MiSTle is a successor of the MiST project.

Like MiST, the MiSTle project aims to make FPGA based retro computing simple and affordable. Unlike MiST, MiSTle tries to be hardware-agnostic. MiST came with one dedicated hardware, and most clones were just rebrandings of the very same hardware. MiSTle instead aims to be a framework allowing to choose between different FPGA's and MCU's to build from.

A MiSTle setup usually consists of an FPGA and an MCU. The FPGA runs the retro core itself based a hardware description of the retro machine. Various cores have been implemented for the MiSTle like e.g.:

• MiSTeryNano, Atari ST
• NanoMig, Commodore Amiga
• NanoMac, Apple Macintosh Plus
• C64 Nano, Commodore C64
• VIC20 Nano, Commodore VIC20
• A2600 Nano, Atari VCS 2600
• NanoApple2, Apple IIe
• C16 Nano, Commodore C16 Plus/4

The MCU runs the FPGA-Companion firmware and provides support functions for the overall system control through the on-screen-display and assists with modern peripherals like the SD card or USB peripherals.