MiSTer FPGA History Series: Part 5: Progressing Toward The Late '90s

It's always been amusing to me how most things on the MiSTer have indeed followed a similar progression to reality; it does make sense, though, as things got more complex as the years went on, and for the most part, people focused on the low hanging fruit... or occasionally their dream console or arcade machine that would fit within the confines of the MiSTer's 110000 LEs and available SDRam.

January saw the introduction of the ADCTest core by dshadoff, a utility core to test the signal coming into an ADC board; we'd see more utilities like this show up over the next few years. The MT-32 Pi board was also debuted this month, a way to turn a Raspberry Pi into a SNAC-connected MIDI controller, adding better sound to a number of computer cores, especially the ao486 and X68000 cores.

This was also the month of the initial release of one of my true dream cores, Dodonpachi by nullobject; this would eventually extend to many other Cave 68000 games. We also got Donkey Kong 3 from gaz68, and Future Spy support was added to the Zaxxon core by alanswx. jotego brought us the first beta of CPS2 near the end of the month, with just Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo working, but that certainly had us excited going into February.

February began with King and Balloon on the Galaxian core, and the initial launch of the MiSTer FPGA Discord. jotego brought us Mighty! Pang, Street Fighter Alpha, CAPCOM Sports Club, Megaman 1, and Megaman 2 on the CPS2 this month. Pierco brought us a QBert core, and Bellwood brought us a Space Race core to finish up the month.

A core for Polyplay, the only East German arcade hardware, showed up in March, from Slein. FPGAzumspass brought us the Atari Lynx core as well, and it was a good month for micros with the ZX Spectrum Next from sorgelig. We also got another Iron Curtain arcade board in the TIA-MC1, supporting Billiard, Gorodki, Konek Gorbunok, Kot-Rybolov, Snezhnaja Koroleva, and SOS, from Slein as well. Pragma brought us a Mr. Do! core (another old fave of mine), and Ace brought us an entirely redone Time Pilot '84 core. jotego added support for Puzz Loop 2 and Alien vs. Predator in the first week of March, and a week later Darkstalkers, Jyangokushi and 19xx, the next week Street Fighter Alpha 2, Quiz Nanairo Dreams, and Battle Circuit, and a week later Darkstalkers' Revenge, Dimahoo, D&D Tower of Doom, and X-Men: Children of the Atom. Quite a month for the CPS2 core, continuing to get more and more amazing games.

Only one new mainline core in April, but one very important to me personally: the Atari 7800. This was my main childhood console, although I also owned others, I played that 7800 more than anything else. We also got a mild redesign on the SDRam module to increase stability, and some nice QoL features of pausing in a number of older arcades (Pacman and Defender cores). jotego gave us a bit of a surprise release with Shinobi, then continued to add more to the CPS2 core. Street Fighter Alpha 3, D&D Shadow over Mystara, 1944, Janpai Puzzle Choko, X-Men vs SF, Vampire Savior, Super Gem Fighter and Slam Masters 2 all became playable this month. On a personal note, this is also the month I built a MiSTer for my son, who didn't live with me at the time; he actually lives with me now. He was 16 at the time, and is 20 now.

No new releases from the mainline MiSTer for May, but LOTS of work making the C64 core better and better. jotego brought yet more of CPS2 into playability: Vampire Saviour 2, the ever-popular Marvel vs. Capcom, Hyper SF2 Anniversary Edition, Armored Warriors, Gigawing, and Mars Matrix, bringing us every game on CPS2.

In June, we got a rare Japanese micro in the RX-78 from alanswx and Pierco. Pierco also brought us V'Ball, jimmystones brought us Dottori-Kun, and FPGAzumspass brought us the Wonderswan core. From jotego, we got a beta for Sega's System 16, with Wonder Boy 3, Phantasy Zone, Action Fighter, Alex Kidd, Tetris, and Body Slam.

We'd get even more System 16 games as July began, Alien Syndrome, Passing Shot, and Time Scanner. Over in mainline, we got the Input Tester core from jimmystones, (a utility I still use often to this day to test arcade controllers I build), the Gameboy2P core from FPGAzumSpass, and Macro gave us a new Universal core, supporting Space Panic, Cosmic Alien and Magical Spot. Ace brought us Gyruss, Iron Horse, and Jackal as well this month. jotego continued to add on to System 16, with Quartet, Altered Beast, Ryukyu, MVP, Golden Axe, Dynamite Dux, Cotton, Heavy Champ, and Wrestle War

August brought us an Intellivision core by Grabulosaure, complete with Intellivoice support. Also new this month were the Interact Home Computer by edanuff, and Compukit UK101 by Grant Searle, and ported by danielb to MiSTer, as well as the TI99/4K by GreyRouge. jotego, meanwhile, took a break from System16 to give us Exed Exes, then went back to bringing us more supported games on System16. Aurail, Bullet, Flash Point, and E-Swat, for this month. All told, quite a month for classic micros in mainline, and some good arcade work from jotego as well.

September and October were slow in the mainline, but jotego continued to bring out new arcade cores. First was MX5000/Flak Attack, then Fast Lane, both new Konami cores. We got another System16 beta, with Wonder Boy 3 and Tough Turf now working, as well as Bad Dudes vs. DragonNinja, a new core. That core also gained support for Heavy Barrel, and he also released a reworked and fixed version of Cotton for System16 (previously it was rather buggy, but these are betas). Over in Mainline MiSTer, we did get the new Downloader, still in use to this day, which was much faster than the previous one. We also got a few new arcade cores, Scooter Shooter and Finalizer, and another obscure micro, the Ondra SPO 186 from Shark100.

November brought us the Sord M5 from molekula, and support for Shadow Masks as a filter, in mainline. jotego gave us Fantasy Zone 2, a 2008 arcade release on an expanded System16 board from Sega, as well as Riot City and Toryumon, also on System16. The next week saw even more System16 releases, Sonic Boom, MVP, Dunk Shot, and Excite League. He also finished Kicker, a truly new core, and reported his work on the Neo Geo Pocket. Heading into December, we got a major rework of the X68000 core, bringing it in line with other computer cores and no longer requiring usage of the second SD card slot. No new cores this month, but some notable updates, especially to a large number of arcade cores, bringing much better QoL features for users of those cores. Not all that much new from jotego this month either, but we did get a few presents, Yie Ar Kung Fu for Christmas, and Super Basketball just before New Years, both new Konami cores.

All told, a pretty great year, and one that brought the experience a lot closer to what modern users are used to, again. The new Downloader was WAY faster on a good connection, and we got a number of notable cores, like the 7800 core and the reworked X68000 core, and a lot more of the arcade hits of the 80s and early 90s. We'd continue to get these things as the years went on, and even though it wasn't quite as much as in 2020, 2021 was still a great year to be a MiSTerFPGA owner.

As I've still got a few years to get to current, I'll continue to make these historical posts, until I've gotten through 2024. I'll likely do a retrospective at the end of 2025 as well, of course. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!