This past weekend I was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of my SuperStation one (S1) and with it came a whole unexpected afternoon of tinkering and testing that reinforced my love this new wave of retro preservation. I'm sure many of you are familiar with this tech already but for those who aren't FPGAs are versatile boards that can, if programed correctly, emulate hardware of older devices. They have many other uses as well, ie military hardware and even upscalers like the RetroTink 4K.
At the very least, the tech is impressive, but at it's height, it's fucking bananas. If you are like me, which I know many of you on here are, you're taking every precaution you can to ensure your collection of consoles are in their most tip top shape. You've replaced caps when needed, fixing cold/cracked joints when they arise, or, like I did just last year, essentially performed surgery on a genesis to bypass many parts of the board to bring it back to life. We care about retro games, but really many of us want to know that we'll be able to play these games as they were intended even in old age. But the reality is that hardware doesn't last forever. GPUs and Boards die and capacitors leak without knowing, or corrosion spreads on a board without you're knowledge, or at least until you notice too late.
All of that was to bring me to the thick of this conversation... FPGA consoles.
As of now, I've engaged with three types of FPGA manufacturers/brands: RetroRemake's S1, the Analogue 3D, and the FunnyPlaying FP-GBC. All of which are stupid impressive with how accurate they run games, as if they were on actual hardware. There are many many other products and manufacturers. If you wanna go down a rabbit hole, just look into the MiSTer community and get ready to get lost in the content.
I know there are a bunch of people who may see this and say something like, "Wait til they find out about emulation" or "Emulation is free". And yes, I get that, emulation is often fantastic and can be better and more accessible for most, but as someone who emulated for decades, I eventually came back to the original consoles and played as close to their native presentation as I could. I want the scanlines, I want the crunchy graphics, I want the developer's initial intentions to be fulfilled. I want the original experience and I want it to last.
Now, Analogue is likely the most popular of the manufacturers I mentioned, but one thing that urks me a bit with their 3D, though I love it overall, is that it only has an HDMI for display output. As someone who uses a RetroTink and CRT, I really wish that they gave us an option for analogue signals... Analogue doesn't offer analogue =P ... Otherwise, the console is arguably the best way to play original N64 games on a modern display, being able to overclock the system and reduce the infamous framerate drops of the OG console.
The S1 mediates this display issue by allowing component, composite, vga, hdmi signals, all around. It's awesome. It's fucking bananas. I love it so far but what it does better in preserving the original outputs of these consoles, it loses in it's accessibility. That MiSTer project I was talking about is what the S1 is based on, and, for better or worse, the start up and continued usage is not beginner friendly. I'm saying that as someone who uses Arch and other Linux builds and loves the tinkering aspect of these devices. If you wanted to get an S1 for your kid, it might be good for them to mess around and learn on, but it's not gonna be without some headaches.
Regardless of accessibility and the like, I love supporting these projects as they give me hope that when my PS1 dies, and the ebay/craigslist listings start thinning out, these FPGA consoles will be around and available brand new, and I can continue to experience games the way I love them and the way I want to experience them.
How do you all feel about FPGA? Have you gotten into the projects out there or do you have an Analogue or the like? I would love to know your thoughts.
