MiSTer FPGA History Series: Part 4: More Mature, More Capable, More Costly
2020 was a pivotal year for the MiSTer, but not everything was turning up roses. Thanks to COVID, things were sometimes more difficult and expensive, but the community persevered and even thrived.
Before heading into part 4 in earnest, I wanted to note that as the MiSTer FPGA is an open source project, no one is really getting paid to build all of these cores. Some of the developers do keep Patreons or Ko-fis, most of which I'm a member of myself. Here's the active ones I know about: Sorgelig Jotego furrtek srg320 Coin-Op Collection theypsilon Raki wizzo d0pefish Macro jimmystones ace9921 jasona spark2k06 . Also of note for his modern Youtube video coverage, though not a developer, is PixelCherryNinja. If anyone knows of any more that I didn't list, please tell me so that I can add them; thanks! Also, as one more note, I list jotego's releases by when they were released for patrons, not for the general public; I've been a jotego patron nearly as long as one could be a patron, so this is the more appropriate way to list them for my personal experience.
After that brief aside, in our timeline we're now getting into January 2020. The year began with a major feature update for the GBA core: it became the first core on the MiSTer to support save states. We also got more core consolidation updates in the arcade sphere; it's surprising how many old arcade games ran on Pacman hardware. jotego released Double Dragon 2 early in the month as well. The aforementioned Pacman core got a few new games in The Glob and Beastie Feastie, as well as Jump Shot, and a new core was ported by the combined work of alanswx, sorgelig, and blue1, the MCR3Mono core. This core supported Rampage, Sage, Power Drive, MaxRPM, and Demolition Derby early on, and would get more games later.
Bagman also gained support for Super Bagman, and some consolidation work moved Squash, Botanic, and Pickin' into that core, since they were on near-identical hardware. Arkanoid was added as well, with spinner support via the SNAC or via USB. The MCR3 core added more games with Disks of Tron (one of my personal faves), Star Guards, and Journey. Although jotego had no more releases this month, his work was very closely followed by all of us, as he was working on a truly major arcade core: Capcom CPS1. I'll talk more about that as it gets released, but a lot of VERY major games run on CPS1, CPS1' (pronounced CPS 1 Dash, and often referred to as CPS1.5), and CPS2. And that brings us to the end of January; as you can see, the speed of releases was truly rapid at this time; every week felt amazing, seeing what new things we could play, in the MiSTer arcade scene especially.
February began with more rapidfire arcade releases, MCR3Scroll which brought Spy Hunter, Turbo Tag, and Crater Rider. Scramble was also released, which also supported Anteater, Armored Car, Battle of Atlantis, Calipso, Lost Tomb, Moonwar, Speed Coin, Super Cobra, Tazz-Mania, Mars, Mighty Monkey, Strategy X, Turtles, Minefield, Rescue, and Dark Planet, as well as merging in the pre-existing cores for Amidar, The End, and Frogger. We also got MCR1 with Kick-Man and Solar Fox, and a Black Widow core with Black Widow, Gravitar, and Lunar Battle. Most of the work, as far as I can tell, for all of the above was sorgelig and alanswx; it isn't perfectly clear, however.
sajattack released a CHIP-8 core, the first "virtual console" that has been implemented in a number of places before and after. On the hardware side, sorgelig released the schematics for a new version of what is now called the Analog IO board, and the very first Digital IO board. Direct Video was a recent innovation, allowing for the use of an adapter from the HDMI port for analog video, making it a viable option for anyone who didn't need the dual outputs for some reason. This allowed for dual RAM configs to support almost everything a single RAM config could.
Near the end of the month, jotego released the first beta of CPS1, supporting Final Fight, Willow, and Ghouls and Ghosts. So, just in the first two months of 2020, we got 42 more arcade titles supported, as well as a new interesting "virtual console" core and a new version of the IO boards. Quite a beginning to the year, I must say.
In March, we got a different core for the Popeye arcade game from Dar; as a note, after his first few cores, jotego's cores have remained separated into his own github, rather than on the mainline MiSTer github. That's still the case to this day. March was more a month of updates than new cores, the biggest new core being the Astrocade Arcade core, which included Extra Bases, Seawolf II, Space Zap, Robby Roto, and Wizard of Wor. sorgelig also ported rampa's Oric 1 and Oric Atmos cores. jotego continued to refine the CPS1 core, adding support for The King of Dragons, Knights of the Round, Magic Sword, and Quiz and Dragons, followed a week later by Strider, Nemo, Dynasty Wars, and UN Squadron, and the next week Three Wonders, Mega Twins, and some more quiz games, and the week after that by Mega Man The Power Battle and Captain Commando.
As I'm sure everyone is well aware, the world changed a lot around this time due to the widespread COVID lockdowns. The main effect this would have on the MiSTer community is to make it much harder to find DE-10 Nanos, to the point where scalping them would be a bit of a thing this year. This is both because of things becoming harder to ship internationally, and due to increased demand; with the CPS1 core, and continued general word of mouth, the MiSTer was starting to become truly popular. Lots of people were popularizing it on Twitch (including myself, owlnonymous, Aquas, and many, many others), and playing video games was a pretty good thing to do when one couldn't go out. This likely led to a number of the advancements we got for the rest of 2020, and even into 2021.
So, heading into April, we continued to get more interesting stuff heading our way. A Zaxxon core from Dar, Gorf support added to the Astrocade core (one of my personal faves), and a new Atari ST core. jotego gave us more CPS1 games: first Varth, Mercs, 1941, and Carrier Air Wing. As a big shmup fan, this was certainly my week; 3 out of those 4 (not a huge Mercs fan) are among my favorites. The next week was just two games, but truly important ones to many: Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter Alpha. Next, just a week later, came Punisher, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, and Warriors of Fate. In non-CPS1 work, he also released Legendary Wings. So, quite a month for Capcom fans, again.
May was a big month for the community, as it represented the founding of the MiSTer FPGA forums, moving away from the atari-forums that most of the updates had lived on until now. No new cores on the main MiSTer, but a major update: Turbografx16 now had CD support, bringing the second CD addon to the MiSTer. jotego continued with his work, however, with Pang 3, and the all-important step of bringing the CPS1 core to public release, as well as a Contra/Gryzor core. So, it may have seemed like a bit of a slow month, but certainly more than enough to keep us busy, especially the PC-Engine fans able to play all the CD games now.
June was HUGE for two big quality of life things on the MiSTer: the first release of both Mr. Fusion, the current SD card image builder, and Update-all, a better updater, both of which are still what is used to this day, came this month. This is probably the time when the MiSTer feels a lot like it does now; it doesn't support quite as many cool cores yet, but at least using it, the feel of it, started to be what it would be. In addition to those major changes, we also got the Irem M62 core, ported from MiST by sorgelig and Blue1, supporting Battle Road, Horizon, Kid Niki, Kung-Fu Master, Lode Runner, Lode Runner II, Lode Runner III, Lode Runner IV, Spelunker, Spelunker II, and Youjyuden. gaz68 gave us Donkey Kong Junior this month as well as Mario Bros., and Gehstock, Dar, and alanswx collaborated to add Super Zaxxon to the Zaxxon core. jotego gave us Bubble Bobble, and a Yamaha OPL1 chip (used as a sound chip in many future cores).
In July, nullobject, a new FPGA developer, released his Rygar core; he'd been showing up in conversations for a while working on his dream core, a core for CAVE shooters like Dodonpachi; I followed this with great interest, though it'd still be a long time until its release. No other new cores from mainline, but as usual, things continued to improve every week. jotego gave us Combat School, and did a lot more work on specific chips to be used in future projects. A bit of a slow month, but after what June had given us, we had lots of new things to play with anyway.
steddyman gave us the Amstrad PCW in August. jotego gave us Trojan and Side Arms. This was pretty much it, other than the continued updates. September saw the Epoch Galaxy II, and Tomytronic Scramble, from Pierco, as well as better support for the bin/cue CD format for CD based games. jotego gave us Street Fighter this month. October saw zero new cores in mainline, but some nice fixes, jotego gave us Pirate Ship Higemaru, Labyrinth Runner, and near the end of the month, CPS1', with Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Muscle Bomber Duo, Saturday Night Slam Masters, The Punisher, and Warriors of Fate.
Pierco brought us another micro core with the Tandy MC-10/Alice 4k in November, and Mister X brought us Sega System 1, with lots of great games: 4-D Warriors, Block Gal, Bullfight, Flicky, I'm Sorry (another personal fave of mine), Mister Viking, My Hero, Pitfall II, Rafflesia, Regulus, Sega Ninja, Spatter, Star Jacker, Swat, TeddyBoy Blues, Up'n Down, Water Match, and Wonder Boy. Ace brought us Time Pilot '84, Alex d18c7db brought us Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, and Vindicators (another personal fave, though I tend to prefer the NES version from Tengen), and alanswx the CoCo2/Dragon32. MisterAddons released his aluminum case, which is a lot of what spurred me to build my second/third MiSTer: this is when I gifted my parents one, as well as when I got my second DE10-based MiSTer for myself. jotego continued to work hard on CPS1' and CPS2, getting the sound just right for them; we started the month with no sound at all, and got a nice update for CPS1' with sound.
Finishing out the year, we got Traverse USA and Shot Rider on the arcade side from sorgelig and gyurco, Breakout from bellwood420, the Acorn Atom from oldgit, and the Space Invaders core, with 280Z ZZAp, Amazing Maze, Attack Force, Balloon Bomber, Blue Shark, Boot Hill, Clowns, Cosmo, Galaxy Wars, Gun Fight, Laguna Racer, Lunar Rescue, Lupin III, Sea Wolf, Space Encounters, Space Invaders II, Space Invaders Part II, and Vortex, from oldgit (David Woods), Mike Coates, Gehstock, Gyurco, Shane Lynch, and lots of original Authors: Daniel Wallner, Mike J, Paul Walsh. As for jotego, if you want to see a lot of what his state of mind was then, I'd recommend this interview with Bob from RetroRGB: here. He was working steadily on getting the sound right for CPS1', but also found an issue with SDRam and the MiSTer that he spent much of the month working through. With promises of CPS2 just around the corner, 2020 came to an end.
One of the biggest notes now, however, is that this is when the DE10-Nano started to have those steady price increases that would lead, eventually, to clone boards being produced. COVID-linked shortages led to price increases that never went away, and now, we're where we are now. But it'll be a while til I get to the clones; we've still got 2021, 2022, and 2023 to get through; look for that in future articles.
