WHAT YOU NEED

To get started with a MiSTer, you only absolutely need one thing: a Terasic DE10-Nano, which costs around £120 from a specialised electronics merchant such as Digi-Key. After flashing its supplied 8GB mini SD card with Mr Fusion, the MiSTer installation image, and running it, most systems will simply work. Exceptions such as the Neo Geo core require the 128MB SDRAM add-on (£53). Most cores won’t need it, but a £13 heatsink and fan are recommended for the most demanding use cases, such as the ao486. If you want to output to a CRT display, you’ll need an I/O board with VGA and audio ports, and to avoid needing to plug a USB hub into the DE10-Nano’s single USB port, there’s a neater MiSTer USB board. For purists, SNAC adapters offer latency-free support for original console controllers, though they’re not officially part of the MiSTer project, while an audio tape input allows you to enjoy loading ZX Spectrum cores from cassette (assuming your tapes haven’t crumbled to dust by now, naturally).

The underside of the DE10-Nano reveals the square bank of pins that wires its Cyclone V FPGA to the board. Other than a display and USB controllers and keyboard, most of MiSTer’s cores need no other hardware

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Forgotten Worlds (the first game on Capcom’s CP System hardware); Sega’s 1984 arcade platformer Flicky; Capcom’s 1985 Ghosts ’n Goblins; Konami’s Contra emerged in arcades in 1987