Tristar (Nintendo)

The Tristar (also known as " Tri-Star " or " Super 8 ") is an adapter for the Super Nintendo to play NES games on the SNES . The idea of the Tristar adapter is based on the Super Gameboy , an adapter that enables Gameboy games to be played on the SNES.

For price reasons, Nintendo did not make the SNES backward compatible with the NES games at the time (1990) . NES games are therefore not playable natively on the SNES.

The Tristar adapter is plugged into the slot of the Super Nintendos and provides three additional slots for US-SNES, NES and Famicon modules (an additional power connection is not necessary). The Tristar is actually designed for the US version of the SNES and therefore the SNES slot provided by the Tristar is also intended for US games. Since the Tristar also functions as a "universal adapter", a large number of PAL-SNES games can be played (for games that carry out a 50/60 Hz check, additional modifications to the Super Nintendo are necessary).

Almost all NES, FC and (US) SNES games can run on the Tristar. Only a few games like Super Mario RPG, which carry out a copy protection check, quit the service. In addition, no other input devices (e.g. joystick or light gun) than the SNES gamepad usually respond, and the select and start buttons of the second player no longer work, which makes some two-player games unusable.

The Tristar adapter is not a Nintendo product, nor is it an official additional device. The manufacturer of the Tristar, which was designed around 1991, is unknown. The device was only released in the USA and Japan and the sales price was the equivalent of around 50 euros. The high price of the adapter is partly due to the fact that the Tristar adapter has integrated a complete Famicom clone for playing the Famicom games .

There is also a comparable adapter called “Tristar 64” for playing NES and SNES games on the N64.