Newsdee

This, so much this. I've actually gone the opposite route, from being a pure emulation guy since the beginning of it (except for latest consoles) to wanting to have a few of the real machines. That said, one part where I think emulation is preferable is for 3D graphics. PS2 or Wii games on a modern PC look fantastic, and some N64 games have texture upgrades for them.

There is a feature to dump the "game DB" XML to the SD, but I haven't found a use for it. Perhaps it allows renaming those "unknown" games?

The RPi2 improved things a lot over the first models and custom cases/expansions are starting to appear. But the Retro Freak still wins my personal choice for having everything out of the box plus carts slots (and without carts, it can be separated in a smaller case than the Pi). Neither can beat the raw power and emu/tool library of a Windows PC, though. My major gripe over many systems is the OS is too obvious and takes a while to boot. I know I'm being picky but Win10 has made progress and is also pretty fast on an SSD, and (for a bit more money) there are miniature i5-based windows PC starting to appear. So I guess the offerings for RPi felt too limited as a comparison. That might change when distros dedicated to emulation become mature. That's why I'm quite interested in FPGA devices; they are not mature yet but they promise something different. I see them as technically equivalent to a console clone + a flash cart + an upscaler. Both the Everdrives and the XRGB-Mini are FPGA devices, and bigger FPGA chips means existing chip designs can be merged in one. As others pointed out ARM + FPGA designs exist already. The MiST is open hardware so for all we know the Chameleon could have taken that design and expanded upon it, maybe moving the SD card inside a cartridge.

$30 a cart for the same library as flashbacks (one per system) and common video output supporting HDMI is not too shabby. Especially if you could plug other controllers with USB.

There were many neat tricks; compression algorithms weren't very advanced then (or you needed too much CPU power) so for example they used modified MIDI-style music for songs, or tilemaps for backgrounds, etc. If you look closely usually main characters are much better animated than the rest because you are more likely to notice, etc. Only the NeoGeo and arcade games had the brute force to pack more/bigger art in the game (and looked and sounded amazing as a result).

Marketing tactics. "Megs" refer to megabits (Mb) not megabytes (MB); 3MB for a 24Mb ROM would be right. Even the Neogeo used bits, if I'm not wrong their bigger carts were shy of 100MB before the CD era.

New cheat DB file is out: http://www.cybergadget.co.jp/support/retrofreak/codefreak/ Unfortunately the cheats names are in Japanese... I wonder if it would work if we run the XML through Google translate.

The Atari 5200 and 800/XL cores were written by foft from these forums, here's the thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216991-5200-in-fpga/page-5 If I'm not mistaken it supports all 5200 games already, at least it ran everything I've tried on it. I found the 800 version of AlleyCat was much more colorful than the IBM (CGA) one I used to play ad a kid... I've just bought some Atari paddles (and adapter) to try with the MiST and get a more realistic experience (before I used USB analog joysticks but it's not the same!).

In terms of setup consoles are much simpler (vs. setting up a computer core) because they have fixed hardware and they only read ROM files. You can put roms anywhere on an SD card (like an Everdrive) and long filenames are supported. You can use subfolder and I keep things in alphabetical folders to find games without too much scrolling ("page up/down" works btw). I separate many systems to their own SD card, so I can switch from NES to PC Engine as easily as changing carts on a console. Often I can use the exact same cart into an Everdrive (or their computer equivalents) because the systen files won't interfere with each other. I do this for the PC Engine and ZX Spectrum for example.

In terms of controls, there are two options, the DB9 joystick ports and USB. DB9 supports two-button sticks but not paddles (for that you need a 2600-adaptor to ise USB). Most cores available only use on or two buttons (for early conputers) or up to four for newer consoles (e.g. NES). You can use a DB9 controller with the NES but you'll have to open the in-game menu (OSD) to press select or start. Personally I just use USB. USB controllers can be mapped via a MIST.INI file on the SD card. While core only use up to four buttons (A, B, start, select) you can map any USB button. The mapping allows you to "wire" a physical button to one or several internal buttons, including directions. This is useful to map some buttoms to "up" to use in old games that didn't have a jump button. You can also assign keyboard hits to a given combination of buttons. This allows using button combos e g. start + select to open the OSD (note - without this you can open the OSD with a USB keyboard or a tiny button on the front panel of the MiST). USB mice are supported, and there there is an optional feature to have a USB pad act as a mouse by keeping select pushed (then move with directions and use L/R for button click). OSD navigation can also be done from the gamepad so you don't have to use a keyboard just to launch Atari or Amiga games.

Yes happy to share impressions, just not sure where to start. Feel free to ask me questions. There's a developer aspect to it which is very interesting, but let's summarize that the hardware itself is final, and people are basically now pushing the boundaries of of it. It hosts both original implementations and ports from other FPGA boards, and it's all done in cordial collaboration as all code is open source. That's an important point for me because basically any work done on this thing benefits future projects, the same way the MiST itself benefited from previous ones. There are similar boards, but the MiST has the advantage of being cheaper, having USB ports, and having a lot of cores already (14 computers and 9 consoles right now). But enough of that and let's talk games. Basically the big advantage of an FPGA vs. an emulator is that it runs things in parallel, and if done right it feels identical to the original because there is slowdown from a CPU or host OS. Here's for example Devil's Crush running on my Supergrafx: And on my MiST (note the video is 30fps as it was made long ago, but the core runs 60fps) For 60fps heres Super Star Soldier: As I said earlier cores have various level of maturity and compatibility. Focus is on gaming but there have been forays in other areas. At least one musician used a couple of MiST in concert to replace an old Atari ST as MIDI machine. I'd have to cover each core separately to give details, but lets cover a few cases. The NES for example doesn't support as many mappers as an Everdrive, and doesn't support saves (save RAM is implemented but not written to SD card) but the games run fine otherwise. But at the same time the atari 800/5200 is implemented fine without any major issues. Setup for consoles is extremely simple, you just need an SD with core files (many cores support switching to another) . Computers sometimes more tricky with setup a harddrive, but the wiki on github has details on how to do it. In terms of donnsides, one caveat of the MiST is that it *is* a clone of old machines meaning e.g. video timings follow the original closely. As a result the timings of the VGA it generates is sometimes a bit off spec (not 60hz exactly), causing some imperfections in modern screens (some vertical lines appear thinner or scrolling isnt as smooth). It can be fixed with an upscaler; I have made a video with a comparison:

I still need to finish Shin Megami Tensei IV. I love the series on the DS (and finished Strange Journey and Soul Hackers) but somewhere along the way I decided to try III (Nocturne) on the PS2... so now I have two games to finish.

Wondering who else has one around here? It's a very neat "consolized" FPGA box with some great things and a few quirks. Basically it's an open hardware platform (i.e. you can go and build your own, or expand on it if you want) that many open-source VHDL projects support (each machine "core" being its own project). It houses the latest versions of Minimig or OpenMSX, and its own Atari ST core, but also does a few consoles (8-bit so far).

Yes. I had it crash a few times when running for a long time with filters (e.g. hq2x). Running without filters fixes it. Scanlines or scaling do not seem to impact it, at least.

Flashbacks with an SD card don't exist because Atari won't allow them to, so far. Sega is apparently more lenient so there is that portable Megadrive with SD. Some guys on Youtube seem to have jailbroken the Freak; once the methods gets out it should be possible to add any emulator to it. But I'd prefer an FPGA version (ideally with carts); here's HERO running in my MIST:

According to this page it works but you have to build your own adapter: http://www.retrode.org/plug-in-adapters/ There is a project to build a Retrode + an RPi in a box (by EvilDragon who's producing the latest Retrode batch). That looks like a convenient solution although the software side is that what will sell it to me (I'd like a turnkey solution and ideally a version where I can install my own RPi2). Beyond that I'm a big fan of FPGAs; the MiST and Arcade Replay both have good support for pre-crash consoles. The Atari VCS is not perfect, but Atari5200/800, Coleco, Astrocade and VideoPac work great (note: these cores are often 3rd party projects so might be available for other boards as well). You can google for videos to get an idea on how they work.

I think somebody mentioned in the RVGS thread that Atari was rather against anything emulating their hardware that isn't vetoed by them. That rules out any kind of official support in the US, and elsewhere it might be too old school already

Didn't the Coleco guy (i.e. the one from the company holding the rights) say the Toy Fair would feature a number of Coleco-branded products? That means the Chameleon will be only one of several; probably the goal is to get investors for the brand.

I've got one. It's easy to mod adding your own buttons and stick (google for the exact Sanwa part that's compatible). I'm tempted to turn it into a Raspberry Pi emulator box, but haven't bothered to good for a suitable LCD...

In the shop where I bought it, the guy told me 8bitdo was planning a wireless dongle, but no idea if he was just saying that to get me to buy it

I just got an SFC30 from 8bitdo, so did a quick comparison the iBufallo and an original controller. The iBufallo is slightly thinner and lighter than the original (50g vs. 60g), whereas the SFC30 is thicker and heavier (90g). Width seems to be the same for the three. Buttons of the original and iBuffalo are pretty silent, but buttons of the 8bitdo can be heard a bit of you tap them strongly. For the d-pad, the SFC30 needs a bit more pressure than the other two, but still feels solid. The original feels a bit more "mushy" than the other two though. Gameplay wise I haven't used the SFC30 yet but the iBuffalo doesn't bother me in any way other than feeling a bit lighter. Build quality of both USB controllers is fantastic. The SFC30 even feels more solid than the original but that might be subjectibe impressiom from the weight

They sell them at Cyber Gadget's online store, as well as extra controllers and the Game Gear adapter. Can't read Japanese but maybe they ship internationally...

I don't have a lot of space to put my stuff but I try to keep as much as I can hooked up, so I can play almost immediately on those systems. I only disconnect the controllers so the front looks neater, and curate a small list of games (plus flashcarts) to have on display on shelves around it. Organizing that and playing around with upscaler options to get the best results has become a little game on its own... Another thing that keeps me busy is exploring FPGA projects; the MiST is chugging along nicely with small updates from time to time. Recently they added supoor for early Macintosh and the NES core was updated to work on a TV at 15khz (previously was only VGA).

It needs a proper USB host to parse HID data and then map buttons to the desired pinout in DB15 Neo Geo or DB9 Atari or Genesis (with multiplexing). Ideally one could also customize buttom mapping by USB PID/VID as well. Closest I can find are some Arduino USB shields, but there might be cheaper solutions...

I'm wondering if I could do USB to NeoGeo (the opposite of the usual way); so far I've only seen it in a bigger PC to JAMMA board which is a bit overkill.