This article is fascinating. From Tom’s Hardware, a piece on SNES running faster with age. (If only that were true of humans too…)

Long story short, “Alan Cecil discovered that Super Nintendo consoles have grown slightly faster because of one of their chips.”

Apparently the “SPC700 coprocessor” is very sensitive and time + environment = a processor that has grown in speed over the years due to that conditioning. When I think of old consoles and games, specifically cart based ones, you kind of just expect them to stop working whether it’s the battery dying or other hardware failure.

The article also notes how it could potentially have an effect on some speed running communities.