Software emulation has come a very long way over the years, and today, for the most part, the accuracy of the games are so close to match the muscle memory of having played certain games over and over again, but there is still something to be desired to how things felt "back in the day."
That's where FPGAs come in! With some really smart people, we've gotten a few options towards preserving not only these old games, but the behaviors of original hardware for that authentic experience.
The first truly marketed option would have to be the Analogue devices. Starting with the Analogue NT, its $500 price point was completely lost on me because I didn't know what FPGAs actually did. I thought it was just another clone console like the Retro Duo or FC Twin. Had I known that it was a cartridge-capable simulation of the original hardware and would have been the most accurate representation of the games and their behavior to original hardware at the time, I'd have probably spent the money on one.
I'm glad I didn't, however, because I may not have gotten into my preferred FPGA option, the MiSTer project. Called as such because it's more MiST than MiST itself (the same project on a weaker FPGA board), the creator of MiSTer sought to expand the MiST project when Intel/Terasic brought out an affordable option for an FPGA chip stronger than the one used in MiST. The de10-nano board touts a Cyclone V FPGA chip, which so far as allowed us to receive as-accurate-as-possible cores as late in gaming's history as the N64/PS1/Saturn generation.
FPGA chips are kind of like CPUs, however they are programmable to be written into basically any kind of electronic component you need, and can even be segmented and written to act like the entire circuitry on the board it's emulating. This is basically why they can bring better results with accurately depicting a game the way it felt on original hardware than software emulation, because you can program the chip to work at the same frequencies that original hardware did, as opposed to the set frequencies that CPUs and ARM chips have on PCs and smart phones with software emulation.
The program set for the different consoles are considered as "cores." You load the core, which rewrites the FPGA into the subset of chips for that console's original hardware layout. These cores are written by people with a passion for preservation who have spent a lot of their free time reverse-engineering chips on console hardware, cartridge hardware, and even memory card hardware, to ensure the most authentic experience as possible. They've also take the libery to give options towards enhancing the chips therein, allowing us to see what could have been possible if the console had upgraded versions of the chips for the time.
There are other projects that I'm mostly unfamiliar with. Just with this thread's title alone, SIDI is an FPGA platform that focuses a lot on arcade stuff. It's a slightly lesser capable FPGA chip than MiSTer, and you can find pretty much everything that SIDI can run on MiSTer in terms of gaming, from arcades to consoles, and even older PC architectures (such as a 486 setup to run DOS/Win95 games). MARS is an up-and-coming platform that aims to be able to emulate the hardware all the way up to Atomiswave arcade games (which uses Dreamcast hardware) - but a lot of people have a ton of doubts that this project is going to go anywhere. It's all hearsay for now.
Analogue has been a pretty disappointing company overall, in my opinion, due to their lack of straight answers, constant delays on deliveries and promises, and their customer support is generally unresponsive from what I've seen. I almost bought an Analogue Pocket from them, but I held off due to how I've heard a loud amount of people complain about their business practices. On top of that, the system seems to use a Cyclone V equipvalent for the main FPGA, but implements a secondary, far less capable FPGA chip for developers to actually inject their own cores on. I'm not sure why they locked the main FPGA away, but I'm sure it probably has a lot to do with legal reasons. The Pocket is the only product from them I would consider, because the MiSTer project currently isn't at a point where it can be a decently sized handheld system.
Personally, I wouldn't consider anything but the components for a MiSTer for any FPGA endeavors. It's mostly open sourced, the community is always very active, and new cores always seem to be developed for MiSTer first, before another platform comes in mind. Due to the cost of FPGA chips, you're not going to see cores for much beyond the N64/PS1/Saturn era of game consoles due to the size of the FPGA chips and how much they can hold. But trust me when I say: The games running through FPGA hardware emulation feel so freaken close to how games felt on their original consoles, and it's rejuvenated a lot of interest from me to actually play those old games.
EDIT: Drobotic pointed something out in the paragraph I wrote explaining vaguely what FPGA chips do in regard to retro gaming emulation, which I changed for better clarity.
That's where FPGAs come in! With some really smart people, we've gotten a few options towards preserving not only these old games, but the behaviors of original hardware for that authentic experience.
The first truly marketed option would have to be the Analogue devices. Starting with the Analogue NT, its $500 price point was completely lost on me because I didn't know what FPGAs actually did. I thought it was just another clone console like the Retro Duo or FC Twin. Had I known that it was a cartridge-capable simulation of the original hardware and would have been the most accurate representation of the games and their behavior to original hardware at the time, I'd have probably spent the money on one.
I'm glad I didn't, however, because I may not have gotten into my preferred FPGA option, the MiSTer project. Called as such because it's more MiST than MiST itself (the same project on a weaker FPGA board), the creator of MiSTer sought to expand the MiST project when Intel/Terasic brought out an affordable option for an FPGA chip stronger than the one used in MiST. The de10-nano board touts a Cyclone V FPGA chip, which so far as allowed us to receive as-accurate-as-possible cores as late in gaming's history as the N64/PS1/Saturn generation.
FPGA chips are kind of like CPUs, however they are programmable to be written into basically any kind of electronic component you need, and can even be segmented and written to act like the entire circuitry on the board it's emulating. This is basically why they can bring better results with accurately depicting a game the way it felt on original hardware than software emulation, because you can program the chip to work at the same frequencies that original hardware did, as opposed to the set frequencies that CPUs and ARM chips have on PCs and smart phones with software emulation.
The program set for the different consoles are considered as "cores." You load the core, which rewrites the FPGA into the subset of chips for that console's original hardware layout. These cores are written by people with a passion for preservation who have spent a lot of their free time reverse-engineering chips on console hardware, cartridge hardware, and even memory card hardware, to ensure the most authentic experience as possible. They've also take the libery to give options towards enhancing the chips therein, allowing us to see what could have been possible if the console had upgraded versions of the chips for the time.
There are other projects that I'm mostly unfamiliar with. Just with this thread's title alone, SIDI is an FPGA platform that focuses a lot on arcade stuff. It's a slightly lesser capable FPGA chip than MiSTer, and you can find pretty much everything that SIDI can run on MiSTer in terms of gaming, from arcades to consoles, and even older PC architectures (such as a 486 setup to run DOS/Win95 games). MARS is an up-and-coming platform that aims to be able to emulate the hardware all the way up to Atomiswave arcade games (which uses Dreamcast hardware) - but a lot of people have a ton of doubts that this project is going to go anywhere. It's all hearsay for now.
Analogue has been a pretty disappointing company overall, in my opinion, due to their lack of straight answers, constant delays on deliveries and promises, and their customer support is generally unresponsive from what I've seen. I almost bought an Analogue Pocket from them, but I held off due to how I've heard a loud amount of people complain about their business practices. On top of that, the system seems to use a Cyclone V equipvalent for the main FPGA, but implements a secondary, far less capable FPGA chip for developers to actually inject their own cores on. I'm not sure why they locked the main FPGA away, but I'm sure it probably has a lot to do with legal reasons. The Pocket is the only product from them I would consider, because the MiSTer project currently isn't at a point where it can be a decently sized handheld system.
Personally, I wouldn't consider anything but the components for a MiSTer for any FPGA endeavors. It's mostly open sourced, the community is always very active, and new cores always seem to be developed for MiSTer first, before another platform comes in mind. Due to the cost of FPGA chips, you're not going to see cores for much beyond the N64/PS1/Saturn era of game consoles due to the size of the FPGA chips and how much they can hold. But trust me when I say: The games running through FPGA hardware emulation feel so freaken close to how games felt on their original consoles, and it's rejuvenated a lot of interest from me to actually play those old games.
EDIT: Drobotic pointed something out in the paragraph I wrote explaining vaguely what FPGA chips do in regard to retro gaming emulation, which I changed for better clarity.
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