Retronauts Episode 261: The MiSTer Revolution
Added 2019-11-18 13:41:45 +0000 UTCThis week's episode is a little bit of an interview segment, a little bit of a public service announcement, and a whole lot technical—but that's the nature of this particular topic, and these particular interview subjects. I recently had the honor of attending a small gathering of active tech and content creators called RetroCreate (hosted by RetroRGB and My Life in Gaming). While I was there, I met many of the people whose work has made it possible for me to produce things like my Video Works series. I also took the opportunity to speak with two of the guests. First, there's Artemio, who made his name working on the famous Policenauts fan translation and currently is developing Sega Genesis audio utility MDFourier. I also spoke to SmokeMonster, who has created the definitive ROM database for tons of classic consoles. What I really wanted to talk to them about was an open-source project they've both had a hand in: The MiSTer FPGA project.
If you haven't heard of MiSTer, that's OK! We go into great detail about it in this episode. It's something we haven't really talked about much on Retronauts, mainly because I wanted experts (such as this week's guests!) to dive into it before I shared my less-complete perspective on it. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll come away as impressed as I am by the capabilities and potential of the MiSTer. You might even want to build one for yourself.
If you're interested in learning more about Artemio and SmokeMonster's work, you can follow them on Twitter (Artemio | SmokeMonster) and branch out from there. And for more on MiSTer, I recommend checking out the site mentioned in the episode, PorkchopExpress's MiSTer Add-Ons.
I'm still fine-tuning my own MiSTer, but it's an absolutely incredible project—basically MAME as hardware—and I can't wait to see how it evolves.
Comments
Great episode! Really hope Analogue can coax devs to port cores to the Pocket. I love MISTer and though Pork Chop Express is trying to make a portable version, it's not an elegant solution. It would be really nice to have a Switch-like solution where I can play on the train, come home, dock it into my arcade and play on a CRT. X68k is perfect for a FPGA. I've tried using the previous models, DE0-CV, to load the X68k core but Quartus is not pleasant to use on modern systems. Makes doing anything with De10-nano a dream in comparison.
Jeremy Hopkins
2019-11-29 18:44:01 +0000 UTCPlease ignore the first unnecessary "are" after "that".
littleterr0r
2019-11-23 22:11:16 +0000 UTCGoing back to your discussion with Smoke Monster, I'm not very technical at all but I still like hearing about these things that are people are doing to preserve retro gaming.
littleterr0r
2019-11-23 22:10:06 +0000 UTCI had no idea what this episode was about when I clicked “play” — I’m very glad I did and that you made it. I was not aware that FPGA emulation was at this point already, and now I’m ready to jump down the rabbit hole. Thank you Jeremy!
2019-11-22 13:37:10 +0000 UTCFWIW: Artemio is listed in the Special Thanks on this older My Life In Gaming episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdfPdM1mw0 Retro gaming is broad and deep with many twisty branches and you don't have to go too far before you're in the wild and wooly world of hardware re-creation. I like how smokemonster went into detail about how the FPGA developers went about building their emulation cores; blackbox vs the 'hardcore' approach. It'd be neat if you could get Byuu of BSNES / Higan / Rom translation fame. He's living in Japan now and active on Twitter. He's been part of the 'scene' since the mid 2000's and is probably the only active SNES emulation author out there. Gideon Zhi is another long standing ROM translation person I respect.
John Simon
2019-11-21 20:35:55 +0000 UTCThis was a really excellent discussion. I've heard of the MiSTer project a few times, but now I *REALLY* want to build my own. I'm mad at myself for not getting into it sooner!
J.R. Raith
2019-11-20 19:01:04 +0000 UTCA very different episode of Retronauts but certainly an interesting one! Fun to learn more about a completely different corner of the retro gaming hobby
Kormakur Gardarsson
2019-11-19 21:16:19 +0000 UTC
