TL;DR
- ModRetro has revealed the design of its upcoming N64 FPGA console and controller.
- It’s much more colorful than the Analogue 3D, and the controller matches the original trident.
- The console will cost $199, but there’s no word on when it will ship.
Over the past week, many Analogue 3D customers finally got their consoles after more than a year of waiting. Now, another N64 FPGA console is close to release, and unlike the minimalist black and white console from Analogue, it’s a much more faithful, and colorful, console.
The ModRetro M64 was briefly revealed earlier this week, but today we got a full look at three transparent colorways: green, purple, and white. Each has four controller ports in the front, a power button, a menu dial, and an eject button at the back. On the back of the console, there’s a USB-C power port, HDMI out, two USB-C ports, and an SD card slot.
The M64 controller adopts a very similar design to the original console’s trident controller, coming in the same transparent colorways as the console itself. The only significant change is the stick, which uses a more modern component than the sunken stick on the original and the official NSO controller. However, it still features the octagonal gating around the stick.
One of the most out of place elements on the console itself is the menu dial, which sticks up where the eject button is on the original hardware. That likely implies that it has the same software limitation as a MiSTer FPGA, which prevents the controller from communicating with the underlying operating system before loading a core.
The ties to MiSTer don’t end there, as the FPGA core used by the M64 is being developed by the same person who created the MiSTer N64 core. This is one of the most advanced and impressive cores on the platform, and for years it was thought to be impossible. The M64 will use a more powerful FPGA chip than the DE-10 Nano on the MiSTer FPGA, so performance limitations should be largely eliminated.
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ModRetro founder Palmer Luckey has also confirmed that both the hardware and software will be open-source. This enables developers to port more cores to the M64, which could turn it into an all-in-one FPGA console, similar to the MiSTer FPGA.
However, Luckey remains a controversial figure. After starting a simple retro console modding forum called ModRetro as a teenager, he went on to found Oculus, which was later sold to Facebook for $2 billion when he was 21 years old. After being forced out of Oculus by Facebook, he founded Anduril, a weapons contractor specializing in automated drones for warfare.
The ModRetro M64 is slated to cost $199, although it’s not clear when orders will start. The team has previously stated that the hardware is already in mass production, so it may still arrive before the holidays. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.
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