Most hardware breaks down and gets worse as it ages. Some old Super Nintendo systems, however, are actually running faster. The changes aren’t noticeable to your average player, but dedicated fans have been measuring the differences and trying to uncover why the changes are occurring and what it could mean for the speedrunning of classics like Super Mario Kart and Super Metroid on original hardware.

We’ve come to expect reduced performance from aging hardware, but some gamers have discovered the opposite with the Super Nintendo, as spotted by Time Extension. The SNES’ main CPU, featuring a quartz crystal,

Tinkerers and speedrunners have recently discovered that the audio processors in many aging Super NES consoles are now running at slightly higher clock frequencies. While the