Hey I'm trying to make a quick reference document for the limitations imposed by the SNES/Super Famicom console as I am planning on retro-porting a 1999 PC game that was never on the Nintendo (or any console for that matter) to the SNES (well actually, I'm planning on creating an imaginary "Game 0" in that franchise, or more accurately, a radically different first game but as I understand it that's within the theme/spirit of the jam . 

This is what I have learned so far about the SNES:

• CPU: 16-Bit (3.58Mhz) - I have no idea how one could realistically impose this limitation w/o it being a great big pain in the butt, so I assume this can be safely ignored.
• RAM: 128KB (1Mb), 64KB (0.5Mb) Video RAM see above. I doubt it will be possible or even desirable to artificially restrict my RAM/CPU cycles, like if it's even possible it's not desirable 
• COLORS: 32768 (256 on screen) this is the first thing that I can realistically do or at least simulate. but what "bit depth" would I downsample these to? I tried saving the image as 8-bits...."deep"...??...but they still look much too good. a bit depth of 4 looks much more like how I remember SNES graphics looking but I don't get how 16-bits = 4-"bit depth" orz
• Sprites: 128 - I really don't understand what exactly this limitation means, because I don't know what is and isn't considered a "sprite" by the SNES hardware/firmware?
• Sprite Size: 64x64 presumably the maximum sprite size?
• Audio: 8-channel 8-bit SONY SPC700 -- I don't really know what this means but I probably won't be seriously thinking about audio until well into the jam (which I know hasn't started yet) once I've established a visual basis

I apologies for any ways the above demonstrated my ignorance and/or stupidity! For a vidya game dev I am REALLY not a very technical person. Thankee!

no you got it pretty much on point! lots of the technical limitations such as the restricted ram or cpu power are pretty unrealistic, so it is perfectly fine to ignore them! like you said, its all within the spirit/theme of the jam. This is really helpful for anyone thinking of making a game for the SNES! A nice person by the name of Sockman1117 posted this template on our discord server, so maybe it'll help you as well? Anyway, good luck!

noice!
i see somehow my post failed to include the thing I was most confused about, nice job me. the resolution:
snes is capable of is supposed to be 512x448 which is crazy small but i keep reading that the actual resolution of the games was even smaller, like half that, which seems ridiculous. 

also what the hell is bit depth someone explain it to me

The SNES uses indexed graphics. Typical (Mode 1) output would be 3 background planes and 1 sprite plane stacked on top of eachother. Background planes would display 32x28 tiles (NTSC) where each tile is 8x8 pixels. Each tile would use one palette out of a total of 8 and every palette consists of 15 colors + transparency.  There are 8 palettes for backgrounds and 8 for sprites. Background 1 and 2 are 4BPP and background 3 is 2BPP.  Bitdepth means that every pixel had 4 bits (or two) to assign a color, so 15 + transparency. 

There are other screen modes, zero to (the famous) 7,  but mode 1 was the most common afaik. 

This playlist is really cool if anyone wants to learn more :)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHQ0utQyFw5KCcj1ljIhExH_lvGwfn6GV

thanks DenTroge, I'm gonna do a deep dive on that some time!

I got some use out of that sweet SNES box template (been playing it pretty close to the vest thus far, and also staying away from Discord (I have found that participating in a jam socially often excludes actually submitting a game to same, and vice versa which kinda sucks but it is what it is) now that we approach the culmination I'm less concerned with the former, although I'll be staying far from the discord until I actually have something kinda-sorta-playable deployed, rolled out, hosted and subb'd)

I'm stoked to see what everyone's come up with when and if I can actually get my gam released!