Why RetroPie?
I chose to do a RetroPie as my project because I have been playing video games since I was a child, so the RetroPie looked like the right project for me. I have a lot of fond memories playing what are now retro games with friends and family growing up, playing old retro games is something that my wife enjoys as well, so I figured this would be a project that would result in being able to relive some old memories.
How it started
I checked out one of the Raspberry Pi 4 kits from the library at Delta.
The kit had the following components.
- A Raspberry Pi 4
- A power cable
- A usb micro sd card reader
- A power cord extension with an on/off switch
- A keyboard
- An micro sd card
I had to go out and buy a HDMI to micro HDMI converter cable along with a usb to load the RetroPi roms onto. I used https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ to load the RetroPi OS onto the RaspberryPi.
I used the following videos as guides for setting up the RetroPi, they were both super simple to follow:
How it turned out
Above are some images of the RaspberryPi hooked up and running the RetroPi software to emulate some Gameboy Advance roms.
Here is a video of the RetroPi in action (No game audio though).
Final Thoughts
This project went a lot better than I expected it would, I was a bit worried since I’d never put a RaspberryPi together before. But after going through with it, I’m happy to say that it was much less complicated than I initially thought it would be, the guide videos I posted above made it super simple to understand. I only had a few hiccups with setting up the controller input and getting the usb flashdrive formatted properly to load retro roms onto, but those were pretty minor issues. Now that I have the RetroPi up and running, I’m a little sad that I’ll have to return it soon, but I might pick a kit up and do this project again so its something that I can always have on hand as a simple way to enjoy old school games. I’d 100% recommend this project to anyone who enjoys simple tinkering or old school/retro games.
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