Sure it would probably be cheaper to chuck a cortex-A* or similar mid-range MCU in there. One advantage of FPGAs that it can achieve "perfect" emulation of a Z8

Sure it would probably be cheaper to chuck a cortex-A* or similar mid-range MCU in there. One advantage of FPGAs that it can achieve "perfect" emulation of a Z80 (or other) since it's running on the logic gate level. No software task latency, no extra sound buffering, etc. It can re-create the original clock-per-clock.