MARS FPGA Will Let You Use Your Original Carts And Support Legacy AV Connections

Sounds promising!

I love having a Mister on our family TV to show my girls games, but it would be so much better to be able to use my real carts / discs and controllers on it!

Wonder if the MSX will ever be in play with this

It's great that they now have the name of it on there only once (previous design had it twice) but this box with chamfered edges needs more curves! Both the MD and SNES were full of curves.

Is composite an option? It’s always been odd that these artisanal game consoles aim for all this accuracy but can’t easily do the one thing all old consoles were made to do (connect to any TV)

@NinChocolate In the picture there is an RCA style composite video jack along with left and right RCA sound jacks.

Though I would disagree all TVs back in the day had this option. In the states, many TVs in the 80s and 90s gaming era were sold with only coaxial jacks, and many of us even gamed on older TVs that only had VHF style twin screw cables.

I would say most homes I visited in the 80s and 90s had their game consoles hooked up to coaxial. Either because that was their only choice, or because they could be daisy chained with other consoles, or because it was an easy way to connect to everything through your VCR. It was actually popular to buy converters that would take a composite signal/cables and convert it to a coaxial jack.

Along with many TVs only having coaxial, most of the 80s consoles only had them too. Heck when the version 2 of the NES came out in America in the 90s, Nintendo thought it made more sense to cut out the composite jack, even though the factory in Japan was already tooled with composite jacks for the Japanese NES version 2. This was because composite still had less adoption than coaxial in America at the time.

In other parts of the world some TVs only had 21 pin connectors. Though some of those did composite style signal through that port, I think most were doing RGB quality signal.

Composite oddly was mostly used a bit later in the PS2 era, even though by that time component video was the best option.

The most widespread I ever saw composite used for video games, was in 2000s era plug n plays, and 2000s-2010s era clone consoles.

@NinChocolate Indeed as said, composite wasn't a high demand in the US until DVD players took off in the late '90s and early 2000s. Before that most people used RF, and when most if not all DVD players lacked RF output, people had a need to buy RF modulators to connect them to their older or lower-end TVs that lacked them (I know my mom had bought a couple RCA TVs in the mid '90s that were our most used. One more expensive one that had composite, and another cheaper one in 1997 to replace another TV, and that one lacked composite. Just predating that DVD bubble.)

@KingMike @DestructoDisk I appreciate the replies. All consoles at least from the 8-bit generation (NES, SMS, Turbo Grafx) were composite compliant. So I don’t know about the general population and RF only TV’s, but composite technology predates game consoles and every “retro” console I’ve owned from 8-bit gen and up have been composite. So as far as popular game consoles goes, it’s been standard. Now those consoles are being emulated with great accuracy and composite is anything but standard

Also PS1 and Saturn released only with A/V on the console. So that should suggest something about composite capability among the gaming population

@NinChocolate Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision, etc are all 8bit consoles as well. They were all coaxial only. And I mentioned earlier the NES model 2 also wasn’t composite compliant. It only did coaxial. The Sega Genesis Model 2 in at least some if not all variants, did not come with a composite cable in the box.

As far as late 90s systems and composite, yes some people were using it, some weren’t. Nintendo 64 had a warning on the box that said “RF modulator sold separately”. Some region PlayStation 1s came with a coaxial cable in the box, some did not. Not sure what the sentence “ Also PS1 and Saturn released only with A/V on the console.” was supposed to mean. A/V just means “Audio Visual”. Coaxial, HDMI, component, S Video, etc are all A/V cables/jacks. If you were implying they only had composite jacks, that is incorrect. Even the launch PS1 that has composite RCA jacks built right onto the system, had a multi port for using other connections such as S Video and Coaxial.

Of course Sega and PlayStation were trying to push composite cables. Both of their machines had built in audio CD players. But they also both realized this wasn’t completely practical because so many homes had TVs without these connections and especially if the console was going into a kids room. That is why all 3 major console manufacturers of that era produced first party coaxial cables for their systems.

But yeah as the other person said RF modulators were a common thing in that era, especially when DVD players started being sold.

I got my first brand new TV in 1996 from Circuit City, a 19 inch Daewoo, for my bedroom and it had coaxial and no other inputs. My sister got her first new TV for her room a year earlier, a 13 inch RCA, which also only had coaxial. Its safe to say if brand new TVs were being sold at the time, with no composite jacks, then not everyone was using composite, and it wasn’t the standard.

There were TVs of course that had composite, but they tended to be upper mid range or higher end home theater enthusiast TVs that not everyone was gaming on. Back then TVs weren’t cheap things we bought every couple years. Many homes in the 90s had 80s TVs.

I noticed even many people with composite capable TVs just used the coax input anyway because that is what they knew. Most people back then had no idea about the technical differences of A/V cables. They saw they could get away with only 1 cable instead of 3 and thats what they did.

And yes the consoles are being emulated with great accuracy, so I think its really great to use RGB. Most of the consoles you spoke of (the post Atari era consoles) had chips that produced RGB video signals. So thats really the best option for most folks who want an analog experience.

@DestructoDisk I’m not sure what you’re aiming to convince me of here. I’ve personally a collection of 8 or 9 various CRTs and all popular consoles between NES and Wii. All the consoles and TV sets are composite compliant, even the black and white TV set. If you’re trying to tell me I’m living in some reality where composite isn’t actually a standard console to TV connection, I don’t think there’s much discussion left here..

While not a bad thing... Does leave me curious with a touch of confused on how JAMMA support is going to function. JAMMA boards should be self contained except for power and controllers. Nothing you need an fpga for. Controller ports simplification, but that about kick harnesses?

I guess it's working as a scan converter maybe an upscaler?

Cool if it can put on a supergun hat, just interested in the how.

I am more interested in price and availability.
If the damn thing is gonna be obscenely priced or unobtanium, it's not gonna be much use.

@NinChocolate not that I would ever want to use RF anymore now, but here are pictures of the first 2 consoles I ever owned, the Sega Master System and then the Sega Mega Drive. Neither had composite, they were RF only. Later when I got an N64 and PS1 with composite I had to run them through the VCR!

@N64-ROX those are nice consoles, but I don’t envy the RF only element of them. Also don’t really understand why I need the evidence of the existence of RF, because it doesn’t have much bearing on the fact that composite was standard in addition to RF (a photo of my SMS and Genny model 1 would show composite out). Most 8 and 16-bit consoles after the NES were made with both. I don’t believe there was any RF only SNES, all had multi A/V out in addition to the RF.

@N64-ROX the picture of MD model 2 shows an A/V out port, not an RF. I’d be surprised to learn of any RF only Mega Drive model 2 considering the model 1 was composite.

Edit: You must have had only the Sega-supplied RF modulator unit attached and not an A/V cable.

Our 1985 Fisher had composite, soo…. Yeah i grew up with the NES plugged into coax and the snes and genny both in composite.

If this thing delivers and is priced right, it could be the retro console to end all retro consoles.