MiSTer in the world of Speedrunning

***Intro***
In retro speedrunning there is constant debate over the use of emulation. From accuracy to input lag, or the cost of real hardware and some games, the debate never ends. Even without the debate you still have the issue with systems becoming increasingly harder to find, requiring refurbishment, and aging out entirely.

Along comes MiSTer, the FPGA hardware emulation project. It sits as a bridge between emulation and real hardware. It honors hardware accuracy while giving you the all-in-one box benefits of emulation. It blurs the lines between the two in the best ways by removing the debate between frame rate differences, and gives you the option to expand upon the base system to address the needs of input lag and and open up upscaling abilities.

This is primarily for the speedrunner that likes to run various games, across various platforms, prefers to have them as accurate as possible, while maintaining a slim setup. If you want to move away from some of the hiccups of software emulation, or don't want to deal with tracking down working systems, and using signal splitters or upscalers to capture, this could be for you. If you already have a setup, run minimal games, or have a flashcarts for your systems, you probably have everything you need already and may not find any use from this. If you’re a hardware enthusiast/collector it will never replace the nostalgic feeling of blowing into the cartridge, popping it into the system, and firing it up, but, if your main goal is speedrunning an accurate representation of the game, slim setup, on a budget (comparatively), this should be something to look at seriously.



***Framerate differences between emulation and consoles***
The NES runs at 60.098FPS. The Sega Genesis runs at 59.922. Emulators run at an even 60FPS. Over time these slight differences can stack up as an advantage or disadvantage leading to time conversions and split leaders boards separating emulation and real hardware.

MiSTer addresses this with 2 analog video output options that suit different setups. If you already have invested in an upscaler, or have an analog capture setup, you may want to look at the “Direct Video” option. It allows you to use a HDMI to VGA adapter to output analog video via the native HDMI port. From here you can use VGA directly, or grab a VGA to component or composite cable and plug into your existing setup. This gives you the true analog video signal as if it were coming directly from the original hardware; The true resolution at the true speed. It would just be like adding the original console to your existing setup.

While the previous option gives you the needed true analog signal, my recommendation for any speedrunner would be the I/O add-on board. It opens up a lot of possibilities, all of which are a benefit, not only with video, but even controller input (which we will get to later), audio, and interaction. The I/O add-on board adds a native VGA port which sends out a true analog signal exactly like the Direct Video option, but it outputs analog at all times and does not require an option to toggle in the cores. The primary benefit is that the HDMI port is now available to use as an upscaled digital audio/video signal ready for capture. This gives you the versatility of running your direct, true, analog signal from the IO board to your analog setup, all while using the HDMI port to send out the digital, upscaled signal to your capture card. This alleviates any need for something like a RetroTink2x, OSSC, or Framemeister as the MiSTer HDMI port would be sending out a signal of up to 1440p (6x).

You may be asking, why not just use HDMI to send video to my capture card, then to my gaming monitor? Depending on the system and game you run, it could work. In reality, none of the video options are optimal for speedrunners, unless your monitor supports non-standard formats (which is rare). You will either see screen tearing, get frame delay, or get no video at all. Using the analog source gives you direct, exact, realtime video as if it were the actual console. Having a 1-2 frame buffer on the HDMI signal going to the capture card is no big deal as you wouldn’t be playing off the capture to begin with.



***Input options***
With the use of an OTG adapter, USB add-on board, or USB port on the BlisSTer board, MiSTer will support any USB controller. Currently testing in beta, MiSTer can poll a USB device every 1ms. At 60 fps a frame lasts 16.33 milliseconds which means MiSTer is checking the USB device for an input 16.33 times per frame. This eliminates virtually any type of input lag. Other operating systems poll every 8ms on average, which is only checking roughly twice per frame.

If direct controller communication with the core at 0 lag is more your thing, MiSTer offers 2 other options.

One is the BLisSTer board. This is an additional add-on board that connects under the MiSTer. This will give 2 controllers direct access to the core, while having the added benefit of controller translation. So if you prefer to use a SNES controller while playing the Genesis, you just need the SNES BlisS cable.

The other option is the User I/O port on the I/O add-on board. Using a SNAC adapter with BlisS cable over this port gives 1 native system controller direct communication with the core. This means you can plug in a NES controller to use on the NES core, or a Genesis controller with the Genesis core.

Please note the translation feature is specific to the BlisSTer board, not the BlisS cables. When using the SNAC adapter, you’d still need to use a Raphnet adapter, or similar product, to use a different controller directly with the system core.



***Emulation accuracy and behavior***
--Note: The following may not be 100% accurate. This is just my understanding of this works, but could be a poor analogy.--

“Cycle Accurate” is a term that is thrown around quite often, but has little proof behind it at the moment. This is just a description of being perfectly accurate to the native hardware's electronic cycles.

This is obtainable through both hardware and software emulation. The main difference is that in order for a software based emulator to run cycle accurate, it would have to run on an extremely powerful computer as there is a layer between it and the information, an operating system and the application itself. Even a modern gaming rig couldn't run a cycle accurate software SNES emulator at full speed.

Hardware emulation can tackle the task of being cycle accurate a lot easier than software, as the hardware is designed to tackle the very specific task while removing the OS/application layers between it and the information. This allows the code on the chip to emulate the console as it was actually designed.

The best way itI can summarize it is that hardware based emulation looks at truly emulating the system itself, whereas software emulation is taking the route of emulating the games as best as possible with the power available, taking shortcuts where needed. With hardware emulation, developers try to be accurate down to signal path, but at times may have to take the route of shortcuts as well. This is done without any impact to the overall results, but keep that in mind if you want 100% accurate down to the signal path emulation.

Since the hardware based solution is trying to represent the system itself, we get more accurate console behavior. Understand, there are still errors in the programming that can lead to inaccuracies, but the project is open source allowing for others to submit bugs, or even submit code to fix the problems themselves. As a speedrunner you are in a position to know a game inside and out and could actually be a viable source of information of system and game accuracy. For instance, I have already noticed the SNES core handles the initial RNG in Super Smash TV accurately, whereas SNES9x does not. And in Streets of Rage the sprite generation, system slowdown, and graphical issues are all identical to the original hardware, something most of the official Virtual Console releases do not achieve.

While these things don't prove the cores are 100% accurate (only true scientific testing will), they’re major differences I have noticed when comparing the games I run and know to their original and software emulated counterparts.



***Utility***
The MiSTer also can operate in a utilitarian way for speedrunners. For instance, there is already a NES TAS core which allows you to run TAS playback. It could be looked at as a step between software and console verification.

And since the device natively uses ROMs you get the ability to run utility ROMs, like the 240p Test Suite giving you the ability to troubleshoot and tweak video. Or the various controller testing utilities. Be it a USB controller, or a controller using one of the various methods of direct communication with the core, you’d have the ability to see how different controllers interact with the system. Or practice ROMs that were made to circumvent the need for savestates.

There will also be an input display utility. Zoggins, the developer behind RetroSpy, has already started work on MiSTer support. Using the network connection, it will talk directly to the RetroSpy application on a host PC and provide the input data for display without the need of any additional hardware and very little cpu overhead to the MiSTer system.

And once again, you have another IO add-on board feature; It adds 3 physical buttons to the system itself. One resets the MiSTer, one toggles the on screen display/menu, and the final will reset the game you are playing at the time. As a speedrunner, that last one is a lifesaver. Sure you could toggle the menu with your controller and scroll to reset, but nothing is easier than just pressing one button. Not to mention it is nostalgic to press a physical button on the system to reset the game.



***Wants***
There are some missing features that would definitely benefit speedrunners. The biggest one would be save states across the cores. There is work being done to add this feature (at least on the GBA core), so it is likely to see this feature arrive soon. It would be an added bonus if we could have multiple save states with custom titles.

This one could be asking a lot, but having a way for the MiSTer to communicate with LiveSplit, be it over the network or the use of the console port, would open up the ability to use the auto-splitting feature as it could grab information from the game similar to how LiveSplit works with software emulators currently.

Cartridge readers could also be a benefit to the validity of speedruns. It would allow you to operate off your existing physical library, and allow the use of flashcarts for abilities not yet in MiSTer. As well, some people just prefer the genuine cartridge when doing a speedrun.

To give more co-op possibilities, seeing some form of online multiplayer support would be great. There are some speedrun boards out there that ban online multiplayer due to lag and manipulations available, but this could bridge that gap possibly. At the very least it would give runners an option to practice multiplayer in a more accurate environment.



***Entry costs and the hardware it replaces***
In my opinion, the most basic MiSTer setup a speedrunner should start off with would consist of the following:
$140 - DE10 Nano Kit
$60 - 128MB RAM
$12-$60 - 64GB-400GB microSD Card (depending on game library size)
$10 - Your choice of HDMI to VGA video adapter
$10-$15 - VGA to your choice of analog video adapter
$5 - Your choice of 3.5mm to RCA adapter
$8 - MicroUSB to USB 4 port hub
$15 - Heatsink and Fan

This setup would get you the main board, RAM to support the entire core library, microSD card for the system and game library, a USB hub to allow you to connect 4 devices (like a keyboard/mouse, USB controller, etc.), along with the needed adapters to get analog signal out of the device. It would make it ready to plug into any setup that is already capturing an analog signal, be it through an upscaler, or just using cable splitters to copy the signal to an analog capture device.

If you want to take it up a notch to free up your HDMI port to send out the digital upscaled a/v signal, and go wireless, you could add the following:

$50 - I/O add-on board - but you will not require the $15 heatsink and fan as the board has a fan and will come with a heatsink, nor would you require the HDMI to VGA dongle
$8-$15 - WiFi Dongle

From here all you would need to do is snap everything together, flash the microSD card with the MiSTer software, copy your game library, copy the update script, fire it up, and update it.

If you’re the type of person that wants it all ready to go out of the box, you can order pre configured MiSTer setups from misteraddons.com. All that would be required from you is to copy your game library to the microSD card.

And while it may seem expensive at first glance, consider all the hardware MiSTer can account for, and eliminate, from your setup:

Game Consoles
RGB, Region, and Security Bypass Mods (along with installation fees if you cannot install yourself)
Game Cartridges
Flashcarts (most features) and ODE solutions (like MegaSD)
Expensive Audio/Video cables or Shoddy SCART cables
Upscalers
Video Switches
The space and furniture required to house it all

At $300 for the extended setup, this is roughly the cost of getting an RGB modded NES alone, all while gaining you access to 17 consoles, 33 retro computers, the entire Neo-Geo library, and various arcade cores. Plus the PSX, PC Engine CD, Jaguar, and CPS-1 cores are in active development. You get all of this in analog video that is true resolution, frame rate, and signal as if it were an RGB modded console, coupled with up to 6x upscaled digital video for capturing.



***Conclusion***
If you are looking to slim down an existing setup, or move into new platforms, the MiSTer could be the right choice for you. You will end up with an all-in-one box solution that will play true to the original hardware, original video, gives you the ability to output upscaled video, and will allow the freedom of choice when it comes to your method of input. It removes all the typical obstacles when debating emulation vs original hardware, and bridges the gap between the two.