📺 Hello and welcome to a massive mid-week edition of The Memory Core newsletter.

This one has been in the works for a few weeks, and I have been dying to share it. I’ve got exclusive details about the Analogue 3D, M64, and possibly the future of FPGA gaming.

Writing this up got me so excited to revisit the N64 that I bought an 8BitDo 64 controller. I don’t have an Analogue 3D on pre-order, but I can’t imagine going back to the trident at this point. Sorry, N64 purists.

Now let’s get to the story. If you have even a passing interest in FPGA gaming, you’ll want to read until the end.

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The console that defined 3D, and defies preservation

For gamers of a certain age, the Nintendo 64 was one of the most memorable consoles of its time. It didn’t outsell the PlayStation, but it defined 3D gaming for a generation with its blocky visuals and an “innovative” trident controller.

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the N64’s release, but it hasn’t reached the same level of accessibility as other popular home consoles of the time, or since. (Minus the Saturn, which has its own problems).

Sure, Nintendo added the N64 to Nintendo Switch Online in 2021, but hardcore N64 fans soon noticed that things weren’t as they should be. Stutters, graphical glitches, and audio issues were later improved, but for anyone who had tried to emulate N64 games in the past, this was par for the course.

The unfortunate truth is that N64 software emulation is still in a rough spot in 2025. Without going into detail, the console’s unique architecture doesn’t translate well to modern machines. Recent emulators like Ares get most of the way there, but they require a much more powerful PC than you’d expect to play 30-year-old games.

But there’s another approach that bypasses the software jank, and that’s hardware emulation. This is done via FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chips, which can be reprogrammed after manufacturing to behave like other chips. This enables developers to create “cores” that configure the hardware to imitate a classic system, so games can potentially run exactly the way they would on original hardware.

Compared to software-based N64 emulation, which typically relies on high-level emulation that often requires tweaking on a game-by-game basis, FPGA-based solutions have the potential to offer a better and more authentic way to play classic N64 games.

While previously a tight niche, the MiSTer FPGA has expanded the scene since its introduction in 2017. It brought together countless developers worldwide to develop open-source cores for retro systems, but the N64 was considered beyond the capabilities of the DE10-Nano-based kit.

Then, in 2020, someone finally made progress on a new solution with the potential to unlock FPGA N64 for the first time.

The first steps toward N64 FPGA hardware

The brainchild of Murray Aickin (AKA Mazamars312), the UltraFP64 was touted as “The World’s First FPGA N64.” Unlike the underpowered MiSTer FPGA, the closed-source core was designed on custom-built hardware, but development took several surprising turns in the following years.

Initially aimed at N64 homebrew projects, it was in rough shape when it first debuted in 2020. It would take several more years of probing, testing, and tweaking the original hardware before it would be considered “finished.”

If it ever truly was finished.

The last official update on the project was in 2023. At that point, neither the hardware nor the core had been officially showcased.

In an interview with Pixel Cherry Ninja in June of 2023, Aickin was coy about progress on the UltraFP64. He stated, “I’m much further than I’m letting on, but I’m behind so much further from where I want to be.”

A few months later, a much bigger name in the space would announce another FPGA N64 device, the Analogue 3D. And as we’ll see in a minute, that might be more than just a coincidence.

Analogue’s next big bet

If you’re not familiar with Analogue, it makes several FPGA consoles designed to work with original cartridges. For the most part, these are closed-source projects that don’t officially work with ROMs (although all of them were later jailbroken).

But its most popular product is the Analogue Pocket, which uses FPGA cores to play everything from Game Boy to Neo Geo Pocket and Atari Lynx cartridges. A year after release, firmware update 1.1 introduced openFPGA, an open-source framework that allowed third-party developers to create even more cores and expand compatibility.

UltraFP64 developer Murray Aickin has developed several openFPGA cores: two for the Neo Geo (one that runs games faster/better than the original hardware), one for the PCEngine CD, and another for the Commodore Amiga. In fact, in the same 2023 interview, he revealed that he was one of the first developers to receive a dev kit and that he was consulted on the openFPGA platform before it was made public.

Regardless, the device was a massive success. The Pocket sold out immediately, and the company would struggle to keep it in stock for years.

So when the company announced the Analogue 3D N64 clone in October 2023, the hype was sky high, and its founder, Christopher Taber, embraced it.

In an interview with Paste Magazine (now hosted on Endlessmode), Taber promised “100% compatibility with the N64 library” (region-free), 4K output, save states, and video filters that mimic the original CRT look on modern TVs. He stated it was to be “by far the most powerful and expensive” device the company had ever made.

Since then, news has been few and far between. A year later, pre-orders were opened at $249, despite the console never being fully revealed. The initial “Q1 2025” shipment date was pushed once, then twice, then a third time to Q4 2025.

Alongside the pre-order, Analogue snuck a sentence in the 3D homepage stating that it will use a 220k LE Altera Cyclone 10GX FPGA, which is roughly twice the size of the Cyclone V in the MiSTer FPGA. That's a very impressive upgrade, at least on paper.

We are now entering Q4 2025, and the company has yet to show the console, apart from a video discovered on Analogue’s press asset server. Officially, the company hasn’t even acknowledged that video.

The open secret behind the Analogue 3D

Despite the lack of official information, we may know more about what’s going on inside the device. Almost immediately after the Analogue 3D was announced in 2023, rumors began to swirl around connections to the UltraFP64.

Within the FPGA dev community, it’s an open secret that the UltraFP64 is the basis for the Analogue 3D. That said, neither Analogue nor Aickin has confirmed as much.

I reached out to Aickin for this piece, but he declined to comment, simply stating, “I’m currently unable to answer on the UltraFP64 at this moment.”

Regardless, on June 26 the community received all the verification it needed.

Another developer, Robert Peip (AKA FPGAzumSpass), commented on the MiSTer FPGA Discord that the Analogue 3D will indeed use Aickin’s core. He also confirmed that the core will remain closed-source and that the FPGA hardware will likely not allow the loading of custom cores.

In other words, it will be less like the Analogue Pocket and more like the company’s other standalone FPGA consoles.

But it’s important to note that Robert Peip isn’t just any developer. Often hailed as a “wizard,” he is an absolute legend in the FPGA community. He’s created countless cores for the MiSTer FPGA and his PlayStation 1 core was an incredible feat considering the platform’s hardware limitations.

But he’s best known for an even bigger accomplishment. Against all odds, he created a MiSTer FPGA N64 core.

The impossible MiSTer FPGA core

As mentioned above, the DE10-Nano in the MiSTer FPGA stack has some very clear limitations. Most MiSTer FPGA cores require add-on boards that expand RAM, add more ports or I/O, and add features like a real-time clock or active cooling. The Cyclone V FPGA chip is also nearly a decade old, and at the time, it was primarily designed for education, not demanding gaming hardware emulation.

Because of this, it was generally thought that an N64 core would be impossible to achieve. So when Robert Peip announced he was working on an N64 core in April 2023, people paid attention.

But even Peip himself had his doubts early. In an interview with Read Only Memo, he stated that the N64 CPU speeds “will likely not be possible on the DE10-Nano.” Still, he had “some ideas to work around that issue” as well as other issues surrounding the N64’s 4MB of high-speed RDRAM.

Peip got to work, first creating a software emulator that would serve as a kind of white paper for a true FPGA core. Then, just six months later, the core was already operational.

By October 2023, the impossible MiSTer FPGA N64 core was compatible with around 70% of the N64 library. By April 2024, the core could officially boot 100% of the North American library, and it was pushed out of the test phase and onto the main list of MiSTer FPGA cores.

Not all games ran perfectly, but the fact that it ran at all was huge. It’s also more than we’ve ever managed to see from the UltraFP64 or Analogue 3D.

This was great news for the MiSTer FPGA community, but it came with bittersweet news. Two weeks prior to becoming official, Peip announced that he was stopping work on the core. I asked him why he decided to stop, and it was directly tied to the hardware limitations of the DE10-Nano:

Still, after closing his Patreon and officially moving on, Peip returned to his N64 core for a few minor fixes and enhancements. For example, one update added a Turbo core, which improved framerates on the most demanding N64 games, like Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, and DK64. (Correction: The Turbo core was added before closing his Patreon.)

But it was time to hang up his trident until a more powerful FPGA device emerged. One that solved the shortcomings of the DE10-Nano once and for all.

It turns out, he didn’t have to wait long.

ModRetro enters the arena

If Analogue has any competition in the consumer FPGA space, it’s ModRetro. Initially a passion project of controversial billionaire Palmer Luckey, ModRetro takes the over-the-top ’90s aesthetic to the next level with bright colors and aggressive ads. That puts it in contrast to Analogue's minimalist, monochrome aesthetic and air of secrecy.

But behind the divisive founder and marketing bluster is an impressive team of engineers. The company’s first product, the ModRetro Chromatic, pushed the Game Boy Color to its ultimate form without compromising the authentic retro feel.

Unlike the Analogue Pocket, which has a display 10 times the resolution of the original Game Boy and enough power to play a variety of retro consoles, the Chromatic maintains the same 160 x 140 resolution as the original Game Boy screen.

Both are open-source, with the Chromatic core based on the MiSTer Game Boy Color core. However, only the Analogue Pocket has enjoyed widespread support from independent FPGA developers. Whether it’s the single-purpose screen, limitations of the Chromatic hardware, or Analogue sending dev units and providing direct support, ModRetro’s first FPGA device still hasn’t broken beyond its original core.

This year, the company announced its first home console, and surprise, surprise, it’s an N64 FPGA device called the M64. Very little has been revealed about the console publicly (apart from early bird pricing at $199), but key details have trickled in over the past few months.

A new foundation for open FPGA gaming

First, an eagle-eyed Twitter user spotted the telltale frame counter from Robert Peip’s MiSTer FPGA N64 core in a short teaser posted by Palmer Luckey last month. This all but confirmed that the M64 would be based on the open-source MiSTer core, which is the only working core we’ve seen so far.

Later that day, Peip confirmed he's working with the ModRetro team on the M64. He later told me that he had been working with ModRetro since before the console was announced, despite feigning ignorance when asked about it before the frame counter was spotted.

In the same message, he wrote that alongside the ModRetro team, they had “designed powerful hardware that can solve all the shortcomings the core has on the DE10-Nano. Like [a] much faster and larger FPGA as well as fast and low latency [memory].”

In a separate message, he also confirmed that the M64 will use an AMD FPGA, which rules out the Cyclone 10GX used on the Analogue 3D.

More importantly, he appeared to be very excited to return to the N64. He wrote, “You all know that the N64 is my favorite console and it’s so much fun for me to work on it without all the workarounds and shortcomings.”

When I asked Peip what he was working on specifically, he mentioned that he’s not involved in enhancing the core itself. Instead, he’s working on “new hardware and features,” including porting the MiSTer core to the AMG FPGA platform that the M64 will use.

Walter Lee, Head of Marketing at ModRetro, expanded a bit more on Peip’s role:

Lee also confirmed that the core will remain open-source, so any improvements could possibly be ported back to the MiSTer FPGA, assuming they aren’t gated by the DE10-Nano.

When asked specifically about whether the M64 will eliminate the shortcomings of the DE10-Nano, he gave a promising response:

Perhaps more significantly, he also revealed that the goal isn’t just to make a better N64 core, but rather to create a better open-source platform for FPGA development. He wrote, “Our objective is to make the M64 platform the cheapest generalized device for this sort of open source activity.”

In other words, this $199 consumer-focused N64 clone, which on the surface is designed to play N64 carts on modern TVs, may also replace a full MiSTer FPGA stack. The company will release more information about the open-source platform soon, but it could be a game-changer if it manages to catch on as much as Analogue’s openFPGA.

With Analogue betting on closed hardware and ModRetro chasing a new open-source standard, FPGA gaming stands at a fork in the road. One path leads toward boutique collector’s items, the other to a more accessible ecosystem. The winner could define the next era of retro gaming.

I can’t think of a more appropriate console to be at the heart of this race than the N64. Thirty years ago, it ushered in the age of 3D gaming. Now, it’s poised to define the future of FPGA.

Special thanks to everyone who spoke to me for this story, and special thanks to you, dear reader, for making it all the way to the end of this very long newsletter.

Until Friday,

Archivist Rowan