Retronauts Episode 261: The MiSTer Revolution (Patreon)

This week's episode is a little bit of an interview segment, a little bit of a public service announcement, and a whole lot technical—but that's the nature of this particular topic, and these particular interview subjects. I recently had the honor of attending a small gathering of active tech and content creators called RetroCreate (hosted by RetroRGB and My Life in Gaming). While I was there, I met many of the people whose work has made it possible for me to produce things like my Video Works series. I also took the opportunity to speak with two of the guests. First, there's Artemio, who made his name working on the famous Policenauts fan translation and currently is developing Sega Genesis audio utility MDFourier. I also spoke to SmokeMonster, who has created the definitive ROM database for tons of classic consoles. What I really wanted to talk to them about was an open-source project they've both had a hand in: The MiSTer FPGA project.

If you haven't heard of MiSTer, that's OK! We go into great detail about it in this episode. It's something we haven't really talked about much on Retronauts, mainly because I wanted experts (such as this week's guests!) to dive into it before I shared my less-complete perspective on it. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll come away as impressed as I am by the capabilities and potential of the MiSTer. You might even want to build one for yourself.

If you're interested in learning more about Artemio and SmokeMonster's work, you can follow them on Twitter (Artemio | SmokeMonster) and branch out from there. And for more on MiSTer, I recommend checking out the site mentioned in the episode, PorkchopExpress's MiSTer Add-Ons.

I'm still fine-tuning my own MiSTer, but it's an absolutely incredible project—basically MAME as hardware—and I can't wait to see how it evolves.