Been contemplating getting a Mister for a while.
I've got a Super NT, Mega SG and Retrousb AVS so i know how impressive FPGA is when it comes to replicating old machines.
The only problem I can see (for me personally) is that I'd probably spend more time messing about tweaking stuff than I would actually playing games.
I've been down that route before with a raspberry pi, infinite number of games and systems but spend all my time tinkering in the settings.
I think the fact it is DIY makes it wayyyyy less popular than it should be. Like, shockingly so.
There really isn't a super ton of tinkering though, and the initial update script downloads all cores automatically for you so you just have to add ROM's + BIOSes for some cores (megaCD and NeoGeo).
The physical modularity of it at first seems overwhelming too, but there's only a few boards outside of the de10 nano base you have to consider (do you plan on powering lots of USB devices and want a tidied package? Get the USB board otherwise opt for the cheap $6 Makerspot and dangle it off microUSB... also do you want to have dual outputs for streaming - go digital io, or want to hook it up to a CRT go standard io.. thats about it) and you can add them as you go down the road. Main thing is cooling, SDRAM, and de10 if you're interested in hooking it up to an HDTV.
the nice thing is its unlike RetroArch when you have to research competing cores for a platform and weigh the pros and cons, because there are downsides to software emulation and have to pick your battles- each system has one main core and most if not all are as good as perfect.
If you are to tinker with something, its what overlay of video processing you want or button mapping but. Its got just enough granularity without going off the deep end into obscure and irrelevant
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its cool Analogue makes + sells FPGA clone systems, but I feel like once you get a MiSTer it might make you consider even selling your Analogues. Unless you're just into physical carts / flashcarts (which have benefits like save states for the premium models, only GBA core has save states since real time hardware emulation is tough to pull off with this), or a pretty package.
These are more accurate, and will always be better by being open source and multi platform. I could see enjoying a clone system of your favorite one, but I see no reason to invest in their full array of products it seems like a financial waste imo. Though I'm huge on handhelds and the Analogue Pocket or whatever it is with adapter cores seems pretty cool. Still, not a fan of how they purposefully limit the heck out of preorders every time to contribute to needless hype fests. Theyre of course in it for money, but theyre in a position to make retro more accessible while making money and they dont seem overly interested in that. They are probably marketing masters and have found that it results In better ROI, but I dunno I feel like more units shipped + sold would be even more ROI. But the MegaSG I think is always available, so thats cool.
Its also nuts to me that a company even makes good clones, but nothing can beat free support + devs pouring thousands of hours into this as a labor of love vs. commercial purposes. The developers of this are obsessively driven for preservationist and accuracy purposes.
Then there's always arcade cores, thats where things get really mind bogglingly insane conceptually for me.
Last edited by playstays_shun,