The Raspberry Pi is a development board that offers many possibilities. One of the things we can do with this small device is to build a console to play retro games for very little money. In this post we explain how to install RetroPie on Raspberry Pi to emulate old consoles.
What is RetroPie
RetroPie is a complete software library that is used to emulate a large number of old consoles on the Raspberry Pi, in addition, it is free, so the whole project will be very cheap.
RetroPie's interface is designed to be very intuitive and easy to use from a controller, something that is ideal for setting up our game system. This system works under Emulation Station and offers support for a multitude of classic game consoles, including NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari, N64, PSP, PSX and many more .
RetroPie is compatible with all versions of the Raspberry Pi , although in the case of the recently announced Raspberry Pi 4, the developers have not ported the system yet, so it will take a while to be available. You can go for the Raspberry Pi 3 B +, or wait for the new version of this development board to arrive.
What is needed
The first thing we need is to have a RaspBerry Pi mounted and functional , we can get all the components for an approximate price of just over 60 euros.
| Processor | ARM Cortex A-72 with quad cores at 1.5 GHz |
| RAM | 1, 2 or 4 GB LPDDR4 |
| Graphic card | VideoCore VI |
| Internal memory | Via micro SD cards |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home |
| Connections | WiFi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0 and Ethernet |
| Ports | 2 x micro HDMI, 1 x USB type C, 2 x USB 2.0 type A, 2 x USB 3.0 type A, 40-pin GPIO, DSI, CSI and audio jack for headphones |
| Release date | Available |
| Price | From 30 euros to change |
Next, we leave you a list with all the necessary components and the links to buy it.
- Raspberry Pi 3B + 33 euros.
- Power adapter 11 euros.
- MicroSD card 12 euros.
- HDMI cable 2.30 euros.
- Box for the plate 5 euros.
- Game controls 9.60 euros.
Download and install RetroPie
The next step is to download the RetroPie operating system , we can do it from the official website of the project. As we have mentioned before, it is completely free.
Once we are on the RetroPie website, we enter the downloads tab and look for the right version for our Raspberry Pi , we leave you an image to help you.
We click and wait for the operating system installation image to download. It weighs just under 700MB so it shouldn't take long to download.
Once the download has finished, it's time to install RetroPie on our memory card. For this we will use the Etcher program, which is very easy to use and can be downloaded for free from its official website.
To install RetroPie we just need to open Etcher , select the image of the operating system that we downloaded in the previous step, select the memory card we want to use, and finally click on accept. The process will take a few minutes, depending on the writing speed of our memory card.
Once it is finished we will have the memory card ready to put it in the Raspberry Pi. After that we connect it to the power and to our monitor and we will see how the RetroPie operating system starts . The first boot can be a bit slow, this is because the system needs to finish setting up.
The games are not included with RetroPie , as it is not possible to make them for legal reasons . You will have to look for your own ROMs to be able to play, although it is also possible to find images of Retropie modified with many games included on the Internet. We recommend using the official system and searching for the games separately to avoid possible malware.