RETROPIE: Classic gaming
Turn your Raspberry Pi into a fully featured retro games console, capable of playing titles for Amiga, Sega, Nintendo and much more.
Turn your Raspberry Pi into a fully featured retro games console capable of playing titles for Amiga, Sega, Nintendo and much more, with Nate Drake.
Anyone growing up in the past 30 years is likely to feel a twinge of nostalgia when remembering playing such classics as Super
Mario Bros., Pac-man and Street Fighter. Some readers may even have been fortunate enough to own their own games console, while the rest of us had to be content with pumping coins into any arcade machine they could get their hands on.
Using the custom Retropie operating system, your Raspberry Pi can be transformed into a machine capable of playing all your favourite games for dozens of different titles for Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Atari and more.
If you’re familiar with emulating games, you may wonder why you would install Retropie given the number of emulators out there. The answer is simply that installing Retropie is one of the quickest and easiest ways to play video games classics – the frontend software, Emulationstation, is specifically designed for display on HD televisions. The steps for this project have been partly adapted from the official wiki for Retropie available at https://github.com/Retropie/retropie-setup/wiki.
This Raspberry Pi project is easy to set up, but you may want some extra equipment to make sure your gaming experience is top-notch. The bare minimum you’ll need is your Raspberry Pi computer.
The Retropie website offers images for the Raspberry Pi 1, 2 and 3B, but during our tests, the latter image worked perfectly well with the latest Raspberry Pi 4. You’ll also need a USB keyboard and mouse for setup, a spare microsd card of about 8GB and a computer with internet access.
In order to install the Retropie image to your new microsd card, you’ll also need an SD card adapter. These may come bundled with your SD card; if not they can be obtained very inexpensively from Amazon or the like. The remaining equipment is optional but useful.
You will almost certainly want to get hold of some authentic-looking controllers on which to play the games. If you still have some controllers left over from your old SNES or Sega Mega Drive, you may be able to buy an adapter to get them working with the Pi’s USB slots. Alternatively, you can buy USB controllers that resemble classic gamepads – see the ‘Taking Control’ box (over the page) for more information. If you’re serious about creating your own gaming station, you may also want to think of constructing a snazzy case for the Pi itself using wood, a 3D printer, or even Lego. Some users even add a Powerblock, available from suppliers such as the Pi Hut (http://bit.ly/ lxf257power). This is simply a switch which you can use to power off the Pi just like a regular console.
If you do build a case, make sure either to buy a new Raspberry Pi specifically for this project or make sure that you can still access all the ports – especially the SD
card – if you ever want to convert the Pi back into a regular computer.
Roms and Emu
The term ROM stands for Read-only Memory. This reflects the fact that many video games used to be available on cartridges containing a read-only memory chip. Early developers of ‘emus’ or emulators – software programs designed to mimic the functions of video games consoles on computers – would use technical wizardry to make a copy of these games to their machines to allow them to be played. These digital files were and are known as ROMS.
Retropie contains emulators for around 70 different platforms. These range from more familiar consoles such as the Nintendo 64 to more obscure machines like the Atari Lynx. The legality of creating, distributing and downloading ROMS is highly dubious. For this reason, Retropie doesn’t come with any games preinstalled.
A word on piracy
There’s a thriving online community of developers who produce both software emulators to play games (some of which are included in Retropie) and who also reverseengineer ROMS. Although there’s nothing to prevent you from searching out these websites online yourself, many of the users there seem to be very comfortable with creating and playing pirated games. Although they claim not to condone software piracy, a good many pirated and ‘homebrew’ versions of copyrighted retro games are available for download on these sites.
The general feeling seems to be that it is lawful to download a ROM provided you own the video game cartridge itself. It’s not clear what legal basis there is for this from region to region. In the UK, for instance, it’s still technically illegal to copy music from a CD you own into a media player like itunes, although apparently no one’s about to arrest you for doing so.
Other arguments in favour of creating and downloading ROMS for games seem to be that many are not currently sold by the publishers, so people wishing to play games have no choice. They also argue that emulation can actually improve the gameplay experience and that the games were created so long ago they can be considered to be in the public domain and therefore free of copyright (not true–ed).
The community also seems keen to stress that creating, developing and playing with software designed to emulate a video game console isn’t in itself illegal. In fact, some consoles such as the Sony Playstation 3 include emulators to play titles for older consoles – in this case, the PS1. However, this would seem to undermine the argument that users have no choice but to play with pirated ROMS, as stores such as the Playstation Store allow playing certain retro games like
Sonic the Hedgehog through an emulator. Developers who have reverse-engineered ROMS to work with their particular emulator may have had to alter the game to some extent. This means that what you are playing will not necessarily resemble the games you remember. Some developers have deliberately changed gameplay, such as the hacked version of
Super Mario Bros. where the famous plumber brothers are sporting afro hairstyles.
Even for older video game titles, as Nintendo states
on its website, some iconic characters such as Donkey Kong have been brought back time and again for new games. Even if an older game is considered public domain, the characters themselves may be trademarked. Nintendo also claims that in the USA, for instance, the copyright for video games developed by a corporation is 75 years, so even pirating an arcade game from the ’80s would technically be in breach of the law. Some websites such as the Internet Archive (https://archive.org) seemingly circumvent this issue by hosting ROMS only for companies which no longer exist, and so would have difficulties making a copyright claim. It’s not clear if hosting this ‘abandonware’ follows the letter of the law in every country, however. (It does not – Ed)
Classic collectors
If you follow our recommendation to have an authentic gaming experience by buying games cartridges, you will almost certainly stumble into the world of collectors of vintage video games. Many, like you, will simply be looking for a way to play games they enjoyed when younger. Others are diehard collectors looking to obtain rare copies of every game for a particular platform at any cost.
This is important to understand, as you’ll be able to buy most second-hand games online for a few pennies. A few exceptionally rare games such as Smurfs 2: Autor Du Monde (Smurfs 2: Around the World), however, sell for far above their original retail price.
This can work both ways, of course. If you still have any video games left over, particularly if the box and/or instruction manual are intact, you may find you can sell them for a profit. If you want to learn more about rare and valuable games or want to start collecting, the Retro Collect website is an excellent starting point – see www.retrocollect.com.
Retro headaches
The chief issue you’re likely to have with this project is not that it won’t work; rather, it’s likely to be too effective and you’ll find yourself whiling away the hours as you nostalgically play games. If you don’t have access to any other computer besides the Pi or don’t have an extra SD card, it is possible to install Retropie manually – see http://bit.ly/lxf257manual for specific steps.
The Automatic Controller configuration should allow most gamepads to work out of the box. Having said that, some of the games can be rather tricky. The default button combination for saving and loading your progress is Select + Right Shoulder Button and Select + Left Shoulder Button respectively.
If you have a number of games in your Retropie, you may find them difficult to navigate. One excellent and helpful garnish for your Retropie is to install a Scraper. This is a small program which will download a brief summary and the box art of a game from the internet. For more information on how to set this up visit http:// bit.ly/lxf257scraper. Finally, if you need further help with your setup post a question in the Retropie forums at http://bit.ly/lxf257retrohelp.