It's Critter Time!

So the MiSTer

If you have a retro gamer friend or are one yourself, you've probably heard the name at least. It's the current all-in-one FPGA circuit board sandwich du jour that plays pretty much anything PlayStation and prior pretty dang accurately.

Originally made with some custom boards and the DE-10 Nano, there are now fully MiSTer-specific FPGA boards that have cut the cost of getting one pretty low.

Do any of you have one or are looking to get one? Let's use this thread to answer any questions about them or just share experiences or updates to them!

Me waiting for my MiSTer pre-order to arrive.

I think this might benefit me to have but also have no idea how to get one

EdenCoven wrote: Mon Jul 14, 2025 4:14 pm I think this might benefit me to have but also have no idea how to get one

They can be a bit finicky to get a hold of since it's a lot of hobby-grade stuff, but the best places to get one are

https://retroremake.co/products/misterpi-preorder
https://misteraddons.com/products/miste ... 5343953029
https://shop.heber.co.uk/mister-multisy ... enclosure/

Not certain where exactly all those places ship, but those are the 3 most reliable prebuilts available.

I actually just got the CDi core set up last night now that it's on update_all, it's genuinely amazing how far the project has come after I got mine a couple years back, when the PS1 was considered impossible let alone all the other 5th gen consoles now available.

Recently started installing various romhacks onto mine. It's been a fun way to pass the time.
Speaking of which, I'm actually planning to get my hands on the Multisystem 2 when it's scheduled to ship in roughly a month from now. My old one will be going to a friend who was interested when that happens.

I've got a MiSTer (using the DE-10 Nano board). I have a bunch of consoles (and flashcarts), and generally prefer to just use those when I want to play games for them, but I've gotten a lot of use out of it anyway. I like to bring my MiSTer with me to other peoples' houses during events; it's one small box that does everything, and other people usually don't have CRTs so HDMI output lets me bypass most TVs doing a bad job with composite. And then there's consoles that I think are neat, but I'm not so passionate about them that I want to go out and get them (like I don't really need a ColecoVision, or Intellivision, or Atari Lynx) and it's nice to have a convenient way to play that stuff on a TV.

I think software emulators are probably going to be at the cutting edge of accuracy (all of the emulator developers I see hanging out in places that are doing new research and running hardware tests and discovering new things are working on software emulators, and there's more C++ developers out there that can update emulators with new findings than there are Verilog developers), but emulators are good enough overall at this point that having the very best and accurately emulating obscure console bugs doesn't matter to people who just want to play licensed games (but it does matter to homebrew developers).

I had a lot of fun with the new CD-i support, and it was cool to actually experience a lot of these games that are famous for their cutscenes. Of course not having support for the Digital Video Cartridge means I can't play stuff like Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam yet, but I'm not sure if any CD-i emulator has that.

i am waiting on the SuperStationᵒⁿᵉ myself

hopefully it ships... by end of year

I couldn't resist getting a SuperStationᵒⁿᵉ myself even though I already had a setup haha. It just looks so nice and there's a lot of I/O and video options I don't have with what I'm using. I like that they're explicitly going against the way Analogue does business, even if it is repackaging open source stuff for the most part.

oh never mind this is way too complicated for us to bother parsing lmao.

It's wild though. Imagining explaining the existence of this advice to our child self. Unreal.

This is the first I've seen of the SuperStation since I don't follow MiSTer projects often.. The translucent blue plastic is already calling to me.

I was lucky to get a DE-10 Nano, analog I/O board, and RAM expansion module for comparatively not-so-much, some years back. So far, I've only used it to play homebrew titles that I've purchased, like Xeno Crisis for Neo Geo, or freeware I've downloaded, like the NES & C64 versions of Wolfling. At some point, I should extract the Neo Geo games that I've bought from GOG.

I'm gonna see if I can put my PC Engine in maybe a self-made case that's about the size of a PC Engine case. I should be able to leave the Analogue I/O board on top of the DE-10 nano, though I'll have the USB ports in front of the DE-10 nano instead of below.

oh yay!! i've been having so much fun with my mister pi, it's the first one of these things i've played around with! i picked up a cute 13" trinitron for free around here recently and was looking for stuff to use it with and jumped on the last batch. it's been so nice to have around the house especially with the small CRT on the end table right near the couch. really fun to stream to it with mistercast too just for kicks lol

Oh HELL yeah I love the MiSTer! Best money I've ever fuckin spent in my LIFE!!!

Back in like 2020 or so I caught my homie sarvets streaming some shit from his and I was like...hold up what is THIS??? And he told me about it and everything and I was like holy shit this thing is like a genuine miracle on this earth

So I got one with some of my COVID money. Back then I had to shop around for the parts in various places, the market's developed A LOT since then.

So I got it put it together, started playing and was just absolutely awestruck at how accurate everything was. I about cried testing Sailor Moon S on the Super Nintendo and like it felt the EXACT SAME as real hardware. I was an immediate advocate for it like IMMEDIATELY in FGC spaces. In fact it became the platform we run VSav tournaments on: MiSTer saves so so so so soooooo much hassle in having to wrangle up arcade boards and superguns and shit while also being easy to set up for a PVM

Straight up one of the greatest blessings videogames ever got. I've played through a bunch of stuff like Ys 1, 2, 4 (all TurboGrafx CD versions), Alundra, Shining Soul, Megaman X4, etcetc

I boot up Lords of Thunder from time to time cuz that game absolutelt rips!!!!

And like on my 1440p monitor everything looks so insanely crisp it's GODLIKE!!!!