S-OS SUPEROS / S-OS SHELL 65816 · FAST LOROM · 32K SRAM SRAM: 3 FILES, 18432 BYTES FREE. ROM: 2 PACKAGES (BIGAPP, RAYCAST) MOUSE: DETECTED · PORT 1. READY. > dir rom:/ BIGAPP 33K RAYCAST 10.4 HZ MEASURED READY. > run raycast LOADING... OK.
WHAT IT IS
IN DEVELOPMENTYour SNES was a computer all along.
SUPEROS is an operating system for the Super Nintendo — real, bootable, written in 65816 assembly. It runs on an original SNES via flash cart. It boots to a mouse-driven shell with an editable command line, a persistent filesystem in cartridge SRAM, and a loader that runs native apps.
Closed ROM, productized — same tradition as Super MIDI Pak. In active development; real-hardware verification in progress. No preorders, no prices, no dates.
Built as a Fast LoROM cart image with ca65/ld65. Target hardware: an FXPak Pro in a real SNES, plus a Hyperkin portable clone.
FEATURES
What you can do today: type commands, paint, save across power cycles, and launch native apps from the cart.
APPS ON THE CART SHIPPING
- RAYCAST — textured first-person raycaster, measured at 10.4 Hz on real hardware.
- CODES — Game Genie / Pro Action Replay sets kept on the cart and applied at launch.
- A video player mode has landed.
More apps in development.
THE SHELL
SHIPPINGA Mode-1 text shell on the SNES's own tile hardware: a 256×224 screen, editable command line, mouse and pad driven. Type, recall history, run commands.
CONTROL
- Controller-driven, with an editable command line.
- Command history: recall, edit, re-run.
- A QWERTY-ish on-screen keyboard drawn from the same tile grid.
VOICE
- Concise. Legible. Predictable.
READY.OK.FILE NOT FOUND.BAD COMMAND. TYPE HELP.- No jokes. No mascot. No banter.
SRAM FILESYSTEM
SHIPPINGA persistent filesystem in the cartridge's 32 KiB of SRAM. Write files from the shell, power off, pull the cart, plug it back in — your files are still there.
format sram: | Initialize the SRAM volume. |
dir sram: | List files and free space: 3 FILES, 18432 BYTES FREE. |
type <file> | Print a file to the screen. |
write <file> <text> | Write a file from the command line. |
del <file> | Delete a file. |
PROGRAM LOADER
SHIPPINGA loader that runs native apps from ROM packages or from the SRAM filesystem. install copies a package onto your volume; run launches it.
dir rom:/ | List ROM packages. |
help <app> | Read package help. |
run <app> | Launch an app from ROM or SRAM. |
install <app> | Copy a ROM package into the SRAM filesystem. |
FIRST TENANTS
- BIGAPP — a large demo that proves the loader will run what it claims.
- RAYCAST — textured first-person raycaster: doors, materials, keyboard play. Measured at 10.4 Hz on real hardware.
INPUT
v1 SCOPEHARDWARE KEYBOARD DRIVER SHIPPED
An optional hardware keyboard on the controller port, alongside the on-screen keyboard. Hot-plug and unplug fall back cleanly mid-session.
SNES MOUSE DRIVER SHIPPED
Port-1 SNES Mouse with pad fallback. Hotplug both directions. A 16×16 outlined-arrow pointer drives the GUI layer.
THE GUI LAYER
SHIPPEDA mouse-first icon-launcher GUI shell, layered over the text shell, not a replacement for it. The register is locked to an early-Windows-3.x look, built entirely from the existing 8×8 tile grid, the banked 16-color palette, and an 8×8 monospace chrome typeface. There is no proportional system font, and there will not be one.
The GUI shell is shipped and operator-certified: launcher, selection, modal panels, program launch and return, mouse and pad drivers. The chrome typeface is dungeon-mode, a CC0 public-domain 8×8 bitmap font, imported as tiles directly. Every surface ships behind a capture gate: the rendered frame is measured against the operator-signed mockup before anything lands.
The first facility built on it is CODES, a native cheat and patch system in the Game Genie lineage: import Game Genie and Pro Action Replay codes or enter native ones on an on-screen pad, keep them in named sets on the cart, and apply them silently at launch. Engine and full chrome are shipped, entry pad included, with a confirm that asks before applying codes to a module that has changed.
Chunky raised/sunken grey bevels. A title bar. A Program Manager-style icon grid. Modal panels. An austere monitor, in the literal sense.
FLAGSHIP: A LOW-FANTASY 4X
ENGINE IN BUILDA strategy game with the theme locked to a genericized SPI register: offices as institutions, theme-as-system, austere presentation, asymmetry in the numbers rather than the prose. Lineage: Avianos (UFO 50), Dominions, Civilization II, and the graphic discipline of Simulations Publications, Inc.
The founding specification is complete: 11 sections, independently fidelity-audited against the design locks. Full game state fits in 21 percent of the 32 KiB cart save. The engine core is now in build against that lock.
COURT-AUDIENCE ECONOMY
Five court offices, ratified: Steward, Marshal, Warden, Chronicler, Hierophant. Each season you grant audience to one; its fixed 3-action agenda is the whole turn, followed by a 2-season fatigue lockout on that office.
THE ITINERANT COURT
The five offices circulate among 3–4 rival realms. Hosting an office denies it to rivals; the court's itinerary doubles as the diplomacy layer.
THE LEDGER
Provisions / Momentum / Relic Stages / Office Fatigue. The resource ledger is the save state.
LEDGER CLASH
Combat is one opposed d6 roll. No combat-results table. No step losses.
COLLAPSE / REVELATION
Victory clocks for survival and relic-power wins, decided before conquest is.
WHY ON SUPEROS
Turn exchange over deterministic lockstep is the first planned use of real-hardware netplay. The 4X is the first customer.
THE TRACKER LADDER
SERIOUS PROGRAM TRACKThe SNES's SPC700 sound chip is literally an 8-voice hardware sampler. The second serious program track climbs toward it in three deliberate rungs:
RUNG 1 PIANO TOY input → voice, instantly RUNG 2 SEQUENCER patterns, steps, a song RUNG 3 SAMPLER TRACKER the full 8-voice instrument
PHASE-2 STRETCH GOALS
HELD · SEEDED, NOT BUILTTHE PORTAL HELD
A curated online portal in the AOL / XBAND register: a walled garden — headline ticker, encyclopedia reader, microblog client, NTP time. A 1994-grade service menu for a 1990 console.
REAL-HARDWARE NETPLAY HELD
Networked play between physical SNES consoles over deterministic input lockstep, the same technique XBAND used over phone lines in 1994.
Turn-exchange first (the 4X is the first customer); real-time co-op second.
THE REGISTER
"The shell should feel like a small real system: concise, legible, predictable, slightly austere, pleasingly retro." — SUPEROS founding spec, §3.1 "Personality and register"
READY. OK. FILE NOT FOUND. SRAM NOT FORMATTED. 3 FILES, 18432 BYTES FREE. BAD COMMAND. TYPE HELP. No mascot. No persona. No banter. SUPEROS is the machine.
THE PALETTE
IN ROMThis page is colored by SUPEROS's real banked 16-color SNES palette, the same ramp the shell, the GUI mockups, and the games draw from.
THE CREW
SUPEROS is a two-man operation. We met on the NintendoAge forums, the classic-Nintendo community where people traded carts and built homebrew for a decade. The handles and avatars below are the ones we used there.
The OS itself: founding spec, shell, SRAM filesystem, program loader, mouse and keyboard drivers, the GUI layer. All of it in native 65816.
The bench: flash carts, FXPak Pro, real console silicon. He flashes each build and runs it on the actual machine before anything ships as hardware-verified.