Lu

MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – IREM Arcade games, Rodland, VRR and More

Posted on by Lu

Rodland Core

Pierco posted a playable beta of Rodland for Patreon subscribers. This is an action platformer where you take control of a fairy with a magical rod that you use to clear levels of enemies. It runs on the Jaleco Mega System 1 hardware. Other games that run on the hardware are

Saint Dragon
64th Street: A Detective Story
The Astyanax

Playstation Core Updates

The Playstation core is getting more and more accurate, thanks to the developers accuracy tests. All of the tests for the GTE timings are matching the results of a real Playstation. The GTE, also known as the Geometry Transform Engine, is a coprocessor for the original playstation that quickly performs math operations that speed up 3D graphics.

Games that were improved over the week are:

In Evil Dead – Hail to the King, you can now leave the inventory and play the game.
Graphical glitches in Tomba 2, Elemental Gearbolt, Akuji the Heartless, Gex 2+3 and Jumping Flash 3 are now gone.
And finally, SPU improvements helped fix hangs in Misadventures of Tron Bonne.

Jotego Updates

An issue witht he MCU prevented Street Fighter 1 from running. Atrac17 and Darren__O identified the issue and notified Jotego. Now Street Fighter 1 is working and playable.

Jotego has also made some progress with PCB extraction. The schematics from Capcom Bowling have been completed and will be available on Github.
Afterwards, PCB extraction for GunBird 2 has begun.

Jotego has also added some new games for Patreon subscribers to the Capcom/Mitchell core. Games added are:

Capcom World
Dokaben
Block Block.

Irem M72 Games

Games based on Irem’s M72+ hardware are coming. Starting with Dragon Breed. This was confirmed by Atrac17 who is working closely with Darren__O to get this system up and running.

Other games that ran on the hardware include:
R-Type
Ninja Spirit
Image Fight
Legend of Hero Tonma
And others

Megumi Rescue Arcade Game Added

The arcade game Megumi Rescue was added to the Sega Master System core by greyrouge. The Master System core has support for Sega’s System E arcade hardware (It was a Master System with updated VDP). This new game is a very rare arcade game that was just recently dumped and emulated, and now we can play it on the MiSTerFPGA.

Taito Egret Spinner Support for Arkanoid

Thanks to theypsilon, there is preliminary support for the spinner for Taito’s Egret II mini arcade cabinet when playing Arkanoid.
A binary is provided in the MiSTerFPGA discord that needs to replace the current MiSTer binary. This is only a test build so other functions for MiSTer might be adversely affected. So make sure you backup your main MiSTer binary before you test this one. Games like Arkanoid really need a spinner to get the most enjoyment out of them.

MiSTer Controller Lag Tests by Zez Retro

Zez Retro has a video that shows you how to perform lag tests for your controllers on the MiSTer FPGA. You can use these tests to add new controllers the MiSTerAddons Input Latency database, or compare the results of your controller to an existing on in the database. Check the video out if you’re interested in performing these lag tests.

Variable Refresh Rate Test Build

There is currently a MiSTer test build with support for variable refresh rate in the MiSTer FPGA discord server. This was developed by zakk4223. Variable refresh rate is a technology that syncs the refresh rate of your display to the refresh rate of the application that’s running.

Now why is this important for MiSTer? Well, console, computer and arcade hardware can run at weird refresh rates. For example, Mortal Kombat in the arcades runs at 53.2Hz. If you run the game on a 60Hz display you will experience framerate stutters, sound stutters and screen tearing. You can force the game to run at 60Hz, however, that will make the game run faster. Now with this MiSTer test build and a display that supports Variable Refresh Rate, if there was a Mortal Kombat core, it can run at the proper 53.2Hz refresh rate.

 

Other cores I can see this benefitting is the AO486 core. A common resolution for DOS games was 320×240 at 70Hz. Also the Gameboy and SNES systems didn’t run at exactly 60hz.

Other Miscellaneous Updates

And other cores getting miscellaneous fixes and updates are:

  • ZX Spectrum
  • Amstrad
  • Sega Master System Core
  • SNES
  • Genesis
  • MegaCD