Check out this $150 FPGA-based PlayStation

You may recognize Taki Udon from his retro gaming YouTube channel, but last year he started a company to manufacture gaming hardware, including a much-cheaper variant of the DE10 board behind the popular open-source MiSTer FPGA project — you can read all about my beloved MiSTer here — and he hasn’t slowed down since.

After a series of teases, Udon’s Retro Remake imprint has taken the wraps off of its FPGA-powered PlayStation clone, called the SuperStation One. The MiSTer-based console starts at just $149.99 for pre-orders, in what is being billed as a “Founder’s Edition,” with subsequent pricing having a “hard cap” of $225 (also visible in this image of the store page). If you want that SuperSpecial price, pre-orders open at the following times, on the Retro Remake store: 

• Los Angeles: 6 p.m. PST on Saturday, January 25
• New York: 9 p.m. EST on Saturday, January 25
• London: 2 a.m. GMT on Sunday, January 26
• Hong Kong: 10 a.m. HKT on Sunday, January 26
• Sydney: 1 p.m. AEDT on Sunday, January 26
• More times here ?

The SuperStation One is a custom MiSTer device, housed in a plastic shell that certainly evokes the vibes of the original PlayStation (or, perhaps, the PSOne would be more accurate). While the device will run any of the MiSTer’s myriad cores, it’s the project’s PSX_MiSTer core that takes center stage here. Coupled with original PlayStation controller and Memory Card ports on the front of the device, and a bevy of other inputs and outputs befitting any MiSTer project, and the SuperStation One makes a compelling alternative to the MiSTer’s often confusing assembly of hubs and hats and SDRAM and SNAC adapters. With built-in analog output, USB, NFC, wifi, Bluetooth, and SNAC support, Udon’s console has de-dongled the MiSTer to a really impressive degree. There’s even a power button! (MiSTer users know. ?)

Then there’s the question of how you get games on the thing. Retro Remake has teased a separate attachment called the SuperDock, which houses a “CD/DVD drive, four USB A ports, and a 2280 m.2 SSD bay,” and which appears to fit neatly beneath the SuperStation One. While no pricing has been announced yet, pre-order deposits will be available for $5 alongside a SuperStation One purchase.

If you’d rather skip loading real discs, or would prefer to do what I did and embed small NFC stickers into your cases, the SuperStation One comes equipped with an NFC reader so you can use Zaparoo (née TapTo) to load games, giving you that tactile console experience. Normally, how you get the ROMs that you’ll be “tapping” onto the device is a process best left unspoken, but Udon spoke to the excellent folks at Time Extension about the SuperDock’s capabilities here. 

Thankfully, saving games is split from the media, and our SNAC ports give us the direct ability to load and save games without needing to use cartridge-based workarounds. That just leaves you with how to handle the CD itself. On a stock core with a stock system, it is possible to store your games on an internal SSD via a simple process. Whenever you use that CD in the future, the stock system will call the stored backup and load the game without you needing to do anything.

This is a great solution for those of us with large PS1 disc collections, where you could rip your own ROMs, and load them upon disc insertion, or (presumably) NFC tap if you’d prefer. While there’s still a large open question for how these changes apply upstream to the MiSTer project, it’s certainly compelling from a user experience standpoint.

If all of this reminds you of Analogue’s excellent clone consoles, well… yeah, this is a direct competitor to what Analogue has been up to. While Analogue’s products are beautiful and simple compared to the complexities of a MiSTer build, they lack the flexibility and Tinker Factor™ that the MiSTer has. They also lack — much to the frustration of many of its customers and fans of its name — analog output for CRT support, which the SuperStation One will support. Analogue hasn’t gotten around to a PlayStation core yet; its first CD-based system was 2023’s excellent, but niche, Analogue Duo and up next is the Analogue 3D, a 4K Nintendo 64 clone which should be shipping this quarter. As much as I’ve enjoyed all of Analogue’s projects, it’s exciting to see some more competition in this space.