Lu

MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – Vigilante, PSX updates, Alpha Mission and More

Posted on by Lu

 

Alpha Mission Beta Core

RndMNKIII released a beta core for the arcade game Alpha Mission. There are still other things left to be implemented and there are some graphical glitches. The developer asks any bugs to be reported to the project’s GitHub.

 PSX Core Update

Here are some of the notable updates done on the WIP PlayStation core:

  • Konami Justifier support was added by Nolan Nicholson.
  • A 180 degree rotation option in case you have your display rotated in the wrong direction for a shooter.
  • SNAC Support has also been added.

There have also been a lot of maintenance bug fixes and updates that have gotten more games running.

Official MT32-Pi Kit for Raspberry Pi Zero

Dopefish, the creator of the MT32-pi project, has developed an official MT32-pi kit for the Raspberry Pi Zero2. This kit will also be compatible with a MiSTer FPGA and it will have:

TRS MIDI in
3.5mm stereo audio out
128×64 OLED screen
The standard 2 button controls
And a thumbwheel rotary encoder with a click button

Attract Mode and Vertical Only Scripts

Alexander Upton on GitHub has created two scripts that can be useful for MiSTer FPGA users. The first script, called mra_attract_mode, is an attract mode that will cycle through random arcade games in your library. His second script, called vert_arcade_only, aims to exist as an interim solution for MiSTer users who want a flat menu for vertically oriented Arcade titles only. Generally users who have their MiSTer hosted in an Arcade cabinet.

Soldier Girl Amazon

Darron__O’s beta Terra Cresta core has added support for Soldier Girl Amazon. It’s still beta, but you can obtain the core by running the “Unofficial Distribution” setting in the update_all script. Or if you are running MOnSiuerFPGA you can install its package.

Soldier Girl Amazon is a shooter game from Nichibutsu, released in 1986. It has gameplay similar to Commando. You take control of an Amazonian soldier girl, equipped with a magic sword that shoots fire. Her mission is to save her Amazon race from extinction from invaders.

Terra Force & Ikari III

Work on Terra Force keeps going. Atrac17 has taken some measurements of an arcade board to help with its development. A beta release should be available within the next few weeks. 

Once work on Terra Force reaches a point where Atrac17 can help with adding additional titles and features, Darren_O will start working on Ikari Warriors II: The Rescue. Other games that will come out of the Ikari III core are:

POW
Street Smarts
And Search and Rescue

Vigilante Core

Jotego has released a new core to his Patreon subscribers. This one is for the arcade beat-em up, Vigilante. As with all of Jotego’s cores, he first releases them privately in beta form to his patreon subscribers. After they are stable enough he releases them to the public for free. So consider joining his Patreon if you want early access to his cores.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles core is showing some signs of life. The developer, Furrtek, has shown the progress of the self-test report the game does at boot up. At first, the self test was garbled, but eventually that was fixed. Now the CPU access to the graphics ROM needs to be fixed so the self-test can successfully pass all tests.

Interview with Creators of MiSTer Multisystem

This is a reminder of the interview Bob did with the creators of the MiSter Multisystem. Some of the topics spoken about had to do with the expansions they are working on for the Multisystem. These expansions include but are not limited to

Raspberry Pi cartridge for MT32pi usage
JAMMA expansion
S-Video/Composite cartridge

They also talk about a portable MiSTer prototype, which I talk a little more about below.

MiSTer Portable

The creators of the MiSTer Multisystem have shown off a portable device they’ve developed. Right now it’s in the prototype stage and they are gauging the interest such a device will have.  It’s 100% compatible with MiSTer cores and on their twitter page, you can see all three prototypes they’ve made and browse through pictures and videos of the device playing games.

Mike Simone’s S-Video Cores

I just released a video on Mike Simone’s native S-video cores for MiSTer. I show some video recordings so you can see how they look and I also compare it to Antonio Villena’s adapter that converts RGB to S-video. Mike is also creating an adapter for his cores that will reduce the number of cables you need and improve the composite video quality significantly. 

Another video you can check out with more details on these cores was done by Zez Retro. Check it out and also his post here on RetroRGB.com.

Antonio Villena S-Video/Composite Adapter for Mike Simone’s Cores

Antonio Villena released an alternate S-Video/Composite adapter that works with Mike Simones custom cores. This adapter is much cheaper than his other adapter that converts RGB to s-video and composite. This new adapter is not a replacement for the older one. This new one only works with Mike’s custom core’s, and the older one is more expensive and works with all standard cores that support output to a crt. It costs 15 euros, but as of now it seems to be sold out.

Game and Watch Core in Development

Pierco on Twitter has been posting his progress on a Game & Watch FPGA Core. The Game & Watch series were early portable gaming devices developed by Nintendo. 

He just did his first test with MiSTer and says the Game & Watch config loads correctly on it.

Downloader Script

The downloader script that fetches all the files you need to update your MiSTer has been updated to version 1.5. This is one of the features of MiSTer that you may not pay much attention to but is important to keep your MiSTer up to date and help run smoothly. The maintainer of the script theypsilon also developed the update_all script which is a much more advanced updater for your MiSTer that I really recommend. Consider supporting theypsilon on Patreon for helping to keep our MiSTer FPGA’s up to date.