UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM (2026-June-09)
Hey everyone!
This week I bring an update for Distribution MiSTer and other databases that contain Arcades, such as Jotego's JTCORES database.
I'm adding filter terms to them so that users can filter games based on screen rotation, screen scan rate, number of buttons, number of players, special controllers, and so on:
controls_1_button: All arcade games that use exactly 1 button.
controls_2_buttons: All arcade games that use exactly 2 buttons.
controls_3_buttons: All arcade games that use exactly 3 buttons.
controls_4_buttons: All arcade games that use exactly 4 buttons.
controls_5_buttons: All arcade games that use exactly 5 buttons.
controls_6_buttons: All arcade games that use exactly 6 buttons.
controls_spinner: All arcade games that require a spinner.
controls_paddle: All arcade games that require a paddle.
controls_dial: All arcade games that require a dial.
controls_trackball: All arcade games that require a trackball.
controls_move_2-way: All arcade games with 2-way directional movement (left-right or up-down).
controls_move_4-way: All arcade games with 4-way directional movement.
controls_move_8-way: All arcade games with 8-way omnidirectional movement.
controls_2_players: All arcade games that support up to two simultaneous players.
controls_3_players: All arcade games that support up to three simultaneous players.
controls_4_players: All arcade games that support up to four simultaneous players.
screen_rotation_horizontal / screen_no_tate: All arcade games designed for horizontal screens.
screen_rotation_vertical_cw / screen_tate_cw: All arcade games designed for clock-wise vertical screens. Including counter clock-wise with a flip option.
screen_rotation_vertical_ccw / screen_tate_ccw: All arcade games designed for counter clock-wise vertical screens. Including clock-wise with a flip option.
screen_rotation_vertical_cw_no_flip / screen_tate_cw_no_flip: All arcade games designed for clock-wise vertical screens without a flip option.
screen_rotation_vertical_ccw_no_flip / screen_tate_ccw_no_flip: All arcade games designed for counter clock-wise vertical screens without a flip option.
screen_horizontal_scan_rate_15khz: All arcade games only supported by 15kHz CRT screens.
screen_horizontal_scan_rate_31khz: All arcade games only supported by 31kHz CRT screens.
unlicensed_games: All arcade bootlegs, hacks or homebrew games
This means, you can now customize the downloader.ini file to install only what you will actually use. If you don't know how to edit filters, check out this video, and this document for reference.
This is especially attractive for arcade cabinet owners and users with CRT setups—I know many of you fit this description. You have been avid users of the Arcade Organizer for this very reason, and this update provides a more natural way to meet your customization needs.
All of this metadata comes from the Arcade Database repository maintained by Toya, a new addition to the MiSTer-devel organization. As I explained in the previous post, Toya has been doing a great work on that database long before it was was brought to MiSTer-devel, so we should all be very thankful for this contribution. If there are any mismatches, please help him by reporting the fixes in that repository.
As an additional note on this topic, I'm considering to make the Arcade Organizer disabled by default in Update All, since it's losing some of its appeal with this update and the process is fairly slow to run by default. It is probably better to have a much faster update by default and keep it as an option for those who really like it. Let me know what you think about this.
Before closing, I'll also share another smaller update. The official MiSTer Discord server has now a #distribution-updates channel that will display messages when Distribution MiSTer is updated. That should happen within the 20-minute time frame after an update of any core. So when a message appears there, you can be sure that you'll get something new after you run any of the updaters. The message itself is not useful (neither the GitHub webhook nor the Discord bot lets you refine the message easily), but the important info is when it shows up, not what it says.
That's all for today.
I also want to thank all the supporters who participated in the poll. I'm definitely taking notes on the suggestions, and they will be considered in my future updates.
See you soon!
UPDATE (2026-June-09)
New terms screen_tate_cw_no_flip and screen_tate_ccw_no_flip (with aliases) have been added to the list to increase the expressiveness of the filters. That way, if you only want games compatible with your CCW Tate screen, you can use either of these filters:
arcade-rbfs-only mame hbmame screen_tate_ccw
arcade !screen_tate_cw_no_flip !screen_no_tate