Raspberry Pi Emulator

It's easy as can be. Too easy for people to be spending money on the new Nintendo
1)Get a raspberry pi 3 model B (amazon $30-40)
2) get a micro SD card (Samsung Evo 32gb class 10 has been tested as one of the best for the RP3). Put it into your computer. Right click on it and format it to Fat32.
3)Download the latest version of retropie (free)
4)download win32 disk imager (free) and use that to write retropie onto the micro SB. Thats as simple as copying the retropie file name into win32, selecting whichever drive the SD card is located on, and then pressing "write"

Take out micro SD from computer, insert it into RP3. Connect usb controller, usb keyboard, and tv connection first. Then plug in the power supply which will start the RP3 up and it will automatically start reading the SD card which copies all of the emulators onto the RP3 at once. You don't personally have to add each emulator yourself, that's what the retropie program does (it's called emulation station). You won't see any emulators on the screen at first, just the retropie setting menu. The emulators don't appear until you add the first ROM/ISO to it.

To this point, the entire process my have taken 20 minutes. If that. And most of that time is just sitting around waiting for files to DL.

After retropie is set up on the RP3, you'll follow the steps to configure your controller which should already be plugged in. Afterwards, use your newly configured controller to click on the retropie settings to gain access to your wifi (this is what you need the keyboard for). Select your wifi and type in the password to give the RP3 access to it.

That's it, everything is set up including all emulators. It's just transferring Roms after that.

Two ways to do that:
1) easy way: Copy your Roms to a USB stick then plug that USB stick into the RP3. It will automatically read the USB card and transfer the roms to the correct emulator for you. YouTube this - there is a little more to it but it is super easy.

Or

2) the super duper easy way: transfer Roms wirelessly through your wifi network which you can do if you successfully set up wifi on the RP3.

To do this, get on your computer and open up "network" to see everything connected to your wifi. You should see Retropie on there (if not, just search for the retropie IP address which you can find in the retropie settings right next to where you had to go to set up the wifi). Once you see retropie listed on your network, click it to open it up. You'll see some folders (BIOS, ROMS, Splash Screen and a few more). The "ROMS" folder has the list of emulators in it.

Go to ROM website. DL the ROM to your computer. Then drag/copy the ROM to the correct emulator listed in the retropie network Roms file (example: if you just DLd a NES ROM, copy it to the NES emulator that will be in the list). Voila! Then go to your RP3 and select reboot. When it loads back up, a new emulator will be available with the transferred ROM sitting in it. Play away.

Rinse and repeat to add more ROMs.

There are a ton of YouTube videos available as a guide. Just make sure the videos are for setting up Retropie on a Raspberry Pi 3. The RP3 has a lot more built in programs that makes it easier to configure than the older raspberry pis.

Look up Reys 128gb retro pie image

quote:

---

Can you hook this up to a TV?
And can you buy retro controllers to play on? NES games were meant to be played with an NES controller. I can't play them any other way.

---

Yes and yes.

Although the most popular retro controller is the Buffalo SNES controller. Can be bought on Amazon for $15 (I think that's the price). Retro NES controllers can be bought too, but you're limiting yourself to two buttons and will have to swap out controllers each time you open an emulator that uses 4 button controllers.

The Retropie 3 model B comes with 4 USB ports and an HDMI port. So you can connect to tv through hdmi

Ps3 & 360 controllers can be used. You initially have to set them up through a wired connection, but the raspberry pi 3 has built in bluetooth (you'll need a bluetooth dongle for older raspberry pi versions). You can set up your controllers to run wirelessly after the initial wired setup. I haven't done this, so you'll have to use YouTube videos to guide you.

I've read that ps4 controllers are compatible as well. Not sure about Xbox one. I personally haven't tried connecting either of those controllers, so can't say for sure they work.

Ps3 and 360 work 100% though. I use a ps3

I just tried some n64 games yesterday. MARIO 64 stuttered a little, goldeneye worse, Zelda ocarina actually played pretty flawlessly, at least in the starting area. I just ordered another case for the rp3 with a fan so I can try to cool it better and hopefully increase performance a bit.

quote:

---

haven't figured out how to get Street fighter 2 to run correctly

---

The tricky thing about MAME roms is that they have a version number themselves. I found that I had better luck running MAME 2003 with MAME roms that are version 0.78. To use MAME 2003, the 0.78 roms must be placed in this path:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/

SF2 through SSF2T work great with this method. I haven't attempted Killer Instinct or Tekken yet, though I was never a fan of those games.

If you're going to just be loading up random games you have an interest in, 32 GB should be fine. The Pi's I've setup for friends have used that. However, as TTownTiger says, if you start loading CD based games, you're going to need more space since each ISO can run up to 500+ MB depending on the title. This is why I recently jumped up to a 64 GB card.

Also note that the use of graphical shaders / filters on old games is something to look into once you've got the games running. I find that the emulators that come with Retropie either don't filter the graphics at all (which looks terrible to me on modern TV's) or filter them too much (which can look even worse).

The first few minutes of this video can't be used as a guide since it's so old, but it does a good job of demonstrating why you might want to look into shaders and how they can make these games look closer to what the original game designers had in mind back when they were making them.

quote:

---

is why I recently jumped up to a 64 GB card. 

---

Which card you using? I considered jumping up to add more psone games. Did you have to do any special formatting other than the standard fat32 format to get the larger card compatible?

Really buy a 128 gb card and check this out. It takes a lot of the work out of it. LINK

I'm dying to do this with a busted up n64 that I still have

Is this possible?