Hey MiSTer, Whatcha up to?

A (not so) Brief Introduction

An eternity ago, back in the now-distant realm of 2024, I became aware of the SuperStation. This was a ground-breaking discovery, because I had been tempted by the MiSTer ever since Jeff Gerstmann (formerly of this site, as you might remember) started talking about it way back when (approximately a decade ago, I think). I never would have considered myself to be much of an emulation pervert, mostly because I am usually perfectly fine with just using the more commercially available ports for most things. I've got a Switch cart with all the Final Fantasy NES-SNES remakes on it, for example, and I've got an NSO subscription that gets me access to a lot of Nintendo games at least. I bought the PC release of Chrono Trigger everyone got mad about on account of basically just being the mobile port, even! It's fine, it does what I want, which is allow me to play Chrono Trigger.

The thing that attracted me to the idea of the MiSTer was not necessarily the promise of Hardware Accurate (or as close as you can get without owning the actual hardware, anyway) gaming, is my point. It was more the promise of being able to Tinker With Something. I am not actually a big tinkering guy, but I did build my own PCs, and when I started buying prebuilts instead because I was too lazy to build them, I still did (and still do) a lot of swapping bits in and out and manually upgrading them. PC and PC-adjacent tinkering is the realm where I am most comfortable tinkering with shit, and the MiSTer was exactly that.

Unfortunately, it is a real pain in the ass to source those bits when you have also just moved to a foreign country and shipping components from the US is too expensive for you, a person low on funds because you just moved to a foreign country and that takes a lot of money (even when the company you work for picks up most of the tab).

I'm rambling - let's just say that at the time I didn't have the money and the whole idea of putting a MiSTer together and fucking around with it went on the backburner. Then the SuperStation appeared, and was not just cheap but also the hard part (putting the thing together) was already done, leaving just the interesting part which is messing with different cores and whatnot. I preordered it, then two years went by, and now I have it.

I didn't spring for the dock, and I'm still kind of surprised at how tiny it ended up being. Nice box, though.

Setup

Out of the box, the SuperStation comes with three things: the console itself, which includes a 32 GB microSD card (where all the data lives), a pretty nice looking USB C cable (you have to provide your own plug), and an HDMI cable that isn't very long and now lives in the same drawer as the 30 other HDMI cables I don't need. I spent something like €20 to grab a dedicated plug for it (if you have a Steam Deck that adapter will work for it too, as will basically any phone charger made in the last five years), plugged in an HDMI cable and a keyboard, and turned it on. It turned on, the main screen popped up, and we were off to the races.

The races here, of course, meant setting up the wifi (the SuperStation comes with on-board wifi, which is very nice) and running the update script to make sure I had the most current versions of the core. The SuperStation does not currently have its fancy Consolized front-end that is one of the much ballyhooed benefits of the SuperStation, but the MiSTer front-end is straightforward enough for me that I do not actually give a shit - it is both simple and clean and reminds me of the Old Days even if it is not actually anything like that.

Once I'd done the basics (and tried out some of the homebrew games pre-loaded on the thing just to check that my controller of choice, an 8bitdo SN30 Pro, would work) it was time to put some games on the thing. I turned the system off, popped the SD card out, and plugged it into my PC, where the roms live.

A Brief Aside About Documentation

Setting the system up, and figuring out what went where, was a painless process for me - mostly because I've got an Analogue Pocket and the file system (and where stuff is supposed to go) is more or less 1:1. Without previous experience, I can imagine this being more of a pain in the ass, because the only thing you get in terms of an instruction manual for the SuperStation is a QR code that takes you to a YouTube video that serves as a quickstart guide.

I cannot say this strongly enough: fuck this shit. I don't want to watch a video, I want fucking text on a screen, maybe with pictures. That there is no such documentation for the SuperStation is frankly ridiculous. You could also go to the discord, but I would rather saw my own nuts off with a rusty blade than go in a discord to find information. A discord is not a substitute for technical documentation! Get the fuck out of here with that shit! The fine folks on the GB Discord, specifically those in the Game Emulation & Emulation Hardware thread, have given me help here and there when I've asked, but usually if I'm asking a question there it is either because

1. I have already exhausted my usual searching techniques and have either been unable to find the solution, or the solution I've found isn't working and I am clearly missing something but need to talk through the issue to figure it out.

2. I am feeling too lazy to search an answer up on my own and know someone in there probably has the answer or knows the right place to look.

In fairness, I'll also note that the main page for the SuperStation also has a few "helpful tips" one of which explains how to pair a controller via bluetooth, so I guess good job with that one. I was able to sync a couple 8bitdo controllers (the SN30 Pro and the N64 controller). It was painless. I am still pissed that's the only place where any written documentation for the fuckin' thing exists.

Fortunately for all the other stuff I've been using, the github pages of the various cores and scripts are pretty well-documented. Bless you MiSTer programmers who document the shit out of everything you do, I love you.

Adding Cores and ROMs

The star of the current state of MiSTer core shenanigans is the update_all.sh script. One of the GB discord folk immediately brought this up when I mentioned wanting to set up the RetroAchievements cores, and it was a moment's work to find it and drop the script file in the appropriate folder (hint: it's the one called "Scripts"). Running a script on the MiSTer is a painless process of hitting the script command in the main menu and navigating to whichever script you are looking to run. update_all.sh pulls down a whole shitload of FPGA cores and also has options to grab other useful things like BIOS files for some cores and the necessary files for arcade game emulation (i.e. the MAME files or roms or what-have-you) as well - although to do that you have to agree that yes, you know these files may skirt the line of legality and yes, you are willing to be on the hook for that if the copyright cops break down your door and beat your ass.

I would never condone piracy, which is why I was sure that everything I have a copy of I own legitimately. You should too. If there's nothing else we've learned in the last few weeks, it's that major game publishers and developers are very concerned with preservation of history and making sure that it is easy to play old games. It's like the ESA's number one priority!

While I had the SD card hooked up to my PC, I took the opportunity to move a bundle of ROMs I had set aside for this very occasion. NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, a couple PSX things, some PC Engine stuff, and that was a good enough start for me. Plugged the card back into the SuperStation, ran update_all to get the rest of the cores and files I'd need, and jumped in..

Another brief aside on RetroAchievements on the MiSTer

I have, like many other members of this community (and staff), gotten kind of into RetroAchievements over the last couple years. They're fun! I enjoy them! It warms my heart to be among the 8.33% of players to have gotten the Flash Turtle achievement for TMNT on the NES, and when I finally beat TMNT on the NES, I will have a little achievement pop that says I fuckin' did that shit.

Setting up the RA cores has an extra step here which I had to go back and do because I forgot about it. When you grab the cores, there's also a specific .ini file for RetroAchievements you have to edit with your user name and password. It took me like two seconds to pop it into my PC, edit the file, and pop it back into the MiSTer. The RA cores are all well-documented so finding instructions for how to do all this nonsense was a snap.

The First Game

The first game I fired up on the SuperStation was, because it had been front of mind back when I first pre-ordered the damn thing, Symphony of the Night. Given the SuperStation's whole aesthetic, I figured firing up a PSX game as the maiden voyage, so to speak, was the most appropriate choice as well, so this was an easy call.

Hey, did you know that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a very good video game? Shocking, I know, but I would be a fucking liar if I said the experience of playing it on the SuperStation didn't feel fantastic. There's some good CRT filters in there, if you are a pervert into that sort of thing (it's me I'm pervert) and hey, if you want to get real grimy with it you can manually set up a custom filter of your own. I am not that kind of person, but I do like a nice CRT filter, and this provided that without any fuss. Everything sounds exactly as good as I wanted it to sound, and the controls feel snappy the way it would on actual hardware. Shit, the game even pauses for (nonexistant) CD loads when you move through the big areas! I am sure there's probably a way to turn that off, but I haven't done a ton of tweaking to the settings because frankly I was too busy just bouncing between a million games.

I played through the intro of this one, at any rate, before realizing I could be using the RA core instead so I started over. I want my cheevos, man!

I did not notice any difference in the feel of the two cores, although for all I know there are some changes True Sickos probably could point out to me. For my purposes, which boil down to "play SotN and have it feel like it should and also get some achievements," it's perfect.

This was where I ran into the first (and so far only) oddity of the system, however. For some reason, the SuperStation (maybe the MiSTer as a whole for all I know) doesn't recognize the menu button on the SN30 Pro when you've loaded into a core. I'm not sure why this is, but it means I have to keep another controller by me to pull the menu up when I'm playing most things. I thought it might be an 8bitdo thing, but the N64 controller works fine! As far as flies in the ointment go, this one is basically nothing.

After that, I got down to the most important business of all, which was playing Castlevania 64. The N64 core works great!

So Many Arcade Games

Now I might've screwed myself a little by downloading a shitload of arcade games - I am saying this specifically because I am subject to the curse of being indecisive when confronted with a large list of games - having access to like, most of the arcade games made from 1970-whatever to like 2002 is a Problem.

I played some of this too

However, I've been on a real Street Fighter kick (if you'll pardon the pun) recently so obviously I just sat and played mostly Street Fighter Alpha 2 and was so fuckin' delighted both by how good everything feels and by the fact that it gave me an excuse to dig out my old Quanba Q4 (longtime readers will know it from the Let's You and Me Fight series of posts I did way back in.... actually you know what let's not think too hard about how long ago that was. All these fighting games I have access to now means I might end up bringing it back, because why not revisit something from oh god eleven years ago you gotta be shitting me) and now I have a dedicated arcade stick for my MiSTer! Which is good, because another thing I got working was, as you will notice, was the NeoGeo core and now.... now I can play Neo Turf Masters.

Just look at this guy! What a guy!

So, so much Neo Turf Masters. Hey, have you played Neo Turf Masters before? Because I had only seen it on some Remap streams and thought "that looks like my brand of golf game" and turns out it absolutely fucking is my brand of golf game. God it's so good. It's simple, it's goofy, the music is shit hot, and something about the audio clip that informs you when you are On the GREEEEN is just delightful. The animation on your golfer as they swing is something else too, it is damn near hypnotic. They animated the shit out of that.

Play Neo Turf Masters if you get the chance.

YEAH I GOLF REAL GOOD

I think that's probably it for now - I'm going to keep messing with this thing, and frankly even though it took fuckin' forever to arrive, it was worth the wait. If you have the chance to get your hands on a SuperStation, I say go for it! If not, get your hands on a MiSTer some other way. It's a real tremendous thing. Especially now that you can do RetroAchievements on it.