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MiSTer FPGA News – VCD Playback, Taito F2, New UI, Amiga CD32 & More

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Possible MiSTer 4K Board in the works

A possible add-on board for the MiSTer FPGA was proposed on the official Discord server by woozle, who is behind the Morph4K upscaler. This is supposed to be a 4K upscale board.

Here are some of the keypoints mentioned in the initial post:

  • It should fit in current mister cases, but will need new IO panels, which looks easy to 3d print for existing cases.
  • It has a built in USBC power input and power switch. Should be able to safely power the de10-nano, or be powered from the de10-nano, and there’s no risk if both nano power and hat power are plugged in at same time.
  • IR sensor for remote control, will also support CEC remotes
  • the de10-nano i2c bus is connected to an esp32
  • it uses the same fpga/ddr2 as the Morph 4K

It is just an experiment right now, so keep that in mind. You can follow the conversation on discord to find out more information and give your input.

 

CD-i Digital Video Cartridge

There have been some big developments regarding the CD-i core by Slammy. There is now preliminary support for the Digital Video Cartridge. Some games are already running with it. even VCD’s are working. There is still more work to do, but there is a test build that lets you try out the DVC support yourself.

 

Taito F2

Martin Donlon has added the following games to the Taito F2 core.

  • Hat Trick Hero/Euro Football Champ. A soccer/football game
  • Ah Eikou no Koshien. This is a baseball game.

 

 

Jotego Core Maintenance

Jotego updated some older cores to fixed some issues. Here is what was fixed:

  • A sound issued was fixed in Lightning Fighters.
  • Vendetta where a limiter was added to the ADPCM mix to solve PCM issues.
  • For Wonder Planet graphical issues where fixed when dip flip screen is set to ON.
  • Sound clipping was fix in 1942
  • In Rolling Thunder the title screen alignment was fixed.
  • And the MiSTer framework for Jotego cores was updated. This update will help users that connect to CRTs over composite.

 

 

MiSTer FPGA Graphical GUI

Taki Udon posted a developer blog on the Graphical User Interface his team is creating for the Super Station One console and will also be compatible with any MiSTer FPGA setup.

  • The UI will be called Console Mode
  • A goal is to do everything the MiSTer UI can do by just using a game controller.
  • Box art is supported with multiple ways of navigating the UI
  • Multiple resolutions and CRT support.

Taki’s video goes into further details on the current features.

 

Future of FPGA gaming discussion

The MiSTer Multisystem developers started a conversation on how the community can get together to help define the future of FPGA gaming.

They advocate for a new platform based on a community-driven specification. They are willing to design new prototypes and emphasize the importance of maintaining 100% compatibility with the main MiSTer project. They also want to evolve the ecosystem collaboratively, rather than creating a fragmented fork.

At the moment nothing is guaranteed as this is just a discussion, but if you want to join the conversation and give your input or just read the fascinating discussion, head over to the MiSTer FPGA forums.

 

Golfing Greats

Jotego released a beta core for Konami’s Golfing Greats arcade game on the MiSTerFPGA.

In addition to this new beta core, Jotego fixed a shade effect in Surprise Attack that also had the added benefit of fixing another shade effect problem in the X-Men core.

 

Zaparoo

Zaparoo Core v2.6.0 andv2.6.2 have been released with some significant updates:

  • A new NFC driver is now being used, giving some major performance improvements.
  • MIFARE tags are now 100% supported, read and write, and they no longer need to be formatted beforehand
  • There’s a Slightly more responsive feel when scanning tags (especially tags with a lot of data)
  • Uses one third of the CPU resources compared to the previous driver
  • Experimental support for FeLiCa tags (I followed the spec but I don’t own any of these cards so I don’t know if it works!)
  • TTY2OLED Display Support, so Zaproo can now communicates with TTY2OLED hardware to show game information and artwork on external displays.
  • Improved media database performance.
  • There is Support for the /media/fat/_DOS Games folder for 0MHz game detection, in addition to the existing AO486 folder
  • Experimental support for Amiga CD32 (needs some further testing but it’s better than the completely broken support before)

 

 

Super Station One N64 Carts

Taki Udon, showed off N64 cartridge loading on the Super Station One. The loading was extremely slow, much slower than loading from an SD card so it isn’t practical for gaming use. This can be a convenient way of dumping your own cartridges.

 

Taito F2

Martin Donlon also added the following two games to the Taito F2 core.

  • Metal Black, a side scrolling shooter.
  • Dead Connection. A Single screen run and gun game set in the 1950’s.

 

 

Neo Geo

The Neo Geo core added support for 4 player multi-taps used by NeoTris and the NEO-FTC1B. NeoTris is a  hombrew Tetris like puzzle game for the Neo Geo that let’s you play with 3 other people at the same time.

The NEO-FTC1B is a multiplayer extension board used with Kizuna Encounter – Super Tag Battle to allow 4 players to play on the same system. The 4 player version of Kizuna Encounter – Super Tag Battle was only location tested and never officially released.

Other update ot the core include :

  • Updates for romsets.xml
  • Updated framework.

 

 

Super Cassette Vision

The Super Cassette Vision core has updated the video chip and now all known display issues are now resolved. Also a new OSD menu option is added to mask the edges of the overscan region.

The Super Cassette Vision is a console that was released in 1984 and competed with Nintendo’s Famicom and Sega’s SG1000. It was only released in Europe and Japan.

 

Amiga CD32

The AmigaVision team have released a setup for CD32 games. Here are the features.

  • It’s Fully stand-alone — no AmigaVision install required. If you only want CD32 games (although you’d be missing out on most of the Amiga classics! 😄), this works by itself.
  • Launch CD32 games straight from the MiSTer menu — no keyboard or mouse required, just your controller.
  • Forget juggling obscure settings like NoFastMem, Instruction Cache, or that one game needing Volume Control off — we handle all that automatically.
  • Uses AmigaVision’s scanline and shadow masks presets.
  • Uses AmigaVision’s scaling presets, which are considered the best in the business. 😅
  • Games that can make use of AmigaVision’s 5×PAL Overscale presets — like Chaos Engine CD32 — now use that on a per-game basis when a game can handle it.

 

 

All-In-One JAMMA Board

The MiSTer Multisystem team teased an upcoming All-in-one FPGA based JAMMA board. Since it is all in one, that means the Cyclone V FPGA chip and ARM processor will be built onto the board. This mean you will not need to obtain separate FPGA board to make this work. This should lower costs like it has with the Multisystem 2. More details will be given at a later date.