DF Retro Hardware: MiSTer FPGA - A Brilliant Mini Emulation System Explored!

[Music] this video is brought to you by the logitech lightspeed wireless range of keyboards mice and headsets the benchmark in wireless gaming performance [Music] over the past couple of years we've experienced a rise in the popularity of fpga within the retro gaming scene and perhaps one of the most interesting projects in this space is the mr fpga now you've probably heard of mr some of you probably already use it while others are perhaps curious about it the scope of the project is huge however so i wanted to share my experiences with mr over the recent weeks while providing a primer of sorts for those that haven't used it you see over the holiday break i spent some time configuring a mr kiosk of sorts that i thought was pretty fun hopefully i can share some ideas to make a project like this feasible for anybody that wants to give it a shot i also want to talk about various arcade cores that have been developed for mister over the past couple of years allowing for zero lag ultra accurate reproduction of classic games all that and more is coming up on this episode of df retro [Music] at its core mister is an open platform built around a de10 nano fpga development board along with its various add-ons the idea to recreate classic hardware in hdl to more accurately simulate classic consoles computers and arcade machines the community around mr has fully embraced the hardware and there is a huge range of cores available covering many 8 and 16 bit systems and beyond i purchased my mister fully loaded from mr add-ons this includes the de10 nano board itself the i o board and a multi-port usb hub all housed within this small case a new aluminum case was recently developed and it looks fantastic as well once you get your hands on the mister though setup is relatively straightforward if you can configure something like a raspberry pi the mister should be no problem there are plenty of guides and videos online if you get stuck so it shouldn't be a problem to get going okay but what makes the mr worth playing versus say software emulation or original hardware well firstly fpga cores when completed enable near perfect accuracy simulating the original hardware at a circuit level psychoaccurate emulation is definitely possible on the pc already but only select systems have corresponding emulators and less capable systems can struggle to deliver perfect performance packing all of this into a small case with minimal power draw is a huge part of the appeal of mister beyond this the mister also supports a wide range of controllers and is capable of offering zero leg gameplay across the board another key benefit of the mister is the flexibility in terms of video outputs naturally digital video output is supported via hdmi and it has a lot of wonderful scaling modes to fit your display but with the i o board a de15 connector also becomes available allowing you to connect the mister to an analog display such as a crt the benefit here is that this enables proper 15 kilohertz output at the original refresh rate and resolution so pairing your mister with a crt monitor can deliver an experience that looks very close to what you might have seen in an actual arcade which brings me to this idea to create a small mr setup that would be easy to jump into at any point while supporting both yoko and tate gameplay now over the years i've spent time cramming a lot of gear into my workspace from the retro setup here with a crt display of course to the modern setup for the latest consoles but after placing an arcade stick on top of this small shelf one day i realized it was the perfect height for actual gameplay thus an idea was born to create a small arcade-like nook where i could walk up to and just play the mister at any point now given the chance i always prefer playing on a crt of course but building a setup that allows you to rotate a crt requires a lot of space and i wanted something compact so the first part of the puzzle then is of course finding a screen in my case i settled for a small generic 9.7 inch lcd you can find these on ebay and amazon for dirt cheap i opted to stick with a 4x3 display to avoid black bars on the left and right it just works better for a project like this now it's also possible to pick up one of these screens it's basically an lcd designed for an ipad one of the retina displays it has a resolution of 2048 by 1536 and mr actually has a specific mode just for the screen you can fit this in a generic 9.7 inch capable case like this one here for instance though the installation isn't going to necessarily look factory if you know what i mean when it comes to screen selection you'll probably want to stick with an ips lcd for quality viewing angles and reasonable pixel response i went with this one due to its basic lightweight stand which allows you to rotate the screen side to side if you desire you can go as big or as small as you like but you should try to find a size that's comfortable for your specific viewing distance with the screen mounted then i ran the cables down the wall to a surge protector below and of course to the mister itself next up though is the audio and yes most screens have built-in speakers already but i wanted something that sounded a little better so i went with this cheap sound bar i think it was 29 euros on amazon and basically it's powered by usb has its own internal battery and can accept analog audio input because the mister has plenty of usb ports available when using the usb hub i was able to plug it right in there and it receives power from the mister when it's running with this then i have the video output on this small lcd screen and the audio coming from the sound bar i mounted the sound bar using these l brackets it's not the neatest installation i admit but it gets the job done and it kind of gives you an idea of what you need to make it work now as for the mister itself i also use these small white brackets here to affix the little mister box directly to the wall it slides right in here neatly and allows access to all of the necessary ports for playing games so basically all i really needed to make this setup work was a small section of empty wall in one of my rooms this is the key to this sort of setup you don't need a lot of space to make it work and it can be very comfortable to use the critical part however lies in the controls i'm using this half height shelf here to hold my japanese playstation 2 collection and it just so happens that it's the perfect height for me when an arcade stick is placed on top now you don't need to use a shelf like this of course i simply went with this due to its utility for holding games and the arcade stick but it is a cool option and it's easy to test if you go shopping for such a shelf the stick itself then is a usb arcade stick that was sold to use alongside the astro city mini cabinet from sega now this cab was only sold in japan and features a wide range of sega games if you want me to take a look at this in the future do let me know because we can certainly do that the stick itself has enough buttons and functionality to support any core from the mister that you might throw at it save for maybe some of the computer related cores you can of course use any other usb controller that you desire but this was a great fit for me so as you can see it's really kind of a simplistic setup and it doesn't require a lot of space yet it delivers an arcade-like experience at least somewhat it's more comfortable to use than say a miniature cabinet due to the position of the screen and controls you can adjust it to your liking to fit your own height and comfort level of course given the choice i would prefer to use something like the mrcade which is a board designed to allow you to use the mister with a jama compatible arcade cabinet this with a crt would be a perfect fit i've had a great time playing on this little setup though and the ability to rotate the screen helps immensely with game's design for tate play all told for a relatively meager sum you can have a great little arcade setup in just about any room in your house and it won't really look that bad either so it's not going to stick out like a huge arcade cabinet might of course if you have the space you can certainly go bigger bring in the crts and do something a little bit more elaborate specifically something that supports two-player simultaneous play from the same kiosk but okay let's say you get all this setup then what can you actually do with mister well that is a huge topic indeed yes consoles are supported as you would expect this includes systems such as the sega mega drive the super nes the pc engine and even handhelds like game boy and game boy advance but for me that's not the main draw i'm more about the arcade games for starters neogeo is fully supported in mr provided you have the ram upgrade so technically the aes is a home system of course but to me neo geo is an arcade machine now the entire library can now be played on mister with extreme accuracy when considering the unbelievably high prices of individual neo geo games it doesn't really make sense to get into collecting for the system at this point and although there are other ways to play neo geo games still on other platforms i feel like the mister is a really great way to get a feel for the library as a whole the interface itself is also very simple to use and works between all different supported games you can set up your controls your visuals etc and you're ready to go but it's the individual cores that are perhaps even more interesting for starters there's plenty of early 80s and other classic arcade games available games like donkey kong zaxon huian and more but there's also more advanced cores available and these are the ones that i find the most exciting to play with perhaps my favorite work stems from yotego an electronics engineer based in spain in his free time he's been developing and releasing cores for different fpga platforms but mostly focusing on the mr project he's the guy responsible for capcom play system or cps1 and 1.5 game releases on the mister this opens the door to a wide range of titles ranging from captain commando street fighter 2 the world warrior [Music] cadillacs and dinosaurs [Music] and street fighter zero [Music] just to name a few what makes the reproduction of such arcade hardware so fascinating to me is the wide range of chips that must be properly emulated each chip must be fully understood and converted to hdl for use within mr and a lot of work is poured into ensuring that it behaves as close to the original hardware as possible but this gets into slightly tricky territory as a lot of folks including myself don't have regular access to the original cps1 hardware so it can be tough to gauge accuracy here take carrier air wing for instance on maim if you watch the attract mode or just play the game you'll find that it runs flawlessly without a single dropped frame or skip that seems great of course but is it really accurate to how the original arcade board plays well on mister the same sequence exhibits noticeable drops and slow down in performance when placing the two side by side i also noticed some subtle differences between them for one despite the more noticeable slowdown the mister version actually runs slightly faster watch the horizon line as we descend into the clouds here it occurs first on the mr side mame is slightly behind and it's the same when you approach the bottom of the screen here [Music] also watch the push start text there in the bottom right corner of the screen on both versions the longer you play the more the text goes out of sync also check this out right after we take off from the carrier and the level begins let's go frame by frame the hud appears first on both versions but look at the way the background appears it draws in differently between mame and mr the question here is which one is closer to the original cps1 arcade board unfortunately i can't really say because i don't have access to it what i do know though is that the games do look fantastic especially when played on a crt monitor but they also hold up beautifully when output to a flat panel display all of this work kicked off with the original cps1 games but yotego followed this up with support for cps 1.5 with q sound implemented for games such as cadillacs and dinosaurs and street fighter zero currently he's working on the very first release of his new cps2 core which could arrive at any moment possibly even by the time this video goes live basically he's doing amazing work here in bringing capcom hardware to the mr platform another promising project comes to us from josh bassett who's been working on the cave 68 000 core among others recently he released caves doron pachi to the public making it one of the newest games supported on mr but more on the way this again gets into what's accurate and what's not there is a difference between how the game performs on mister vs maim at this point but again without the original arcade board on hand there's no way for me to personally say for sure just for fun though let's again look at mister versus maim running in slow motion this time at 10 speed if you look really closely there seems to be a very subtle difference in the way the sprites and backgrounds update between the two different versions look closely at the rock formation and the tank sprites placed on top of it again i'm not entirely sure why these two differ from one another but there is definitely a difference here [Music] this does highlight one thing about playing games using the analog output if you're running mr on a crt for instance and a game is designed to run in tate mode just like the original hardware there's nothing you can do to change that the game will run in this mode home conversions of such titles often had lower resolution pillar boxed modes but that's not possible here which means if you're using a crt you're gonna have to turn it on its side this is one of the reasons i built the little setup using a small lcd instead ultimately though when cores like this are fully implemented it should be possible to achieve results that are virtually identical to original hardware that is the goal of fpga cores in general of course to match the original experience and i think it's really important too projects like mister can help preserve aging hardware in a way that really wasn't possible in the past with developers now studying and duplicating individual ics we're basically gaining access to a large database of virtualized chips this process is one of the reasons why neogeo was supported so early on the work was done to preserve each chip to the circuit level for potential reproduction in case of failure and it just so happened that implementing this into mister was not a huge amount of extra work on top of it i believe this chip by chip approach is one of the reasons why the selection of arcade games available on mister started back in the early 80s and has been slowly working its way up the developers essentially have to study more and more chips as arcade games become more and more advanced of course there are limitations here in terms of what you can cram into the fpga so there's a lot of arcade games i'd like to see that may just not be possible in its current form but we'll just have to wait and see so that's pretty much it i'm really just scratching the surface of the mister here but i wanted to share it with the df audience for those that maybe haven't given it a look it's been an enjoyable project to watch unfold over the years and support is only growing it's an affordable compact way to enjoy a wide range of games with excellent accuracy and zero lag perhaps if there's interest i can keep a tab on all things mister and produce other videos in the future including comparisons with real hardware versus mister versus software emulation if you like be sure to let me know if you want to see this kind of coverage but for now that's going to do it if you enjoyed this video as always please let me know follow us on twitter ring the notification bell and check out the original file over on patreon and until next time stay retro a gaming icon evolved logitech's renowned g502 mouse joins the ranks of the world's most advanced gaming mice with the release of the g502 lightspeed featuring ultrafast wireless connectivity and reliability with performance trusted in competition by esports pros featuring the next generation hero 25k sensor and power play compatibility this is the ultimate rendition of the celebrated g502 mouse

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 133,215

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Id: PfIwDC2F2lc

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021