News "I Am Tired Of Receiving Death Threats Over A Video Game" - FPGA Dev Explains Why Mortal Kombat Is Skipping MiSTer

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FPGA technology has been used in a wide range of different retro gaming systems, but two platforms arguably stand at the forefront right now: MiSTer FPGA and the Analogue Pocket.

Both use FPGA chips to replicate the performance of vintage platforms on a hardware level, and many of the developers who produce FPGA cores support both systems.

However, more recently, we've seen some desirable cores being released on the Analogue Pocket only, and this has caused some people to question what's afoot.

One of the notable recent examples is Mortal Kombat, which is currently exclusive to the Pocket. Some have taken this to be a vendetta against MiSTer, which has resulted in the team behind the core – @_atrac17 and @pr4m0d – to take to social media in order to set the record straight.

Having noticed a tweet begging fellow FPGA developer Jotego / topapate to "please consider making a Mortal Kombat core for MiSTer since it seems others won't make it for MiSTer," @_atrac17 posted the following reply:

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It would be nice if topapate would address his Mortal Kombat core and if it is a viable candidate for MiSTerFPGA. If it is, state your plans to make it please. You have stated numerous times it is up to 8 weeks worth of work for you to implement from the ground up. In December of 2022, you stated you could make it yourself in a month.
You committed to making Mortal Kombat in April of 2021 (publicly with me attached), Mortal Kombat was last addressed by you (known by me privately) in April of 2024. Why am I asking you to address it? Because I am tired of receiving death threats over a videogame.

Things happen, you may have had setbacks, you may have overpromised. That's the way life goes. You have a business model and you decide priority based on your patreon subscribers (currently 4,359 members).

To address jtframe_pocket (Analogue Pocket Framework) being public, topapate had asked both pr4m0d and I to not distribute it. We both paid for lifetime licenses (which have been revoked and is not an issue).
To date, there is nothing that has been done by our release group (CoinOpCollection) that has not had open source code published. Until harassment reached it's peak, there was not a "locked patreon post" for access to our cores.
This harassment from "community" members needs to end. You have the capability of helping that occur by just stating what you have privately to the author about development based on hardware requirements.
Please do so, it would mean a lot coming from a long time supporter and friend if you would address this for the MiSTerFPGA "community".

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Pr4m0d has previously outlined why certain games cannot be released in MiSTer:

Don't believe the hype, the MiSTer is actually not as powerful as the Pocket in several key areas that are fundamental to the needs of the core. That's why these games will never work on the MiSTer. MiSTer is only more powerful in LE and BRAM... the VRAM (pal+bitmap) needs an extremely fast memory that backs it. There are really no good options in the MiSTer for 512kb for just this, in addition to other memories like 128kb for mainram, etc....

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Pr4m0d has also created other related cores, such as the NARC one, which is also exclusive to the Pocket. He does a good job of explaining why this is the case in the video here.

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So, while there's evidence to say that the Pocket, as a portable device, is weaker than the MiSTer, there are some areas in which Analogue's device proves to be superior.

It's a shame, then, that the FPGA community finds itself in such a position when the real reason behind Mortal Kombat skipping MiSTer is a technical one.