessor there and you had to write your own software (65c816), pretty much there was no support for it in the flash cards, compared to other enhancement chips like the DSP 1-4 series. Super FX, ST-0018 and CX4 has similar issues in different magnitudes.
Although markb, a hardware hacker, got VLDC8 working on the real hardware by hacking a real SA-1 cart, still you had no "easy" approach for running SA-1 hacks on the console, which is a pretty big minus considering that when making a SMW hack, who will play later will be just casual SNES players that may prefer using console and will be unable to.
But that's no longer an issue because someone named RedGuyyyy was recently working on SA-1 support for sd2snes (personally I didn't even know about that, big thanks Akutarex and FURiOUS for letting me know!)
Someone named smokemonstertwi was even streaming some known SMW hacks that used SA-1 and as far I heard, most (if not all) worked without problem.
And now you can try it yourself. RedGuyyyy released recently a beta build and you can download the firmware to your sd2snes here.
Honestly, I'm extremely surprised and happy with this. I don't have a sd2snes sadly, but I will be looking forward on how the development of this is going. If everything ends up going well and this is added to the main sd2snes firmware, it will be a huge step forward SA-1 hacks. I always worried with real hardware compatibility, since the days I started doing the first version of the patch because I knew the whole problem that SMWC had to deal in the past with hardware compatibility. Obviously, the SA-1 support is not 100% real hardware -- while the SNES part is the actual hardware, the SA-1 part is more like an emulator. Still, it's great because playing SA-1 games on the console will be way easier compared to before.
Now, what else is left for SA-1 becoming a mainstream thing? What are still the issues that need to be worked on? Accessibility? Stability? But regardless, my expectations I had over SA-1 hacks when I designed the patch in 2012 are been surpassed, I'm super impressed with the high amount of people working and interested in SA-1 and how everything is going so well now in 2018.
GitHub - Twitter - YouTube - SnesLab Discord
Because the SA-1 itself was a programmable chip, that is, there was an actual microprocessor there and you had to write your own software (65c816), pretty much there was no support for it in the flash cards, compared to other enhancement chips like the DSP 1-4 series. Super FX, ST-0018 and CX4 has similar issues in different magnitudes.
Although markb, a hardware hacker, got VLDC8 working on the real hardware by hacking a real SA-1 cart, still you had no "easy" approach for running SA-1 hacks on the console, which is a pretty big minus considering that when making a SMW hack, who will play later will be just casual SNES players that may prefer using console and will be unable to.
But that's no longer an issue because someone named RedGuyyyy was recently working on SA-1 support for sd2snes (personally I didn't even know about that, big thanks Akutarex and FURiOUS for letting me know!)
Someone named smokemonstertwi was even streaming some known SMW hacks that used SA-1 and as far I heard, most (if not all) worked without problem.
And now you can try it yourself. RedGuyyyy released recently a beta build and you can download the firmware to your sd2snes here.
Honestly, I'm extremely surprised and happy with this. I don't have a sd2snes sadly, but I will be looking forward on how the development of this is going. If everything ends up going well and this is added to the main sd2snes firmware, it will be a huge step forward SA-1 hacks. I always worried with real hardware compatibility, since the days I started doing the first version of the patch because I knew the whole problem that SMWC had to deal in the past with hardware compatibility. Obviously, the SA-1 support is not 100% real hardware -- while the SNES part is the actual hardware, the SA-1 part is more like an emulator. Still, it's great because playing SA-1 games on the console will be way easier compared to before.
Now, what else is left for SA-1 becoming a mainstream thing? What are still the issues that need to be worked on? Accessibility? Stability? But regardless, my expectations I had over SA-1 hacks when I designed the patch in 2012 are been surpassed, I'm super impressed with the high amount of people working and interested in SA-1 and how everything is going so well now in 2018.
GitHub - Twitter - YouTube - SnesLab Discord