Jotego’s CPS3 core hits MiSTer FPGA beta, RetroRemake GUI opens to all

Jotego released the long-awaited CPS3 beta core for MiSTer FPGA on June 12. The beta is currently gated behind a Patreon subscription; once it clears beta it will be free to everyone. The CPS3 is one of the most technically demanding boards Capcom ever built: six games total, a custom security cartridge that bricked the board if its battery died, and CD-ROM-based memory loading that took up to 25 minutes per game swap on original hardware. Getting it running in FPGA form has been years in the making, and the community has treated it as the platform’s white whale. One note worth keeping in mind: early footage of CPS3 games booting was captured on a SiDi128 rather than MiSTer hardware directly, because Jotego was chasing SDRAM noise issues on MiSTer at the time. The beta landing on June 12 is the confirmation that those issues are resolved enough to ship.

The same roundup from RetroRGB covers a lot of ground beyond CPS3. RetroRemake’s console mode GUI, previously locked to MiSTer Pi and Super Station One owners, is now in public open beta and installable by anyone via GitHub. That matters because the MiSTer’s biggest barrier to entry has always been its setup complexity, and a polished GUI lowers that wall considerably. Elsewhere: a MiSTer GroovyRelay project lets the platform act as a cast target for Plex, Jellyfin, YouTube, and other sources, outputting through a 15 kHz analog CRT. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive core now supports MD+, which adds CD-quality soundtracks to cartridge games. A two-player Game Gear link core landed, allowing side-by-side Gear-to-Gear play on a single MiSTer. Rmonic79 released stable builds of D-Con and Blood Bros, preview builds of Trio the Punch and Sky Smasher, and a development update on Legionnaire. A test build of the Macintosh LC core is also out, booting MacOS 6.0.8 in black and white with sound and floppy still to come.

The CPS3 core landing in beta is the headline. The rest of this roundup is a reminder of how active the MiSTer development scene is right now.