If you've managed to get your hands on a new-gen console, or perhaps some swanky graphics card over the years, then you're probably already familiar with ray tracing, a rendering technique that allows light to bounce off surfaces to make games look better than ever before.
Well, the thing is, you technically don't need some of this more powerful gear, as a modder has managed to find a way to introduce ray tracing to SNES games. Yes, the console that released back in the 90s. Now obviously, a lot of these games aren't the visual masterpieces we are used to today, but Ben Carter of Shironeko Labs didn't let that stop him.
He managed to achieve such a feat by tweaking the SNES's SuperRT chip to allow for single bounce reflections and direction light shadows, before then also removing parts of the chip to be able to connect it up with a DE10-Nano FPGA development board with a Cyclone V FPGA. Check it out here.
Essentially, he took a chip that was pretty damn great for its time and gave it a little bit of modern flair, all so he could play Star Fox with a better lighting system than ever before. If we could, we'd probably do the same.
Thanks, IGN.