Turning the Raspberry Pi into a dedicated retro-gaming console | Hacker News Reader

Turning the Raspberry Pi into a dedicated retro-gaming console

blog.petrockblock.com

123 pointsdoener22 comments

Tried this, tried Lakka, ended up settling on Lakka. Lakka's basically just a super-fast-booting Linux that runs Retroarch on start, direct-rendered with no x window system.

I started with it on a Pi2 (~$70-75 with not-ugly case, power supply that's not cheap garbage that causes weird bugs to crop up, memory card), but I've since moved to a ~$150 Asus Chromebox (1.4Ghz dual-core Haswell Celeron) so N64 games will work at full speed (only mario64 worked well on the Pi2) and minor slowdowns in certain SNES games will no longer be an issue.

I find Lakka to be more stable and much lower-maintenance—for one thing I've never had to manually set up my controller with it, whereas Retropie required manual mapping, occasionally forgot said mapping, and of course adding a second (et c.) controller meant mapping again. Lakka's not as flashy (it only just got box art as an option, and it requires hand-adding files, no scraper, so I haven't bothered) but it's snappier and navigation is quicker/cleaner. Mimes the PS3 menu system, which is a very good thing IMO. Closest to a "just works" solution for under-the-TV console emulation I've seen.

Thanks for this, I'm going to try Lakka this evening. I was happy with RetroPi but the experience of setting it up wasn't 'smooth' in in the slightest.

I've been using a PS3 controller, wired. Works great. The Playstation button functions almost the same with Lakka/Retroarch as it does with the PS3, bouncing from the game out to the system menu and back again, which is cool. Personally found that I couldn't even beat E. Honda in Punch Out! with the commonly-used Xbox360 controller due to the D-pad, and had issues with both that and speed of switching between A and B in Mario. No such trouble with the PS3 controller. YMMV.

Should you decide to pick up that Asus Chromebox, I'd recommend following steps 2.1 and 2.2 on the Kodi setup wiki[1] then running the easy setup script[2] from the Kodi forums and using options 4, 5 (definitely choose to prefer booting from USB when prompted, will make updating/replacing Lakka in the future a snap) and maybe 6 to get its BIOS/boot system configured properly, then plug in your Lakka-installing USB stick. I don't know anything about Kodi and related stuff, but those are pretty much the guides to replacing ChromeOS on these things. I messed all this up and nearly bricked it, had to buy a $20 to-USB adapter for its internal solid-state memory module to fix my mistakes. Also try to have a Microsoft or Apple wired USB keyboard handy, the BIOS doesn't like devices that don't properly initialize in the amount of time they're supposed to (so, very fast)—most from those two companies do, many others, including lots of logitech gear, do not.

[1] http://kodi.wiki/view/Chromebox

[2] http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=194362

[EDIT] also, heads up: recent versions of Lakka include a rom/disk scanning system that only populates the per-system lists of games when the MD5 matches a "canonical" (archival project sets like no-intro, et c.) source, not (solely) based on file extension. Kick off the scanning with the rightmost section of the menu. Needs better messaging like warning when files don't match, but it works pretty well. You can still launch anything you want manually, and there may be ways to set it to the old only-file-extension behavior and/or add things to the per-console menus by hand, but I've chosen to clean up my files (n64 especially turned out to be... off) rather than investigate those options. A handful of systems (notably, arcade in general including CPS1/2/NeoGeo and a couple disk-using systems, most of which aren't great on the rpi2 anyway, if that's what you have) aren't supported under this yet. I've decided to simply not add that stuff until it's 100% supported rather than fighting it, since I've got plenty of other stuff to do, video games and otherwise, but to each their own.

There's an upstream bug preventing online updates and extra core downloading from working, too. Already fixed, likely will be released this month, judging from their typical pace of development.

Thanks for that.

Lakka worked flawlessly and I was able to get my library of games up and running with no hassle. My joypads (USB PS2 controller clones) didn't need configuring and seem to work fine - although I've only tested them for about half an hour.

Everything's not quite as responsive as an actual SNES, but it's the closest I've been on a Raspberry Pi.

I just bought a Pi2(was delivered on Saturday) with a plan to build a retro gaming rig. I hadn't heard of Lakka before seeing it on this thread. I think I'm going to have to try it out.

Thank you for sharing your experience with it.

I just tried it out. Thus far, I like it. It's going to take some work to get all of the contented organized and ready but it's a slick little setup. I like it a lot.

A few years ago I built a Pi into a real JAMMA cabinet, bought an IPAC to do the hardware switches-to-USB work, it got built in about a day. It would have been a lot easier with this (although the hardware was easy, it was just a few software niggles that took time to get right so that the unit could boot from cold and work every time), and no doubt with a Pi2 it would be faster than my original unit. Oddly, it was the kind of thing that everyone said they desperately wanted, but when it came to sell, the sale price only just covered the hardware cost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXOruCKBE4U

I recently built a DeskCade (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1985705009/piplay-deskc...). The plans are now released under a CC license. It's super easy to build if you have access to a laser cutter! On the software side, there are even at least four Linux distributions to choose from (PiPlay, RetroPie, Recalbox and Lakka).

Here's the BoM (most components were sourced from AliExpress):

* 30€ for the joystick, 10 buttons, a USB adapter and cables

* 20€ for a 7inch 800x480 LCD panel with display controller

* 10€ for the 6mm plywood for laser cutting

* 8€ for two 3W speakers and a small 2x 3W amplifier

* A Rasberry Pi (you probably already have one, right?)

All in all, around 70€ (US$ 77) if you already have a Raspberry Pi. If not, it will even work with the new cheap Raspberry Pi Zero (add a USB audio interface if your display controller doesn't support audio via HDMI).

> The plans are now released under a CC license.

I couldn't find these in a quick search; are they available publicly or just to backers?

The PiPlay DeskCade vector files were release to backers in late November under a Creative Commons Share-Alike Non Commercial license that allows for redistribution and more, so I think it is OK to post the download link here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8gs5hqs822cmphc/AAD1RarwdBPnbdNEu...

I am a huge fan of Recalbox. You only need to write the image and it is ready, all emulator keys preconfigured :-) You can copy roms via a network share.

I concur. I tried RetroPie and it asked for my keybindings on my controller on start, but when I started any Neo-Geo game, the keys didn't work. No such problem on Recalbox.

(Except for sound not playing on some ROMs)

For retro gaming, also look at the OpenPandora and its soon-to-be successor Pyra.

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pandora/

Interesting that this popped up now. My wife got me a Raspberry Pi kit for Christmas and I decided to use it for just this purpose. Setup is quite simple and the UI (EmulationStation) is quite TV-friendly. I've been using a DualShock 4 so far, but I have a SNES-style controller inbound (search for: buffalo snes controller).

I've mostly focused on SNES emulation so far and the pi is fast enough to handle most games at full speed (yes, higan purists, I know you're out there...). The GPU is somewhat under powered for more advanced post processing shaders, but handles the simpler ones well.

I recently did this with a Pi B+ using emulation station and the only thing I really feel is missing is a good search function within each emulator and across all the emulators. I have two iBuffalo SNES controllers and they work out of the box (you have to do a bit of config for MAME and NeoGEO but no big deal)

Yes I'm not sure why there's no search. You get that thing filled up with hundreds of games and people are going to want to use an onscreen kb and find the game, even to where it might display results organized from multiple systems.

Just to be clear: we need a separate SD card/installation for this right? Can we install this on top of Raspbian?

you could use something like berryboot [0] and install both on the same SD card.

0 - http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

There's a setup script that will get RetroPie installed in Raspbian, so that you could start emulationstation (the game selection GUI) manually. The RetroPie SD image has a few extra features configured (http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/#retroimage) that I don't think you get when using the script.

I just don't get it, who thinks that scrolljacking is a good idea?!

> who thinks that scrolljacking is a good idea?!

Well, I'm sure it worked beautifully on the web designer's computer. As for me, tried to scroll down a few lines, ended up halfway down the page.

Websites that mess with your mouse are the worst, just the worst. Whether it's an annoying scroll that breaks your focus, to changing your middle button from "open in new tab" to "open in same tab", or calling alert("function disabled!") on right click.

Images don't even show if you have javascript disabled. They load, but are opacity:0. Literally the worst option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com