A component inside the console’s audio processing unit (APU) appears to be ticking ever so slightly faster with each passing year and while this is normally considered a bad thing in the world of computing, in this case it improves the aging console.

According to 404 Media, the phenomenon was first flagged by Alan Cecil, better known as dwangoAC, administrator of TASBot—the tool-assisted speedrun robot designed to obliterate human records with perfect frame inputs.

He noticed that the SNES’s SPC700 coprocessor, a Sony-made chip that handles the console’s audio, wasn’t sticking to its original frequency of 32,000Hz. Instead, as consoles aged, the chip started running slightly faster. Emulator developers had already noticed this back in 2007, quietly adjusting their software to 32,040Hz for better accuracy.

A clear pattern has emerged thanks to data from over 140 SNES owners responding to Cecil’s findings: the SPC700 is accelerating with time, with some consoles now running as high as 32,182Hz. 

The culprit appears to be the ceramic resonator that helps generate the APU’s clock speed. These components are known to be sensitive to heat, wear, and other external factors, meaning that rather than simply degrading, they’re subtly improving.

 The impact on actual speedruns remains unclear. The difference may be negligible for human players, but for frame-perfect, computer-assisted speed runs, even a minuscule increase in processing speed could be enough to throw off a carefully calculated run. 

For now, SNES speedrunners can breathe easy; leaderboards aren’t about to be rewritten overnight. But this whole ordeal is a reminder that retro hardware isn’t static. Ageing consoles don’t just deteriorate; sometimes, they go rogue and break the laws of time.