Games Consoles Not On MiSTer And Their Viability (A Discussion)

[Malor]

In looking at the specs, the 3DO would be a brutal project. It's using a 12.5MHz ARM60 core, a custom math chip, two custom video coprocessors, and 36(!) DMA channels. It also has a custom, 20-bit DSP chip for audio.

That looks like a giant project to me, one that would take a whole team to do, and it might not fit on the DE-10. Even if it does fit, redesigning all those custom chips would be brutal. I don't think that's a one-person project anymore, that would take a whole team.

Plus, there aren't that many unforgettable titles on that system, so that huge amount of work would have a relatively modest payoff. I'd be quite surprised if it ever showed up.

[yxkalle]

Uzebox?

[Moondandy]

Some good suggestions here, will get some more added to the list soon, been quite busy lately. I remember talking about Uzebox a good while back, I can't remember if people said it was doable or not, I'll need to go back and find that conversation, thanks for the reminder. Tamagochi is another I forgot about that has been mentioned before.

With the 3DO from what Robert and other developers have said it would be a serious undertaking similar to doing the PSX, and you would need to have a top tier dev want to dedicate a year of work to make it happen, so nobody should expect that to happen anytime soon. I don't recall anyone saying it would be beyond the limitations of what the DE-10 nano is capable of though.

[Malor]

AO486 apparently barely fits, and the 3DO has a lot more going on. I'm not expert enough to say whether it can or can't be done, but I can say that either four or five custom, 32-bit chips certainly sounds like a lot more than what AO486 is offering.

[Reed_Solomon]

why not game child?

[Moondandy]

I actually didn't know what the Game Child was until it was mentioned recently, and realised I had one (I think the football one) as a kid, I might still have it under my bed at my parents house.

They're not really a "console" but a series of simple LCD games in shells that look like a Game Boy. Presumably support for these could be added to the G&W core if we have the roms dumped and the assets scanned. There is a chance if those exist then they could work with the current core if someone compiles the files correctly.

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Child

[Moondandy]

With the 3DO vs 486, I think that is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. I'm not a developer, but my understanding is a large part of the reason the core is so big is because it is bit of a Frankenstein's monster at this point, with so many things bolted on to it to support various things, to the point where trying to compile it is like rolling a dice to see if it succeeds or not. It has been mentioned a lot that it could really do with a rewrite from the ground up to be more efficient and have space to add more large features.

The 3DO has a fixed scope as well, while the 486 doesn't. I have no doubts that it would be a large and complex core, but at no point as Robert or any other dev raised the issue of there not being enough space on the FPGA. Presumably if the PSX fits fine then the 3DO would also. Maybe a developer can weigh in on that one.

[Malor]

Well, it's not like I'd reject a 3DO core if someone did one, but I strongly don't expect it. Between human factors and the size of the FPGA, we'd be very lucky indeed to see that happen.

edit to add: I'm not sure if the 3DO chips are even documented well. If they aren't, reverse-engineering them is likely to be just about impossible for hobbyists. Removing the tops and trying to figure out the traces/schematics by scanning the wiring will be extraordinarily difficult on chips that complex.

[dmckean]

The 3DO isn't very well documented (at least when compared to the PSX anyway).

Basically if you want to try to recruit a developer for 3DO you need to first find someone to document it thoroughly. Then you need to find someone that can make a really accurate emulator of it. This will help with troubleshooting. Otherwise the person making the core would need a 3DO modified for hardware debugging and a copy of its entire game library.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

I would rather see a CD-i core before a 3DO core. CD-i is a bastard thing with no worthwhile games (barring the few infamous ones) but it has a huge library of bizarre corporate media and obscure educational software that is worth preserving.

[pgimeno]

I would rather see a CD-i core before a 3DO core. CD-i is a bastard thing with no worthwhile games (barring the few infamous ones) but it has a huge library of bizarre corporate media and obscure educational software that is worth preserving.

You don't need a hardware emulator to preserve that library though, do you?

[slappymcphee]

I would love to see an NEC PC-FX core. I know that there has been a lot of localization work for the PC98/88 and not so much for the PC-FX, but I recently joined a community to see if I could get my feet wet in it. I bought a PC-FX several months ago with the intention of using it and with burned copies of games, but the laser in the unit isn't in the greatest condition so it only recognizes OEM discs. This means my plans have been blown out of the water unfortunately.

[Mirest]

I would love to see an NEC PC-FX core.

If PC-FX would be included as the NEC PC-FX GA ("game accelerator") for the PC-98 computer core, there would be the benefit of the "additional 3D chipset (Kubota/Hudson HuC6273) over the regular PC-FX." (Quotes from Wikipedia.)

[KremlingKuthroat19]

Forgive me for making it sound trivial, but I'm a fan of the concept of low-hanging fruit. The lowest hanging fruit in terms of console cores are the consolized PC cores. For example, we have the Atari 5200 which is essentially a repurposed Atari 800. Recently we got the Tomy Tutor which can load Tomy Pyuuta Jr. games. The Atari 800 core can also load Atari XEGS games.

Afaik, the Amstrad GX4000 could be added to the Amstrad CPC core if the core would allow carts to be loaded. The same can be said about the Minimig core if bin/cue support was added as well as the Akiko chip was written. That'd cover the CD32 and CDTV. Also, if an FM Towns core was created, you could also load FM Towns Marty games if bin/cue support was added.

[Moondandy]

Jason had a quick look at adding GX4000 support to the CPC core not long back and sadly it seems to be quite involved. I actually think what we may see is the inverse of this, with the computerisation of early console cores. A lot of the early consoles had basic carts and keyboard and tape peripherals to turn them into crude computers. I think there is a good chance we will see this happen to a few systems over the next year, the NES core for example has had some of the work done for this, and I think/hope someone will add in the features needed to add SG-3000 support to the SMS/SC-1000 core.

I would like to get a list of what early consoles had these keyboard, Basic cart and tape peripherals. Off hand I know the 2600 did.

[pgimeno]

The Philips Videopac+ G7400 had a BASIC cartridge, the C7420, which contained a Z80 CPU. There's a description of the internal communication here: http://videopac.nl/forum/index.php?topi ... 4#msg14384. I've helped a friend with adding SD card support to a real hardware card (not the original but a remade card, with an ARM processor emulating the Z80).

By the way, another cartridge, a chess game, had almost identical hardware to the BASIC one.

[Moondandy]

Oh nice, that's a cool project there.

The Videopac/Odyssey2 core is a good example of a core that can be improved significantly, getting the chip added to upgrade it to a G7400+ would be ace, and then if it could get Basic, Keyboard, Tape and the Chess cart added that would be a real best in class emulation and experience there. Hopefully someone decides to look at that one at some point; Rysha ported that one over originally.

[pgimeno]

By the way, recent versions of MAME include support for the BASIC and the chess carts (invoking as: mame videopacp -cart homecomp). That helped me a lot with that project because it provided debugging of both the Z80 and the 8048 side. And in case someone wants to make it for MiSTer, that can be used as a reference.

[seastalker]

Sega IR-7000 (the 'other' Sega handheld) from 1994... has built in game, 'Brain Drain'

[Moondandy]

So that's the one year anniversary of me making the big list and starting this thread, and it's been quite the year of MiSTer cores. Over the past year I have periodically gone back and updated the original post with other systems, and updated ones that were released of their status changed, so if you liked reading through it before you might enjoy skimming through it again a year on.

I thought it would be fun though to have a look back and see all the new console cores we have got over the past year, it's quite a list!

Bandai Super Vision 8000
Nintendo Game & Watch
VTech CreatiVision
Entex Adventure Vision
Tomy Tutor
Casio PV-1000
Casio PV-2000
Nichibutsu My Vision
BBC Bridge Companion
Gamate
Watara Supervision
Mega Duck
Sega 32X
Nintendo Pokemon Mini

14 systems, more than one a month! And that's not including the amazing progress on other console cores like:
Neo Geo CD
Sega Saturn
Nintendo 64
Konix Multisystem

Many thanks to the devs and here's hoping for another big year of console core's on MiSTer, obscure and not no-so-obscure. When I get a bit of time I'll see about doing a quick follow up post with where we seem to be with a number of the cores that are under development.

[limi]

The successor to the Cassette Vision that went up against the Famicom and PV-1000, and came out slightly better than the PV-1000. Now this is a more interesting system than some of the others on the list, as it actually had a respectable library of 30 games and even managed to secure exclusives of licensed games such as Doraemon, Lupin III and Dragon Ball. These games have all recently been dumped, so here’s hoping someone decided to look into doing this one. It does feature chips we do not have cores for yet, sadly. That being said, this is definitely one of the more interesting systems from the era we don’t have yet so fingers crossed.

It does look surprisingly decent for the era!

[12characters]

It does look surprisingly decent for the era!

A Super Cassette Vision core is on its way, see https://gitlab.com/ReverendGumby/SuperC ... ion_MiSTer. It lacks audio at the moment but it will get there.

[Monos]

A Super Cassette Vision core is on its way, see https://gitlab.com/ReverendGumby/SuperC ... ion_MiSTer. It lacks audio at the moment but it will get there.

Yes, good news. Nice one.