Lu

MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – Saturn, More Cave games,Toaplan and more

Posted on by Lu

SNES Core MSU-1 Audio is Official

MSU-1 support is official and you can test it out the next time you update your MiSTer. The MSU1 is an enhancement chip that gives the SNES the ability to play CD quality audio and playback full motion video. So it’s kind of like what a SNES CD addon could’ve been.

  • https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=51569#p51569

Formation Armed F Beta Core

Daren__O and Atrac17 have released a beta core of Nichibutsu’s Formation Armed F. A vertically scrolling shoot ’em up. You can download the beta core from the projects Github or from atrac17’s patreon page.

Toaplan Core Updates

Darren__O has also made updates to the  beta Toaplan core. Games you can currently play on the core are Tatsujin, Hellfire, Zero Wing, and Outzone.

You can obtain the core from the projects github, or if you’re using the update all script by theypsilon then you can enable the unofficial downloader to have them downloaded for you.

Saturn Core

The source for the Saturn core is available and you can actually compile it yourself to test out the core. According to the experiences of people who’ve been testing the core. Many games load and are playable and the core even works with a single SDRAM chip, but there are still many bugs that need to be taken care of.

Game And Watch Core

Pierco on twitter has made a lot of progress on the Game & Watch core. He tested his new framebuffer rendering on a real MISTer and has the core closer to an official release. Antialiasing has also been added to smooth out any jaggies.

He also reactivated his Patreon, so consider supporting him for the work he’s providing. If you want to try out the core for yourself, Pierco has provided a pre-compiled build of the core for his Patreon subscribers, but if you are not a subscriber and have the knowledge to do so, you can still compile the core on your own from his github page.

Neo Geo Pocket Updates

For the past two weeks Jotego has been focused on working with the Neo Geo Pocket CPU. As a result he has finished the implementation of the CPU’s instruction set. This brings us a lot closer to a Neo Geo Pocket core for the MiSTer FPGA. 

Jotego also teases us with a new arcade core release for next week. A clue he gives is “an action game with no scroll…”

Cave Arcade Game Updates

For the Cave core, Guwange, Dangun Feveron and Puzzle Uo Poko, are now publicly available. Just update your MiSTer to obtain the cores.

MiSTer FPGA Core Development Tutorial Series

If you’re interested in learning how to develop your own MiSTerFPGA core, MiSTer Retro Wolf has released episode 14 of his MiSTer Core development series. In this episode you will be looking at the bullet rendering circuit of the Tank Battalion game you will be developing a core for. You then will implement that circuit in Verilog, which is a language used for FPGA development.

The goal of the series is to develop a simple arcade core of the Namco arcade game Tank Battalion. You will explore all the tools you will need to create the core and how to create it.

New Coleco Adam Core

A new Computer core has been released. This one is for the Colecovision Adam. The core is fairly complete and has disk and tape support. The CP/M operating system also works.

Alanswx did the Adam memory map conversion and some verilator magic.
Frank Bruno also help with the verilog conversion, bugs and wrote the AdamNet code which was based on the ColEm emulator.

Konix Multi System Core in Development

SavourySnax on the MiSTerFPGA forums is working on a Konix Multisystem core for MiSTer.

The Konix Multisystem was a cancelled console for the UK. SavourySnax had previously developed a software emulator for the Konix multisystem using documentation and ROM examples. However, with this FPGA core, it is expected to be faithful to the original hardware because the original net lists will be ported to verilog.

Other Miscellaneous Updates

Other cores getting miscellaneous fixes and updates are:

ASO
Joust 2
Turkey Shoot
Mystic Marathon
Arkanoid

And the main MiSTer software has recieved the following updates:

The HDMI output configuration was moved to HPS for better flexibility and future options.
HDMI game mode was made optional in the MiSTer.ini file.
You can associate a VIC mode with the predefined video modes.
Core volume controls were fixed
And like I mentioned before, MSU1 support has been officially added.