Weekly Roundup #512 - May 6th 2026

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:13]Hey everybody, welcome to this week's roundup. Before I begin, I just want to say Ariel from Artistic Pixels is now selling a Grill Master Apron for anybody who likes cooking or needs an apron for any reason, but I was tired of the old one that I had and just wanted something fun and silly with a CRT Nerd joke on it. And I made a ridiculous promo video for it that I laughed the entire time I was making, so hopefully it made at least some of you laugh as well. But anyway, please check this out at links are in the description and weather's getting nicer. We're all probably trying to cook outside a little bit more, so why not protect your coat clothes and be a ridiculous nerd at the same time. But anyway, let's jump in and see what's been going on.

[00:00:54]First up, Hotegego just did an interview where he confirmed both his and Furtek's involvement with the upcoming brand new Neo Geo AES Plus. And it's a short interview that I strongly recommend everybody interested watches, but a very quick summary is that Hotegego confirmed this is an ASIC that was spun off from the Mister FPGA core, which in my opinion is absolutely excellent news.

[00:01:17]And he also confirmed that it'll be lag-less, there will be RGB video output, and confirmed a bunch of other things many of us had questions about.

[00:01:25]So basically, my concerns most of my concerns for this project are gone. I think that when you have good people working on it, the only thing left is the delivery. And while I mean this respectfully, you could have the most brilliant engineers on the planet designing something. If it's not manufactured right and then delivered right to the customers, then that's doesn't really matter who designed it.

[00:01:47]So these cartridges still need to have beveled edges and which is something that manufacturers often change in the production run. I can't tell you how many times I've known people here or even just in other industries where they'll get the prototypes, everything is exactly the way they want, they'll say okay, start manufacturing, and something will change, maybe to cut corners, maybe it was a mistake, but the actual production runs are different. So we still always have to verify that with every product. Doesn't really matter what that is.

[00:02:17]But for the most part, my concerns are gone and my guess is this thing's going to be awesome. I also really love that this is now just an ASIC spin-off of the FPGA core, which is a huge, huge risk, by the way. You have to dump millions of dollars into doing that, and if you can't sell them, that's it. You're out a lot of money and there's nothing you could do about it. So I think that the risk here is incredible. I'm so glad that the company is actually trying this out, and if it's a big success, I hope it leads to other ones cuz there's tons of Mister cores that I think would do really well as stand-alone devices in this same context. I think one of the things that's so cool about this is it looks exactly like the original. And that was always one of my biggest complaints about the analog FPGA consoles is they looked very cool, but it didn't look the same way as the original. And if you're going for nostalgia or if you're young and you just want something that feels like the original, it doesn't check those boxes, and this does. So I'm really pumped for it. Hotegego also kind of hinted that there may have been another thing that the company was working on, but I just used the auto-generated English subtitles to be able to watch it. It was a short one, and I'm really glad that Hotegego did this cuz it really just it left me with a lot more confidence in this, and now I'm excited to try one out. A friend of mine offered to have it drop-shipped to me, so I'd be able to check one out. Uh however, the one that my friend wanted was actually the ultimate edition. So just a quick note, if you're in the US and you're trying to pre-order one of those, then you might have to wait till the end of the month.

[00:03:53]They were having issues with shipping fees and stuff like that. So if you go to check out, you'll get random and weird errors that don't make sense. So I'll post again once those open back up, but they say there's enough stock for everybody, hopefully, and I guess I'll just kind of report back once those are able to be purchased. But hopefully, that'll all work and I'll be able to try one of these out as soon as they ship to customers. But yeah, this is awesome. Um if you want to hear more from Hotegego, I did an interview with him a while back and talked to him about his origins and making these awesome cores. So yeah, this is all just good news. Check out absolutely everything you need here linked in the post, and I'm really looking forward to this now. Artemio has just released the first official version of the 240p test suite for the Nintendo 64, and at the moment, it's only the NTSC version, but PAL versions will be planned at some point in the future.

[00:04:44]Also, Mega Cat Studios is planning to sell a physical cartridge once it's out of the release candidate stage, and I'm assuming both the PAL and the NTSC versions are available, which is awesome because not only is the 240p test suite by far the most played ROM on every single ROM card I own, I also use the stand-alone physical versions all the time as well cuz I just think it makes testing a lot easier for my crazy workflow here. Plus, everybody likes a good physical version of something, as long as it's properly beveled and running at the right voltage, of course.

[00:05:15]But so this is really exciting. Um as always, the 240p test suite is sweet is completely free. However, please consider supporting the devs. Monthly support is by far the best, which is what I do. I support them over on Patreon, or you could just leave a tip as you're checking out on the Itch.io page, which is always appreciated as well. And if you want some more info, I posted some stuff right here in the post, and of course, all of the info is available right on their website as well. A quick side note, the monoscope pattern creator, Keith Rainey, mentioned that the Nintendo 64 could produce really close to 100% of the NTSC signal.

[00:05:51]So the N64 version of the monoscope pattern was actually the basis for redesigning it the pattern on all of the other versions. So that's kind of neat, kind of a fun tidbit. So yeah, definitely check it out, but as always, thanks so much to everybody who contributes to these, and of course, to Artemio cuz this is a tool that everybody in retro relies on, whether you know it or not, cuz guaranteed something you use wouldn't be able to be made or finished or tweaked without the developer using this as well. So thank you all very much, anybody who contributes to this, and if you have an N64 ROM card, absolutely give it a download. James from Retro HQ has posted a couple of status updates on his upcoming ROM card for the PolyGameMaster, which is an arcade system that's kind of sort of like the successor to the Neo Geo, ish, but it's basically a root arcade board that you plug different cartridges in, where the cartridges themselves have a lot of chips and data on them. So just think what the Neo Geo 2 might have been like, just as an easy way to visualize it. And his ROM card, which he calls the game drives, so the PolyGameMaster game drive, seems to be running great. It plays all of the shooters, and it should be ready to go on up for sale by the end of the year, although there's no word on that exactly yet. There's not going to be any pre-orders, just like all the other game drives, when they're in stock, they go up for sale. And the price should be comparable to similar-sized ROM cards. So probably not cheap, but if you have a PGM arcade system, this is probably a big deal because the games are very rare and expensive. So being able to have one that kind of does everything on it, especially the Cave shooters, is pretty awesome. Now, James is aiming for full compatibility. At launch, it'll definitely play the Cave games as well as type 1, 2, and 3 ASIC 278 games, as well as the IGS 022 and IGS 025.

[00:07:45]That said, James is known for years-long history of updating his game drives with different features. So my guess is on day one, most PGM owners will be very happy with it, but if there's anything that's missing, just be patient. James, I'm sure, is going to at least attempt to add it at some point in the future.

[00:08:02]If you want to get more info on the PGM, Nicole expressed it in awesome blog post about it a couple years ago, really diving in. And both Scarlet Sprites and Modern Vintage Gamer both did great video overviews. All that's linked in the post. And of course, if you want to just hear more from James, just search any podcast from for Retro RGB, Retro HQ, or just check out the video linked in the post right here. But yeah, this is exciting. So if you want a quick demo of what this looks like, I embedded the the YouTube video right here.

[00:08:33]But this is cool. Finally, a way to play or or have a ROM card for the PolyGameMaster. Kyle from Kai Tor Industries has just open-sourced his 5x YZ SCART adapter, which is essentially just an adapter for the RetroTINK 5X that allows you to plug a SCART cable into it from the top. It's just a pass-through adapter, so composite video still works, and it's meant to look just like the TINK 5X. So this is one of those things that's just kind of fun for people who have a setup that they don't want the wire running out the front. Um I reviewed this thing back when it came out, and I was able to test it, and it doesn't add any interference whatsoever.

[00:09:11]So if you still want one, you could just buy one of the leftovers from Kyle for 35 bucks, or you could make your own under the CC by 4.0 license and just have yours to make. So I always appreciate when people open-source stuff. I I think even though that, you know, most people who probably needed one of these already picked it up, it's good to just have this out there rather than just stop making a product and have it completely disappear. What if you had a TINK 5X and you used it like I did all over the place, so you never had it permanently installed in one spot, but now you do, and you want to run the wires around the back without anything sticking in the front, now you could either make your own or just pick one up. So links to everything in the post.

[00:09:50]I just tested a cheap set of PC speakers that are fully magnetically shielded and completely safe to use around any CRT.

[00:09:59]But first, they're just PC speakers. The same basic ass speakers that used to come with computers in the 90s and early 2000s. They're nothing spectacular.

[00:10:08]They're not terrible if you put price into consideration, less than 20 bucks delivered, but these are really just for people that have a PVM, you've been using your built-in PVM speaker, and you just want some shielded speakers to have next to it and not worry. Or maybe you do have good speakers and a good setup, but you need a spare, a secondary. You just want to buy one now so that if these things go out of stock and you can't find any cheap magnetically shielded speakers, you don't have to dig around looking for used ones and hope that they are shielded. Cuz one of the biggest issues I ran into after doing that video a couple years ago where people were suggesting a whole bunch of different models of speakers that they said were shielded that they bought somewhat recently, within a year or two, and I bought a few of them, and none of them were shielded. And even ones that still said shielded on the Amazon page and still said shielded on their website and on their manual were not. So it's nice to know that there's at least a reliable cheap one that you could just pick up, stick next to your PVM or any CRT, PC CRT monitor, whatever, and they're fine. The headphone jack is also fine. For less than 20 bucks, I would call it excellent. But if you put it next to a high-end speaker, no, of course, they're every just basic PC speaker. The Contours were definitely far better, but also more than 10 times the price. So everything's got context here. Then obviously, you could go rooting around in used bins and try to find ones for probably even cheaper than this that might be fine. Or they might be blown or you know, they might not be what you need. So that's why I just always want to have alternatives for people. I want the cheap stuff like this for people that just want to get it done and have a cheap pair to pick up. The good stuff for people who audio really matters to them. And of course, check out that CRT safe speakers video I did a while back just to give you an idea of why this is necessary and kind of the different steps I went through, but very happy that there's just a cheap pair you could just buy on Amazon. You don't have to worry about hunting down specific models or whatever else. So if you've needed something like this, pick it up now before they go out of stock, but I think this is awesome. The developer Mike O is now selling two brand new USB adapters for the GameCube called USB Dolphin. Both have the ability to load your games off of USB storage devices the same way you would an SD or microSD, you just get to use the USB storage device. However, the SP1 version that plugs into the bottom port also has the ability to emulate the GameCube's broadband adapter using just a cheap USB ethernet adapter. More on that in a bit.

[00:12:46]So that also means if you're running RetroNAS, you could boot your games over the network, which I think is a huge deal, and I was really excited to try it out. So let me just walk you through the basics of what you would need.

[00:12:58]Definitely check the links in the post to all the official documentation on this, but you need of course a working RetroNAS setup, and you need to update it. However, it doesn't matter how old your RetroNAS setup is. I actually hadn't updated RetroNAS in years because I didn't need to. It did everything that I needed without issue. So all I did was log in, and you don't need to do anything command line based. You either SSH in and you get the little GUI there, or you could use cockpit, but just update RetroNAS, only takes a couple of seconds, and then load the FSP plugin, and that's basically it. Once again, check the instructions just to make sure that you got it all right, but that's all you need there. Then on your GameCube, you need the latest version of Swiss is a good idea. I don't think you need the newest, but it's always good to get the newest one out there. And of course, you need a way to boot into Swiss, so a mod chip or any of the adapters or any of the stuff that like Pico loader I just did a demo on.

[00:13:54]And then you need to configure Swiss to look for it. So basically, you just go in and check the Swiss's FSP settings, make sure to add your IP address to your RetroNAS server and change the port to 2121.

[00:14:08]And that's it. It's quite literally just two settings in Swiss. And then you back out or save the settings and then go to the eject icon, you know, where you select what storage device you want to load from, and select file service protocol, not file trans- file transfer protocol, and that's basically it. You might have to reboot the GameCube, but basically, as long as your ethernet cable's plugged in, you should just see your RetroNAS server and all of your games. And loading times are about the same as a DVD, sometimes faster, and I didn't run into any issues with any of the games that I tried. I think compatibility is going to be the same as if you're using the official broadband adapter, but this is pretty incredible cuz now you don't need to mess with multiple storage methods of where you're putting and transferring your GameCube games.

[00:14:56]You just leave them all on your server, and that's all you need. A very quick note for Unraid users, after installing the FSP plugin via RetroNAS, you have to log into your Unraid interface, go to shares, click that little arrow icon to the left of the RetroNAS share, and then just change the permissions to read write for all three settings. And that was it. Shout out to the amazing people in the chat in the live stream I did for showing me that cuz I would have spent days troubleshooting RetroNAS, not the Unraid server. So that's just a a very quick one, and that was it. I was up and running and everything worked really well. I did a short demo on social media. I'll talk about the USB adapter next. If you want to see all of the stuff tested in real time, which you probably don't cuz it's really long and boring, I did a live stream where I did a Pico loader installation, which was super super easy except I broke the flex cable when I did the first installation.

[00:15:57]So I strongly recommend buying a spare from wherever you're buying your Pico loader from cuz making the W shape that you have to make to get it in, the first time I did it was really tricky, and then the second time it went right in, and I got it working on the first try.

[00:16:11]So it's probably worth spending a couple extra bucks in case you're clumsy like me. I also showed off Greg's SD to SP2 Ace, which looks exactly like what an official microSD adapter would have looked like if Nintendo had made one.

[00:16:25]And I also did a case swap with a new orange, I think it's a red shell. I'm colorblind when it comes to that stuff.

[00:16:32]I don't know, but it looked awesome.

[00:16:34]That was donated by Ryan from CastleMania Games, and we're going to be doing a giveaway of one of these GameCubes fairly soon. I'll report back on that. So yeah, it was pretty neat.

[00:16:43]Funny enough, it took me longer to figure out how to put the spring into the front lid of the GameCube than it did most other things, which if you ever do that, it's not hard, you just got to know exactly where everything goes. So pay very close attention when you unbolt it, and don't let it shoot off like I did cuz I had to basically figure it out from scratch. It's very embarrassing, but whatever. So yeah, if you really want to watch all that, cool. At the very least, you might want to just skim through for Pico loader installation, but Tito's video is better on that anyway. But yeah. All right. So that's basically the overview, but let me just talk about the USB adapter next. So one of the coolest things about USB Dolphin is the SP1 version is compatible with a ton of cheap USB ethernet adapters, and I found one on Amazon US that's less than 10 bucks and works perfectly. It's also Windows, Mac, Linux compatible without any driver support. You just plug it in. You don't even need to reboot, but that's not very impressive.

[00:17:40]There's a ton of those available, but this one worked really well with USB Dolphin, and I tried it a bunch of different ways. Now, I will say that Mike O also sells a version of the adapter that works perfect. You could also just check the list, which I linked to in the other post, that's right on the GitHub that shows you the chipsets that are compatible. Maybe you already have a USB ethernet adapter that will already work with it, but I wanted a cheap alternative for people that just wanted to pick one up. And I also showed off that angled USB adapter I talked about last week, and yes, of course, this is what I teased in that video. In case you don't you don't want the white ethernet adapter sticking out, this worked perfectly. It wrapped around the side. It worked with this. I also in the review of the the USB extension cable proved that it doesn't slow down your USB device at all. But I thought this was great. I tested Extreme suggested I tested unplugging the ethernet cable while a game was running and then plugging it back in just to see it recover, and it did that. That worked really well. I was impressed how I guess the GameCube must have just read that as your disc is skipping, keep reading until it either fails out completely or it catches back up, which it did. And I also tested it through a wireless bridge. That's quite a few years old. It doesn't have the same or doesn't run at the same speed as my wireless router. So I imagine there's faster ones available now. It sort of worked. Anytime you're streaming audio or video or any kind of game data over the wireless connection, it got choppy.

[00:19:17]But when I played Mario Kart, it was kind of slow to load, but once the match loaded and the race started, it played the same speed as if you're running off of disk. So it would be neat to do a little more testing to see if I could get a faster wireless bridge and see if that'll work. If anybody knows of one, please let me know. Just post the unique Amazon code or just the title, and I could look one up. This one that I had was the Brother brand, and it's fine, but it's a couple years old, and I would love a wireless solution for this. Or maybe just some really smart person will figure out some wireless adapter that you could like maybe one of the new you know Raspberry Pi Picos or something where you could just drop your wireless info on a text file or something and then plug it into this USB and then just have wireless or who knows maybe MiSTer will even come up with a wireless USB dolphin that has all this stuff built in but and maybe you could even add your SSID to Swiss. I don't know. That's wild fantasy stuff right now. I am completely just wishful thinking. I don't know if any of that's even remotely I'm just saying this ethernet adapter worked perfectly when plugged in with a cable and it worked surprisingly well through the wireless bridge just not for most games. That was just kind of a fun bonus. I just wanted an excuse to talk about it in case anybody had any ideas for that but yeah, if you're looking for just a cheap USB ethernet adapter that you know is going to work with USB dolphin, this is definitely one I'd recommend. Now it's time for this week's MiSTer updates care of Lou from Lou's Retro Source. As usual, I'm just going to skim through these and give my thoughts where I feel like it but if you want all the info and visual examples, please check out Lou's video.

[00:20:57]First up the in development Darius 2 core has sprites playing nicely now and it just looks good. You should soon be able to get it from the standard update sources but at the moment it's still work in progress but it looks great. So if you want especially if you have like an ultra wide monitor, this looks pretty awesome.

[00:21:15]Also there's a project called zip to VHD which is a 486 virtual hard disk builder designed to consoleize DOS games. So there's already projects out there that does exactly this but if the game that you want to play isn't available in those projects, this is a great way to just make one right from your MiSTer. So it looked very cool and it stuff like that really makes thing relaunching these games incredibly easy. It almost launches like a ROM and you just kind of watch it boot and get right to it which is pretty cool.

[00:21:46]The new alternative main MiSTer build that supports retro achievements is now version 1.0 with a bunch of new features and more core builds. So if you're into that, definitely update and thanks to everybody who posted their thoughts in the comments last week about that. It really added a totally new perspective for me and I have a a renewed appreciation for it. I always kind of thought I understood why people might like it but now I get it and while it's still not for me, I definitely appreciate it and respect it.

[00:22:14]Update all has now been updated and it adds a CRT video mode selector and screen position adjustment tool which is a really big deal for CRT users. Now you can really dig into all these settings right from your CRT without having to mess with other stuff.

[00:22:29]So take a moment to set that up right and then just never worry about it again.

[00:22:34]Speaking of the IGS PolyGame Master, Martin aka WickerWaka posted a video showing that the core is moving along and it should play the cave games as well. Although there are some issues that it might not work with games that use the arm processor for logic but I guess that remains to be seen and it still looks like it's a huge progress and we might actually be able to play PGM right on MiSTer which is awesome.

[00:23:02]MiSTer Organize has released a hybrid arm FPGA port of OpenBOR for the MiSTer platform and OpenBOR Lou kind of goes into it in the video and it's an interesting an interesting project that has a collection of about 300 different games and you can now play them right through MiSTer with this and I don't I don't want to get too deep into that because I it seems like an awesome project that I could probably ramble on forever. So check out Lou's video for the info on that.

[00:23:28]MiSTer Companion is getting constant updates. It really is turning out to be such an awesome piece of software and Lou went through a bunch of stuff that was added in there including different tweaks and stuff like that and I believe you can also install the port of Sonic Mania as well. I haven't had a chance to try it. I think it's still pretty buggy but I would love to see Sonic Mania working perfectly on the MiSTer just for the heck of it but I'd also I know I always ask so much of everybody here but I would also love to see AM2R on it if possible. That might be a huge ask and wildly different than something like the Sonic Mania port but I just think that would be super cool cuz I love that game. It is by far my favorite version of Metroid 2. However, I've never been able to play it without screen tearing.

[00:24:13]I've tried PC, Linux, Raspberry Pi, whatever else. So I would love just like a reliable way to just play it on an existing setup. So has anybody ever looked into that? Maybe they already did it and it just it's been a year or so since I've checked but that's definitely an awesome one for me.

[00:24:29]And also Hoteago gave a quick update on the CPS3 core. He said that sound and video modules are functional and the SD RAM memory architecture is working. He's just expecting he's trying to work on booting up the CPS3 core and expects it to boot over the weekend.

[00:24:46]Also Hoteago said game saving is said to be working for the Neo Geo Pocket core as well.

[00:24:51]So as always thanks to Lou for keeping up with all this stuff. There's no possible way I could and obviously thank you to everybody who contributes to the MiSTer project in any way cuz it's awesome and it's just so cool seeing all of these new things constantly being integrated into it. The developer Fullset has just opened pre-orders on a brand new game called Overserved Food Fighters which is kind of like a party battle arena type game that plays a little bit like if Bomberman and Smash TV had a baby. The game will be available for the Neo Geo and the Saturn and the Saturn version will come as a cartridge which is cool cuz much like Fullset's other game for the Saturn Project Neon that was recently ported over, that will be these will be the only two games that I know of that are exclusively on a cartridge. There were of course official Saturn games that were on disk but you also needed a cartridge to run them like the ones that required the memory expansion pack but I think these are the first two games to ever just come on a cartridge for the Saturn which is absolutely awesome.

[00:25:50]Check out links and details and a full 90 minutes of gameplay video in Todd's post here if you want more info on all of that and also there's a four player Neo Geo adapter that should work with this as well.

[00:26:04]Now of course the cartridges will be properly beveled and run at the correct voltage. That's something we talked about when Project Neon was for the Saturn was announced. So this post has all the info in there and if you'd like either of those, definitely pick one up now. Project Neon also was just re-released or ported over to the Dreamcast plus the original release. So basically just go to fullset.io to see all of their games and the different platforms that they're available to purchase or pre-order on and if you want more info on either of these, Todd has all the info right here in the post. A Kickstarter campaign was just successfully funded for a brand new Gameboy Color game called Kero Kai that's kind of like a Metroidvania mixed with overhead Zelda style exploration and arcade space shooter segments all in one Gameboy Color cartridge. If you're into stuff like that or if you're just interested in awesome new retro stuff, Sterling's post has a ton of info, a full write-up, screenshots and a lot of stuff that you would want to know about the project including an interview with the developer itself. And this is the same developer that also did the game Winner is You and a whole bunch of other stuff as well. So if you're into new games for old platforms at all especially anything that is a mixed genre game like this, absolutely check out this post, read through it, get all the info you need and I think the Kickstarter campaign is only going to be open for a short period of time now. I think it was fully funded and I think there's only a day or so left so you might want to jump on this one if it's something that you're interested in.

[00:27:38]Hopefully they'll still have cartridges available for sale after once everything starts to ship to customers but check out all the info right here and this just looks like another fun Gameboy Color game.

[00:27:50]Well, that's it for this week. As always thanks for everybody who watches, listens, plays nicely in the comments and especially thank you to anybody who supports in absolutely any way cuz it really is you who's keeping all this stuff going. So thank you so much and I'll see you next week.

[00:28:06]This week's roundup is brought to you by Neo Paradigm Entertainment connecting Southeast Asian influencers with opportunities in the West.