Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – MiSTer FPGA News – 3DO, Taito F2, New Arcade Cores, Zaparoo & More

Posted on by Lu

Mazinger Z

A core for the Cave arcade game Mazinger Z has been released by the CoinOp collection team. Mazinger Z is a top down shooter based on the Manga series of the same name.

Mazinger Z features encrypted sprites and there is currently no loader support to decrypt the data, so patching the sprite ROMs manually will be required to run the game. The core, patch files and instructions on how to patch the ROMs are provided in the public patreon post.

 

SuperStation One

Taki Udon announced updates for Super Station One’s SuperDock, which now includes a 20-pin PCIe-style connector secured with screws like the GB Player. Additionally, the custom UI is planned have box art support with native language titles. This UI update will be available as an rbf file for any MiSTer FPGA setup, not just the Super Station One.

 

MiSTer FPGA Instruction Book

User adreeve on GitHub created some introductory instructions for the various computers and consoles supported on the MiSTer FPGA. This manual provides guides on how to get software up and running on the various cores available. I found the computer instructions particularly useful becuase the manual provides the necessary commands to get a game to run on computers that do not autoboot to a game.

 

Raizing Cores

What’s New?
-Refactored and rewritten code; done per PCB configuration
-Ported to the K3 framework, including full K3 options support
-MRU cache implemented; GP9001 no longer runs 5 frames behind
-Hi-score saving for each game and revision
-Cheats available for each game and revision
-Per-game options with post/ROM checks skipped by default
-Updated audio mixing; compatible with DV1 and 24-bit I/O boards

Here’s what’s coming:
-FPGA implementations for some chips will be rewritten, improved or changed to a different implementation
-xsd64 SDRAM controller with faster CAS2 timing
-SDRAM speed increased up to 128 MHz
-In-game rank support, modified options, and accessible secrets for Shinobu Yagawa’s “Bat” trilogy. These will include widgets and gadgets similar to what you see in MAME or M2 ports.
-Some features will also function on real hardware; similar to the zakk ROMs available for Battle Garegga.

 

Ironclad DX IO Board

d3fmod has redesigned the B-board for the Ironclad DX IO board, to include an SDCard extension. So you will not have to open up your MiSTer setup to access the SD Card. This will unfortunately delay shipments of the board.

 

Retro Shooter Lightguns

The Linux distributions for MiSTer has been officialy updated and with it comes official support for the Retro Shooter Light Guns. The RS3 Reaper Light guns by Retro Shooter also work.

I started creating a written guide on how to get the Retro Shooter Lightguns working on the MiSTer FPGA. In the guide I show how to setup your MiSTer and different cores. As I do more testing I will add more cores and more info.

 

New Arcade Filters to CUSTOMIZE your Setups

theypsilon just updated MiSTer Distribution and added filter terms that let’s you filter games based on screen rotation, screen scan rate, number of buttons, number of players, special controllers, and so on. This update also affects other databases that contain Arcade games, such as Jotego’s JTCORES database.

This update is very helpful for arcade cabinet owners because it let’s you customize what games are available according to the features of the cabinet. So you can only download vertical games on cabinets with a vertical monitor, only download 4 button games for Neo Geo cabinets and so much more.

 

Cycle Shooting/Bronx

Jotego released a new arcade core for the arcade game Cycle Shooting. This is a 1986 light gun game released by Taito. There is also a bootleg version of this game called Bronx, so you may know this game from that name instead.

 

JTGAIDEN Public

Jotego’s JTGAIDEN core is now public. Now all users are able to play arcade games like Ninja Gaiden, Strato Fighter and Tecmo Knight. Update your MiSTer now to start playing them.

 

Zaparoo Core v2.2.0 released

Zaparoo core version 2.2.0 has been released, here’s what’s new.

-Adam Gastineau’s Game and Watch core is now automatically detected and supported.
-NeoGeo CD now works correctly thanks to mrchrisster.
-Amiga CD32 is now supported thanks to mrchrisster.
-Support for GroovyMiSTer .gmc files added. Thanks to BossRighteous, there are optional Zaparoo utilities to the enable the scanning and launching of some defined PC-emulator titles over the network along with the GroovyMiSTer core.
-CD-i core is now supported.
-Jaguar core is now supported.
-MSX1 core is now supported.

 

3DO

srg320 updated us on the progress of the in development 3DO core. Here’s what’s new.

-REGIS module was added for drawing of rotated sprites.
-Mathematical calculations in MADAM were added. MADAM is the 3DO’s graphics accelerator. This means some 3D games are now working.
-The next step is to add a second drawing module to speed up rendering and correctly display LR sprites.

 

Taito F2

Core developer Martin Donlon has been working behind the scenes on a Taito F2 arcade core. He showed the game Final Blow runnning on the MiSTer FPGA with sound. There is still bug fixing left to do but Martin said the hardest parts are done.

 

MiSTer Organize

MiSTer Organize has another big update. It’s a lot to go over in this video so I suggest you take a look at the public Patreon post to see the full details.

iSTer Organize is a project that will help you keep your games organized for browsing games on your MiSTer. It contains custom DAT files that instruct it on how to organize games.