Now that you’ve got the earworm that was the title of this post in your head I’ll move on.
If you’re a
tech person, or a maker or a programmer then chances are high you know what the
Raspberry Pi is. The Pi is a small
single-board computers developed to promote the teaching of basic computer
science in schools and in developing countries. The chip measures maybe 2 x 3 inches and is
about ½ inch thick. When you buy one it
comes with nothing else but it. There
are of course companies now that put together specialist kits for you that will
come with other parts but in general you buy the chip and nothing else, and the
chip itself prices in at only around $35 USD.
The chip is impressively powerful and has found a big uptake in the
robotics field at many universities across the world. My purposes for the chip however are far more
mundane, emulation.
An emulator
is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the host) to
behave like another computer system (called the guest). An emulator enables the
host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest
system. Emulators have been immensely
popular over the years on computers for giving the user the ability to play
video games that have long been out of production or perhaps were never
available in the users’ area of the world.
After all, a video game is just data and once that file is movable
without a physical body. SSNES is software
that was originally developed just to play Super Nintendo Entertainment System
games in 2010, but it quickly branched out from there creating emulators for
many different gaming systems and getting a rebranding or titling to RetroArch
in 2012. Now I get a little less
knowledgeable here but at some point some programmers married these two pieces
together and created an operating system for the Pi from RetroArch and called
it Retro Pi, a very simple and free to install system that turns that little
$35 chip into a gaming juggernaut.
Currently the RetroArch can run forty-seven different emulators. How many of those are in the current release
of Retro Pi I’m unsure of, but it’s quite impressive. So let me take you on a little walk.
I purchased
from Amazon the following.
CanaKit
Raspberry pi 3 kit $74.99
-Again, if
you buy the chip itself you only get the chip and this came with a number of
other pieces that I would inevitably need anyway such as an AC Adapter, HDMI
Cable, Mini SD Card (the Pi has no onboard hard drive), and a case.
-I bought
two actually, so $22.58 here and they aren’t 100% necessary. There are a ton of other optional controllers
out there that can be used with the Pi, not to mention Microsoft sells a USB
Wireless adapter that you could buy for about $20 USD that will link your
wireless X Box controllers as well.
-This is
generally unnecessary because the Pi doesn’t create much heat but I was going
to put in a case with pretty much zero airflow so I wanted to be safe.
Love RPi
MicroUSB Push On/Off Power Switch Cable $5.99
-The Pi has
no actual power button so to turn it off after shutting down the software you’d
have to just unplug it.
-Yes, I
absolutely wanted mine to look like a baby Nintendo and yes, this was also
completely unnecessary.
Total
investment: $120.41 USD
If you get
rid of unnecessary things like the 2nd controller, NES case, power
switch, fan, then you could be up and running under $90 USD but lets move on
shall we.
The games
files are generally referred to as ROMs.
A ROM is an image or ROM file and contains a copy of the data from a
read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's
firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequently used in
the context of emulation, whereby older games or computer firmware are copied
to ROM files on modern computers and can, using a piece of software known as an
emulator, be run on a computer. Now, I’m
not really certain about the legality of ROMS, in fact I’m fairly sure they are
illegal and there is a lot of grey area.
I’ve read articles and discussion boards stating that to make and store
a ROM of a game you purchased and rightfully own is within your rights as a
backup precaution in case of loss, but to distribute such would be piracy but
I’m no lawyer, and I don’t think the people who wrote any of the articles I
read are either. Regardless of the
legality there are a plethora of websites out there that act as storehouses of
ROM games from the days of yore that you can easily find with a quick google
search. Anyway, you download the ROMS,
upload them to the Mini SD card and then put it into your Pi unit and you are
off to the races.
There are a lot of extra steps you can take such as I have by getting a program called a Stripper which will go through the list of ROMs on your unit and then search the internet for box and game art so that your GUI (graphic user interface) on the screen you’re playing on looks nice and pretty and isn’t just a list of games but as many things in this article have been it is completely optional. You’ll note that I didn’t actually tell you how to put any of this together or install it but there are an awful lot of YouTube tutorials out there that are quite thorough such as the one I’ll link at the end of this article. I should also point out that the Pi 3 that I have contains 4 USB ports. You will have to hook a Keyboard up to the unit while installing everything as well as having to likely hardline it into a Router via CAT5 cable. Once you have the firmware updated you can later do everything through WiFi as the Pi is capable of both that and Bluetooth.
I have thoroughly enjoyed taking my children through the bevy of old games I played as a child. While as I mentioned before there are forty some odd emulators functional on RetroArch I currently only use five. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Gameboy Advance and Playstation. These were the systems I grew up on and loved so much as a youth. Building a Retro Pi can be a fun weekend diversion for you and your family and lead to a lot of great games to be played with your family. I highly recommend it. Thanks for reading.
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