Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – MiSTer Pi Successor, New Arcade Cores, Downloader & More

Posted on by Lu

Zaparoo Online

Wizzo showed off one of the latest features for Zaparoo online. This feature allows you to assign custom menus to a card so you can share custom playlists of games to share with others.

Zaparoo app version 1.5 was also released, this release is mostly preparation for the Zaparoo online release but includes these new updates:

  • Quick changing connected devices from the Settings page. After successfully connecting to a device, it will be added to the device history list, and then is available to easily swap between with a button press.
  • New NFC utilities page in the Create section. This page lets you read raw information from an NFC tag, erase a tag or make it read-only.

 

 

Tecmo Knight

Jotego added another game to the JTGAIDEN core. It is the arcade beat-em up Tecmo Knight. In Japan the game is known as Wild Fang. This game operates on very similar hardware to Ninja Gaiden, but adds a small microcontroller. The core is still in beta so you will need to be a patreon subscriber to obtain it, however once the core is stable enough it will be released to the public for free.

 

MiSTer Main

The Main MiSTer software has been updated with the following:

  • There is added support for Retroshooter lightguns operating in mouse mode by Martin Donlon
  • Sinden Light Gun support was added by terminator2k2
  • And support for OpenFIRE lightguns was added by That One Seong
  • Arcade cheat support by (Martin Donlon)
  • Saturn fixes by (srg320).
  • IDE and AO486 improvements
  • And Other fixes and tweaks

 

 

MiSTer Main Fork

spark2k06 also sychronized his fork of MiSTer Main with the latest updates. His fork differs from the official one, in that it has:

  • Integrated support for Zaparoo.
  • Ability to add custom loading screen on a per game basis.
  • New MGL tags and more.

You can check out the MiSTerFPGA forum thread or Github page for more information on this fork.

 

IREM M92

The Irem M92 core was updated with the following:

  • Added support for cheats. Based on the cheatcode system that Kitrinx made for consoles and using the new arcade support in Main.
  • Improved DIV behavior which fixes the water in Gunforce stage 4, though its animation does not match real hardware
  • Improved sync issues with direct video and scalers.

 

 

HDMI CEC Enabler

Laser Bear Industries released their HDMI CEC enabler. This device will allow you to control your MiSTer FPGA with your TV’s remote control. Your TV needs to support the CEC protocol for this to work.

The best use case for this device is for SNAC users. When using controllers over SNAC, you cannot control the MiSTer FPGA menus. So having a TV remote handy will make it easier to navigate menus and launch games.

 

AmigaVision – Error in MiSTer Configuration

The Amigavision team posted on the MiSTerFPGA forums about an error in the configuration for the October 2024 release of Amigavision. This configuration causes issues with some PAL games and demos. To fix this they recommend you set the “TV Standard” option to PAL on the cores OSD.

This configuration issue will be fixed in the next release.

 

Strato Fighter

The final game for the JTGAIDEN core has been released into beta. It’s a Tecmo shooter called Strato Fighter. Since the core is in beta you need to be a Patreon subscriber to obtain it. As soon as the core is out of beta it will be available for free to everyone.

 

Downloader

theypsilon has released Downloader 2.0. It is a significant rewrite of the downloader script that maximize parallelism across all stages of the update process. The script now can better manage job tasks in order to execute more tasks at the same time, making the update process significantly faster.

You can get the full details on the public Patreon post by theypsilon.

 

Other Jotego Updates

In addition to releasing Strato Fighter for the JTGAIDEN arcade core. Jotego also mentioned some maintenance updates. These include:

  • Stack reset value fixed on jt6805
  • Note that MiSTerAddons released a new firmware that has addressed the phantom input issue for MiSTercade V1.x owners to solve Player 2 stick movement causing phantom inputs for Player 1
  • Sinden Lightgun is working but there are still some issues to take care of before release.

 

SuperStation One UI

Taki Udon posted some images of what the user interface might look like for the SuperStation One console that’s compatible with the MiSTer FPGA software. I like that the UI is still very minimalist while still offering some more graphical features like icons and game art.

Someone in the twitter thread asked if the UI will also be available for current MiSTer Pi owners and Taki answers with a Yes, so this UI should work with all MiSTer FPGA setups.

 

MiSTer FPGA Discord Game Challenge

The next game challenge on the MiSTer FPGA Discord is Uridium 2 on the Amiga. This is a single credit score challenge and goes until March 30th. Submit all your scores to the MiSTer FPGA discord.

MiSTer Pi Successor

Taki Udon posted about being in talks with Altera reate Agilex 5 engineering boards in a modified MiSTER Pi form factor to seed to developers. Costs are estimated to be from 1.5-3x the cost of MiSTER Pi (138K LE – 656K LE) and there is mention of a possible condition of the hardware being opened up after a period of time. Using more logic elements opens up the possibility of running more advance hardware.

Agilex 5 FPGA’s are not compatible with the Cyclone V, so if this board uses the MiSTer framework, that means cores and the MiSTer framework need to be ported to the new board.