An alleged GoldenEye 007 port runs on the SNES thanks to an AI-coded renderer using the Super FX2 co-processor

GoldenEye 007 allegedly now runs on the SNES, specifically on a version equipped with a 2MB Super FX2 chip, a 16-bit coprocessor created by Nintendo and Argonaut Games and included in select SNES titles to handle some of the 3D calculations the console’s own processor could not manage. However, the port runs through emulation on the system, made possible by an AI that wrote most of the renderer.

An AI-assisted endeavour

A YouTube demo of GoldenEye 007 on the SNES claims that Claude Opus and ChatGPT Astra did most of the heavy lifting. It must be stated that nobody apart from the the creator has tried the SNES build so far.

The footage comes from Retroports, which posted a pixelated yet 3D-looking version of GoldenEye 007 featuring the game’s opening Dam level. It runs on the SNES emulator Mesen and uses the console’s 2MB Super FX2 chip. The creator primarily credited the AI models Claude Opus and ChatGPT Astra with fixing most of the bugs.

For context, this port was created decades after Rare’s original Nintendo 64 version of GoldenEye 007, which looked incredible during the heyday of the 16-bit silicon N64.

The rendering system uses polygon rendering, fog, and a fair amount of occlusion culling to ensure everything fits within the SNES’s 10.5 MHz processing limit. This is the same silicon used for Star Fox in 1993, and Nintendo later doubled it for Yoshi’s Island to 21.47 MHz.

No public release yet

For now, no dedicated or downloadable ROM of the GoldenEye 007 SNES project is available online, as the gameplay footage was supposedly uploaded for independent testing.

Beyond that, the developer said only one level of the game can be played on the SNES if the project is ever released. It is an incredible feat, yet detractors and many online viewers are already fatigued by AI-driven impossible ports, as projects like this are starting to feel less impressive.

However, some keen-eyed viewers online claim that the SNES GoldenEye 007 footage is entirely fake because the gun sprite moves far too quickly, and the in-game polygon count is much higher than what the original SNES could achieve.

For now, the verdict on the GoldenEye 007 SNES ROM is, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” That skepticism is understandable, considering that nobody outside Retroports has tried the ROM, run the code, or tested the emulator with the SNES’s Super FX2 chip.