If there’s one thing retro gamers truly love, it’s their cartridge collection, but for many collectors, the cartridges simply sit on a shelf. In a lot of cases, cartridges end up outlasting the consoles that played them. And when the console gives up, the other route to run those titles are emulators, which still need a copy of the game to run. Many people get around that requirement by grabbing copies off sketchy download sites, but not everyone is up for that, for various understandable reasons.
But a small Romanian company called Epilogue now sells a third option: the SN Operator, a sleek, transparent dock. At its top lies a slot that fits both Super Nintendo cartridges and Super Famicom cartridges (the Japanese versions of the SNES). The dock connects over USB-C to Windows, macOS, and Linux machines, plus handhelds like the Steam Deck, Valve’s portable gaming PC.
Inside that clear shell, though, you won’t find any original chips from the Super Nintendo. That’s because the dock doesn’t need those, since it works by copying the game’s data from the cartridge to the computer. Then, Epilogue’s companion app, Playback, runs the game in its built-in emulator. It does work like the real deal, though. And just like the old days, pulling the cart out instantly stops the game.
Epilogue also says the dock is capable of handling cartridges that relied on extra hardware to run. Some carried add-on chips for graphics or processing, like the Super FX chip inside the original “Star Fox.” Other forms of input — like games built for the Super Scope, Nintendo’s now-valuable old light gun accessory – simply use your computer’s mouse.
How the SN Operator handles cartridges
One unique bit about Playback is that it’s capable of reading and writing your in-game saves straight from and to the cartridge. This means you essentially sync your progress between the PC and a real Super Nintendo console. The feature helps solve another problem: lost progress. The thing is that many SNES carts also pack a battery that powers the save on the memory chip inside. If the battery dies, the progress disappears with it. Playback can copy those saves to your computer before that happens, along with the full game.
SN Operator is also capable of handling carts from different regions, which vary a bit. Retro gaming site Time Extension tested carts from US, Europe, and Japan and found that all of them worked.
What they did run into trouble with was newer cartridges, the kind that a few small studios still release today, for brand-new games. Since Playback maintains a database that it checks, and because the database isn’t (yet) updated with those newer games, the software can’t load them. The dock also can’t run multi-game flash carts like the EverDrive.
Even with a cartridge the dock accepts, you’ll still need a modern controller to play, since the device has no ports for original SNES pads. You’ll have to use a USB or wireless gamepad instead. The SN Operator is listed as a preorder as of writing, with a sticker of $59.99 in the US. The next batch is expected to ship October 15.
