A little OT because it's not what they're doing in this case case, but...
The NES and SNES (and I'm guessing other cartridge-based consoles) supported having extra chips (often called "mappers") inside the cartridge that would add extra hardware capabilities beyond what the console could do by itself. Basic mappers could switch between different ROM banks, effectively allowing games to have larger ROMs than the console would normally allow. Later, some cartridges would have co-processors that did some of the computation inside the cartridge itself in order to enhance graphics capabilities. That's how the original StarFox was able to run on Super NES, despite the SNES not supporting 3D polygon rendering.
For a while[1], I've wondered what a NES would be capable of if you used a modern ARM SoC - say, a Raspberry Pi - as a mapper. For one, you could make a NES game with WiFi support (you wouldn't even need an ARM chip for that, just an ESP8266 should be able to do the basics). I'm not sure if this is possible, but in theory you could even do all rendering on the ARM chip and output the image directly to the video buffer, effectively allowing you to do just about any graphics the SoC can do. As for audio, on the Famicom (the Japanese NES), there were actually extra analog audio pins for cartridges that would allow a cartridge to output any audio it could generate. The NES doesn't have these pins, but I think you could still do higher-quality audio than the NES is normally capable of by rapidly changing the DMC channel.
I don't know much about NES programming nor really anything about its video hardware, but this is still an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a while.
I know some people might ask "What's the point? All you're doing is making it harder to use a Raspberry Pi!", but I think it would be pretty cool to say you did all that with something that's technically a valid NES cartridge running on an unmodified NES.
[1] really, I first got this idea when I saw Google Maps' 2012 April Fools joke - I started thinking about how a NES-based Google Maps would technically be possible
Only two 8 bit sprites and smaller objects available per scan line. Sprite sorting and multiplexing gets done on the external CPU, along with feeding the right data at the right times allows one to maximize what the internal 1.x Mhz 6052 can do.
The NES and SNES (and I'm guessing other cartridge-based consoles) supported having extra chips (often called "mappers") inside the cartridge that would add extra hardware capabilities beyond what the console could do by itself. Basic mappers could switch between different ROM banks, effectively allowing games to have larger ROMs than the console would normally allow. Later, some cartridges would have co-processors that did some of the computation inside the cartridge itself in order to enhance graphics capabilities. That's how the original StarFox was able to run on Super NES, despite the SNES not supporting 3D polygon rendering.
For a while[1], I've wondered what a NES would be capable of if you used a modern ARM SoC - say, a Raspberry Pi - as a mapper. For one, you could make a NES game with WiFi support (you wouldn't even need an ARM chip for that, just an ESP8266 should be able to do the basics). I'm not sure if this is possible, but in theory you could even do all rendering on the ARM chip and output the image directly to the video buffer, effectively allowing you to do just about any graphics the SoC can do. As for audio, on the Famicom (the Japanese NES), there were actually extra analog audio pins for cartridges that would allow a cartridge to output any audio it could generate. The NES doesn't have these pins, but I think you could still do higher-quality audio than the NES is normally capable of by rapidly changing the DMC channel.
I don't know much about NES programming nor really anything about its video hardware, but this is still an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a while.
I know some people might ask "What's the point? All you're doing is making it harder to use a Raspberry Pi!", but I think it would be pretty cool to say you did all that with something that's technically a valid NES cartridge running on an unmodified NES.
[1] really, I first got this idea when I saw Google Maps' 2012 April Fools joke - I started thinking about how a NES-based Google Maps would technically be possible