Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!
Why Hacker News recommends it
Praised as a brilliant, deadpan and inventive hardware hack, and a good starting point for Tom7's videos.
What it is
Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) shows 'reverse emulation', using a Raspberry Pi in an NES cartridge to give an unmodified NES new abilities such as playing SNES games. The video starts in a strange way and gets stranger.
Recommended by 12 HN commenters across 12 different months, 2018 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec sdenton4 · 2019-09 · on “SNES Cartridges and Enhancement Chips”
Along these lines, Tom7 invented* 'reverse emulation' which effectively uses a Raspberry Pi as a co-processor, allowing him to run [spoilers ahoy!]an SNES emulator on an NES.[/spoilers] The talk is brilliant: [this video] * - as far as I know...
Strong rec sgrove · 2020-12 · on “SuperRT – Realtime Raytracing on the SNES”
In that case, you might like one of tom7's many wonnderful videos [0], "Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!" where he hacks a real NES cartridge with a raspberry pi with an emulator, then figures out how to map all of the data into NES sprites, etc. As usual for his videos, it's absolutely wonderful. [0] [this video]
Strong rec GuestHNUser · 2022-04 · on “Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]”
Tom7 is brilliant for anyone that hasn't seen him before. His Reverse Emulation video ( [this video] ) and Weird Chess Algorithms ( [LINK] ) are a must watch. His dead pan delivery coupled with the ridiculous amount of effort he puts into things that don't _really_ matter is honestly inspiring.
Strong rec anyfoo · 2022-06 · on “The Floppotron 3.0”
You will love Tom7/suckerpinch's stuff then, if you don't know him already. Here's a good one for the start, though really, they are all fantastic: [this video]
Strong rec pinkmuffinere · 2025-10 · on “First convex polyhedron found that can't pass through itself”
Tom7 is one of my favorite people, he is hilarious, has an amazing technical depth, and so much whimsy to go along with it. I'll proselytize for him all day! relevant video: [LINK] less relevant, but I think my favorite: [this video]
Recommends rrherr · 2018-12 · on “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”
From Deconstruct: Nabil Hassein: Computing, Climate Change, and All Our Relationships [LINK] Tom 7: Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS! [this video]
Recommends progval · 2020-04 · on “RaSCSI: SCSI Interface for Raspberry Pi (2019)”
This reminds me of this video of a "reverse-emulated" NES using a raspberry-pi: [this video] (you can skip to 3:35 if you're not interested in the jokes). The author further explains how he did it in this "making of" video: [LINK]
Recommends jerf · 2021-07 · on “Installing Linux into a 286 laptop from the year 1989”
Well, then do I have the video for you: [this video] Bit of a spoiler to post it in this context, but still worth it.