The promising MARS FPGA console is dead, according to one of the project's developers.
Todd Gill – a longstanding and influential figure within the FPGA community – broke the news on Discord recently.
Gill, who was designing the console's casing, reveals that the person in charge of the MARS board development "just disappeared", putting the project on ice. Gill says that the rest of the MARS team was effectively "Ghosted" by the individual, meaning work could not continue.
MARS was promoted as a rival to the established MiSTer FPGA system and would have used a more powerful FPGA chip to emulate consoles like the Sega Dreamcast on a hardware level.
Its rumoured price point would have been around $699, and it was claimed that it would allow users to plug in their original controllers and cartridges.
In addition to Gill, the MARS FPGA team also included Flxel (developer of 3DO and Dreamcast emulators) and RetroTINK creator Mike Chi. FPGA developer Wizzo parted company with the project last year on good terms.