How to Build a Retro Style Game Console on a Raspberry Pi

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The Ultimate Lifehacker Guide to the Raspberry Pi ): title The Ultimate Lifehacker Guide to the Raspberry Pi Everyone wants a tiny computer that can do all of this, but where do you start? Use this guide to get started with your new Raspberry Pi.

Since its release, the $ 35 Raspberry Pi mini computer has been hailed as the ultimate all-in-one retro gaming console. This is now easier than ever to do and doesn’t require any Linux knowledge. Here’s how to make your own retro video game console in less than 10 minutes.

Update (02/09/2017) : We’ve updated this guide to reflect the changes in the latest version of RetroPie (currently 4.1). This includes completely new sections for customizing your card, system, and controllers. Fortunately, the whole process has now been greatly simplified! If you just want to update your old RetroPie installation to the most recent version, launch RetroPie and go to RetroPie> Update or follow this guide for more detailed instructions.

We’ve introduced you to all kinds of DIY projects for the Raspberry Pi , but this one might be the easiest. You will have a retro style game console with old school controllers installed and up and running in less than 10 minutes. All you have to do is install the operating system on your SD card and perform a simple file transfer from your PC.

Before we get started, let’s go over some of the basics. Emulating old-school video games requires two things: the ROM of the games and an emulator to play them. A ROM is a copy of a game that exists on your device. An emulator is an application that can play this ROM. The rule of ethics for the emulator is that you must have a physical copy of the game if you have a ROM (or you can create your own from your old cartridges). We will give you the opportunity to create ROMs yourself. So let’s set up the Raspberry Pi.

What do you get

Your Raspberry Pi will automatically boot into the EmulationStation . It’s a program that runs on a special SD card called RetroPie that lets you use your controller to select an emulator and play without ever touching your keyboard or mouse. Once everything is set up, you can navigate and do whatever you need to do on your Raspberry Pi from your controller.

Along with games, you’ll also get access to the full version of the media center software, Kodi (you’ll need to go into some advanced settings to download Kodi). This means you can have a one-stop entertainment center that runs classic games and your media center. This is a pretty killer setup.

What systems can you emulate? A lot of them:

You will also get a range of dedicated ports for specific games , including Quake , Minecraft Pi , Baldur’s Gate, and more.

What you need

You don’t need a lot to get started:

Step one: download and install RetroPie to your SD card

Thanks to RetroPie, the process of installing all of these emulators on your Raspberry Pi is incredibly simple:

  1. Download the RetroPie project SD card image for your Raspberry Pi version (0 / B / B + or 2/3). We are using version 3.7 for this tutorial. One word of warning, though: This sucker can take a while to load depending on how busy their servers are, so take some time for yourself.
  2. Once booted, extract the image to your SD card just like a regular Raspbian image. Windows users can easily do this with Win32DiskImager , while Mac users can use RPI-sd map constructor . Linux users have to use a fairly simple command line trick. Either way, check out our beginner’s guide to getting started with the Raspberry Pi and follow the same instructions as with Raspbian.
  3. When it’s done, remove the SD card and insert it into your Raspberry Pi.

As for the initial setup, that’s all you need to do. In fact, if you plan on using a keyboard and mouse instead of a controller, you are mostly done and can skip to step 5 for transferring the ROM files.

If you’d rather install emulators manually, you can do that as well. On RetroPie Github page, there is a manual for this, but keep in mind : the manual process takes from six to nine hours to download and install it. The advantage is that you get the latest emulators and can choose what gets installed. However, for our purposes, the above method works great and is incredibly simple.

Step two: boot the Raspberry Pi and set up the EmulationStation

Next, we’ll boot your Raspberry Pi. Connect one of your controllers and keyboard to the Raspberry Pi. Insert the SD card you just burned and turn on your Raspberry Pi. After a couple of minutes of auto-tuning (this will expand the filesystem and prepare some other stuff), it will boot straight into EmulationStation, the frontend shell with all your emulators. This is where you set up your controller and do a few other tweaks to set up your system.

On first boot, follow the onscreen instructions with the controller to set it up (up, down, left, right, etc.). If you are using a Bluetooth controller, connect it with a USB cable in this step. You can set up Bluetooth later in the next step.

When you’re done, you can navigate RetroPie with just your controller. These controls will work in both emulators and RetroPie itself. In addition to controlling basic movements, you also get a number of hotkeys so that you can quickly perform certain actions from within the game:

  • Select + Start: Quit the game
  • Select + Right Shoulder : Save
  • Select + Left Shoulder : Load
  • Select + Right : Increase the input status slot
  • Select + Left : Decrease the input status slot
  • Select + X : RGUI Menu
  • Select + B : Reset

Not all of these shortcuts are useful for everyone, but you should at least know how to exit the game, create a save, and load a save.

Another thing to watch out for is that while RetroPie comes with a ton of emulators, it hides all emulators that don’t have games installed . So, when you first look at RetroPie, you will notice that emulators are not available. Do not worry! This is how it should work. The rest of the emulators will appear when adding games.

Step three: set up Wi-Fi

The newest version of RetroPie has a built-in system where you can access all of your Raspberry Pi settings, configure memory, and more right from the EmulationStation. Most of these settings are for advanced users, but almost everyone will want to set up Wi-Fi:

  1. Scroll down to Configure WiFi and press the A button.
  2. Select “Connect to Wi-Fi” and choose your network. Enter your password and select OK.

That’s all for the basic setup. If you want to tinker a little more, you can do it here. You can edit the RetroPie theme, set up a Bluetooth controller for wireless connectivity (this is a bit brand- specific , but the RetroPie GitHub page has guides on the most popular options), manage files, and more in this area. For the most part, it’s not worth messing around until you get comfortable with the basics. Check out our guide to RetroArch (the heart of the RetroPie system) if you’re wondering how to tweak some of these advanced options.

Step four (optional): transfer your ROMs from your main computer

For this step, we will assume that you already have several ROMs on your main computer that you want to transfer to your Raspberry Pi. It’s very easy to do:

  1. Make sure your Raspberry Pi is powered on and connected to your router.
  2. The RetroPi folder should automatically appear as a shared folder. If not, you can download it manually. In Windows, open a file manager and type \\retropie into the folder. On your Mac, open Finder and choose Go> Connect To Server. Enter smb://retropie and click Connect.

From now on, you should be able to easily copy ROMs to your Raspberry Pi remotely using this method, so don’t worry if you want to add more later. After the file transfer is complete, restart your Raspberry Pi.

If you’d rather use a USB ROM drive, you can do that too. Just copy them to a USB stick in a folder named retropie and then plug it into your Pi.

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