I have fond memories of watching my older brother play Super Nintendo games on his PC in the mid-to-late 90s with ZSNES, a well-known, groundbreaking SNES emulator. At the time, I couldn't wrap my eight-year-old brain around the fact that it was possible to play SNES games on a laptop.

While ZSNES' development eventually halted in 2006, two of the project's developers have returned with a new version of the emulator, Super ZSNES (on a side note, even the emulator's website is a delightful throwback to the simplicity of 90s web design). The new version of ZSNES is GPU-powered, enabling high-resolution Mode 7 graphics with height mapping (the 3D scrolling effect used in many SNES games) and individual game visual improvements through its Super Enhancement Engine.

The Super Enhancement Engine enables features like higher-resolution visuals, overclocking with games that suffer from slowdown, fixing compressed audio, widescreen support, and more. The increased resolution isn't just AI-powered either; it's driven by an internal drawing program that's "used to make sure that the higher resolution details can be manually drawn to look nice and crisp," according to the team behind the project. Based on clips I've seen of the emulator in action, it adds a modern look to 16-bit titles without straying too far from the game's original vibe (thanks, Modern Vintage Gamer).

These improvements remind me of the decompilation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Ship of Harkinian PC port, which, alongside offering an authentic experience, also includes several improvements, such as in-game bug fixes and high-resolution textures through mod support. However, Ship of Harkinian is a full decompilation of the N64 classic, rather than more traditional emulation like what Super ZSNES offers.

New features are coming to Super ZSNES

The emulator is still in active development

The Super Enhancement Engine currently supports seven games, including F-Zero, Gradius 3, Mega Man X, Super Castlevania 4, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Super Mario World, and Super Metroid. Thankfully, the team behind the project says this isn't a thrown-together, vibe-coded emulator either.

Alongside the Super Enhancement Engine, Super ZSNES also includes expected emulator features such as fast-forward/rewind, save states, cheat codes, and the familiar ZSNES menu's slowly falling snow. Future features include bug fixes, netplay, and emulation of special SNES chips like SuperFX, which powered 3D games like Star Fox.

Super ZSNES is available for free on Windows and Mac, while the Android version costs $4. There isn't an iOS version of the emulator yet, but it's listed as "coming soon." It's been a while since I've dabbled in Super Nintendo emulation, so I'm looking forward to diving into Super ZSNES, particularly to play games like F-Zero with Mode 7 height-mapping and Super Mario World at a higher resolution.