Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – Retrotink Compatibility, 24 Bit Cores, Sega Saturn & More

Posted on by Lu

Carnival

For Sega/Gremlin core, the game Carnival is out for testing and it looks that everything is working well. There more games that run in the hardware, but the developer Jimmy Stones tells us that only Pulsar and Invinco have sound but Invinco is crashing after you complete the first stage.

 

Retrotink 4K Direct Video Meta Data.

If you have a MiSTer FPGA and a RetroTink 4K, you can now have the Tink4K receive metadata from the MiSTerFPGA through Direct Video. The Tink 4K or other scalers, can then use that data and do proper autoscaling and cropping depending on the content that’s running.

 

SNESTang

The creator of the SNESTang posted about how the SNES was ported to the FPGA board. It’s a good read for those interested in FPGA development. The SNESTang is an FPGA based SNES project that works on a $20 FPGA board.

 

Wizzo public discord

Wizzo has opened up his Discord server to the public. You no longer have to be a Patreon subscriber. So join it if you want to discuss all the projects he’s working on.

 

Fujitsu FM7

Pierco is back to working on the FM7 FPGA core. No update on what’s being worked on but it’s cool to see more old computers getting some love. The FM7 is a Japanese computer released in 1982 which competed with the NEC PC-8801 and the Sharp X1.

 

How schematics help core development

Pramod posted a video that talks about how the information contained in schematics helps the core building process. Schematics provide very useful information on how hardware is designed, but it isn’t the only source of information. The video provides a good understanding on how schematics are used.

 

Tapto Project

Wizzo is planning on making the launching of NFC games work across different platforms. The project is called TaptTo right now, only the MiSTer FPGA is supported, but the Github states more platforms are planned.

Wizzo also looks to be working on creating an NFC reader that works like a PC Engine HuCard slot.

 

Golem FPGA

GoLEm FPGA, the alternate MiSTer firmware that’s concentrating more on ease of use, has just added support for keyboards and savestates. The savestate support is of particular interest because it states “Savestates are supported for now per-game in the database.” Not sure what that exactly means, but if they find a way to enable save states on any core, that would be a huge deal.

 

Sega Saturn

An update to the Sega Saturn core has implemented some updates that increases compatibility. Some of the affected games are.

Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus: Salamander2
Digital Pinball – Necronomicon
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
X-Men vs. Street Fighter
Shining the Holy Ark
Phantasy Star IV
Linkle Liver Story

 

Toki

If you want to check out the progress for the Toki core, you can check out a video from Pixel Cherry Ninja. He received a beta and takes the core through it’s paces.

The core is being developed by Solal Retro Gaming and you can support their work over on ko-fi.

 

Nintendo 64

Robert Peip posted a Patreon article that explains why code clean up is very important. He also posted an image on X that shows off LOD textures working for the N64 core. A test core that enables this is being planned for released soon.

 

Discord Game Challenge

The next game in the MiSTer FPGA Discord Game challenge is Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA. Specifically Dual-scoreboard time trials on Luigi Circuit and Sky Garden. Challenge goes on to Jan 26.

Submit all your scores to the MiSTer FPGA game challenge Discord channel.

 

MiSTerFPGA PWM cores

User “Ruleset” on the MiSTer FPGA forums found a way increase the color depth of the analog IO board from 18bit color to 24bit. This was achieved by using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) and it “quickly alternates between two different color values to get a color in between. The PWM happens very fast so it can be done even for 640 wide images.”

This is done on a per core basis and Ruleset released forked cores for the N64 and PSX. 24bit color rendering will significantly reduce banding.

 

New IO Boards from MiSTerAddons

MiSterAddons is planning on releasing two new IO boards.

One is a called the MiSTer FPGA IO Direct and the other is the MiSTer FPGA IO Analog Pro. They both have Sega Saturn AV connecters that support RGB, s-video, composite and component. However the IO Direct supports Dual SDRAM and the Analog Pro does not, but it does support dual HDMI and analog out.

 

Other MiSTer FPGA Updates

And other cores receiving miscellaneous fixes and updates are:

Archie,Apogee,Apple-II,BBCMicro,BK0011M
ColecoVision,Gameboy,GBA,Vectrex
Crazy Balloon, Cosmic Guerilla, Cosmic Z80 and Astrocade
Space Invaders Core – Polaris
Irem M62
MiSTer Main
C64
C128