
MiSTER Pi
We create gaming consoles, handhelds, and DIY solutions for gaming devices.

I've been eyeing the MiSTER platform since it came out - interesting concept of simulating real hardware on a FPGA vs emulating hardware in software.
I'd been turned off a bit by 1) the price and 2) the time investment of understanding the ecosystem. But years have passed, software's gotten easier to use and with the MiSTER Pi (bad name, has nothing to do with Pi foundation!) I figured it was time to dive in (also have an arcade cabinet project I'll be starting next year, which this will power).
the MiSTER Pi doesnt use the DE10 dev board directly like others do - but they've built their own board with the FPGA on it and made some improvements - such as having direct connections to other boards instead of using external adapters.
I got in on the latest batch from retroremake (currently sold out) - and accidentally clicked 4x shipping - but luckily it wasnt the slowest boat and after a few weeks it arrived. Packaging is quite nice and wasn't expecting anything fancy.
It came pre-assembled (I have enough projects around my office!) - with 128mb SRAM and analogue board. A SNES S.N.A.C. adapter (more on that in a bit) was included as well.
The SD card was pre-flashed with the MiSTER software - no roms or bios's of course. Thats where update_all comes in - drop it in your scripts folder of the SD card, and update - thats it! https://github.com/theypsilon/Update_All_MiSTer?tab=readme-ov-file
I hooked it up to my VGA monitor but it didn't support the mode - luckily it was just editing an ini file to enable the built in scaler over the VGA port.
I used my xbox controller over USB - worked right away with no mappings - fired up Mario Bros and played a few levels, off to a great start! I'll be loading up the cores and ROMs here and curating some favorites as just the GoodNES collection is 6k files(!).
Back to the S.N.A.C. This is a very odd decision to me in the MiSTER echosystem - it allows for 0 input lag with original controllers - hooking up directly to the gpio pins - stands for "Serial Native Accessory Converter" - also allows the use of light guns.
That's all great - but the connector they used is USB - but it's not USB! It also requires a level shifter if your controller is 5v. I don't know about you but the general public seeing a USB connector or a USB port is going to plug USB things into it. It seems bad to send a random 5v over USB to some pin on your controller. To make matters even more strange some SNAC adapters use HDMI connectors(!?@). I get that those connectors are likely cheap and plentiful - but from a useability and user error perpective it seems like the wrong choice.
Well that's my first impressions so far - easy to get going, ecosystem still a bit confusing - but lots of options to poke around at. My goal is to do less poking and more playing though!