This one flew under my radar i'll admit, but today a large update was made public regarding an upcoming Mister handheld, an FPGA-focused device crafted by Heber, an electronics manufacturer in collaboration with British retro content creator and retro museum, The Retro Collective.
It's not very often we see new handhelds come out of the UK. The last known one was the GAMERCARD made by Grant Sinclair, which I believe has still yet to ship, but that said, it's good to know there are many handheld nerds in the same country as us, willing to take the risk of building something cool for retro gamers.
The Multisystem 2 will be fully compatible with Mister FPGA cores in an effort to create a handheld system that offers a reliable gaming experience with users' ROM files for systems such as NES, GAME BOY, Neo Geo, SEGA Mega Drive, PC Engine, SNES and much more.
This announcement was the first time the developers had shown a first look at concept images, alongside a look at many prototypes. One surprising feature is the fact that the controls can actually slide off, allowing you to change up the controls and add extra buttons depending on what type of console you are "emulating", with batteries possibly located in each one to better distribute the weight across the handheld.
The video shares a lot more, which I recommend watching, but mostly it's to stimulate discussions amongst the community so that they can better understand the demands from a hardware perspective and make changes over the coming months.
It's clear that there are some very talented individuals working on this, and no doubt it's a mighty task because let's be honest, the Mister technology is not for the simple-minded, nor is the hardware, so there are many concepts up for the taking still, it's still deep in development.
A couple of the things they are pushing are a 4" high resolution display, dual stereo speakers, dual analogue sticks, twin shoulder buttons, curved ergonomics on the back, removable "JOYSTIX" and analogue/digital controls. For now, development continues. The video has excited us, it's always cool to see what the communtity are up to, and this one looks like it's actually going to happen! Hurrah!
