Experimenting With NES Overclocking

From Slashdot:
Deven “Epicenter” Gallo writes “I’ve perfected a process by which to overclock the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to run games smoother without slowdown. The NES CPU normally runs at 1.79 MHz, I’ve reached a stable maximum of 4.2 MHz, about a 230% overclock. The games do not run faster than they should, the CPU never overheats, and most games are perfect up to 3.3 MHz!” Here’s the guide on how to perform the modification, along with photos and demonstration videos

As a followup from Epic Gaming (via Waxy)

Super Mario Bros.
This game ran fine up to about 4.0 MHz when the graphics went insane. It maintained stability no matter what. I couldn’t get it to crash except going past that.

Super Mario Bros. 3
This also ran nicely, but the graphics went nuts around 3.6 MHz. It maxed out around 4.2 MHz, but wouldn’t crash unless pushed further.

Kirby’s Adventure
This game lags like mad all the time, so the gameplay is actually noticably slower at the stock speed. Using the abilities like Fire and Spark, especially around enemies using them as well, can grind the game to a halt. At 3.0 MHz or so the lag was pretty much entirely removed, and gameplay smoothed out tremendously. Around 3.4 MHz however, the graphical corruption became very, very bad. The status bar at the bottom of the screen started to rise up onto the game area. The higher the clock, the higher it went, blocking out my view of the game. Then the topmost sprite layer started to go insane around 4.0 MHz. The game kept running stably in the background though. 😉

Chip’n’Dale’s Rescue Rangers
It’s very hard to find lag in this game, but there are a few distinct points. These were smoothed out at 2.3-2.6 MHz, but the game ran stable up to 4.4 MHz. Past 4.0 MHz however, the sprite layer went nuts like the other games, with random tiles flashing everywhere. No crashes however!

This is similar to the overclocking guide for the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive that Slashdot covered a while back. Interesting, but not my personal cup-o-tea.