DisplacedGamers

Displaced Gamers: Battle of the Bits – Nintendo Power, Mappers, and Circuit Boards

If you are into NES games these days, you’ve probably heard the of term “mapper.” While the details of the various chips used in NES cartridges are just a quick Google search away, a few of their abilities were mentioned in Volume 20 of Nintendo Power back in 1991! I thought it might be fun […]

Rany Battikh

NESessity NES PCB Replacement

Low_budget, creator of the now-discontinued NES clone the Super 8-bit, just revealed his latest project: a complete replacement for the front-loading NES motherboard named the NESessity Designed to fit perfectly inside of an original NES case, the NESessity board’s circuit is closely based on the Super 8-bit layout (Low_budget recently released its full schematics) but the […]

db Himself

Determining the Build Quality of a Game Cartridge

Follow me on Twitter @db_electronics There are many important aspects to consider when assessing the quality of a reproduction or modern release game cartridge. Shell, label, beveled edge, chamfer, surface finish, etc… are all important things to consider. To the untrained eye all PCBs may at first glance appear identical, but after reading this guide […]

SmokeMonster

Budget Arcade Power Supplies Unmasked

For years, I’ve been looking for the perfect budget arcade power supply to recommend to people–something with high-quality components that won’t break the bank. You used to be able to recommend products by brands like Happ that fit the bill, but after looking inside their latest offerings, you’ll probably want to reconsider. Apparently every single […]

SmokeMonster

UD-USB Decoder Arcade Controller Converter Firmware Update

UD Game Tech makes a popular controller adapter called the UD-USB Decoder (AKA “Undamned Converter”) that adapts Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4 controllers to arcade format, for use with arcade game PCBs and superguns. Last week he issued a firmware update to bring support to even more popular PS4 joysticks: UD-USB & UD-CPS2 […]

SmokeMonster

New Playstation 1/2/3 Breakout Board for RGB, Component, Composite, S-video, and Audio

Jacob Proctor has released an open-source PCB schematic for a Playstation 1, 2, and 3 audio-video breakout board. It supports RGBS, Component, Composite, S-video, stereo audio, and obviously is zero lag. Users can decide if they’d like to use RCA or BNC jacks, or a VGA breakout (like MiSTer’s IO Board), and it can do […]

SmokeMonster

Arkanoid Arcade FPGA Core for MiSTer by Ace

Last month Ace joined me on a live-stream to reveal a preview of his impressive new FPGA core for MiSTer, Arkanoid (1986) Arcade. The core is now publicly released after a very long development cycle that required transposing several PCBs of real arcade hardware (a mix of arcade PCBs, old ICs, and other soft-core donors) […]

SmokeMonster

MiSTer Ghosts ‘n Goblins Core Released: Things just got serious.

Sorge–AKA Alexey, the mastermind behind MiSTer–ported Jotego’s (Jose Tejada) open-source Ghosts ‘n Goblins MiST FPGA core to MiSTer, and released it today. A user shared a pre-compiled ROM here, and the core itself can be obtained using the Updater Script or on Github. The Ghosts ‘n Goblins [Makaimura] arcade PCB platform was similar to several […]