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YoIn the past, whenever I’ve written enthusiastically about a modern retro console like the Nintendo Classic Mini: SNES or the Analogue Duo, I’ve gotten a few comments at the bottom of the article asking why people don’t just buy a Raspberry Pi mini-computer, download an emulator, and play all the games they like for next to nothing. My response has usually been ease of use and accessibility. When you buy a mini console, you’re getting a plug-and-play product without any complicated setup or potential compatibility issues. Simple.
But I recently bought a Raspberry Pi for an article about the beautiful PiDP-10 machine, so I thought I might as well check out its retro gaming credentials. Here’s what I found.
The hardware
To build your retro machine, you first need a Raspberry Pi computer, which is basically a tiny PC built on a circuit board barely larger than a credit card. There are two currently supported models: the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (£34) and the newer Raspberry Pi 5 (£58), which has a more powerful processor, making it better suited to emulating later consoles. I bought a Model 5 from the Pi Hut site, which offers a decent starter kit that includes a compatible power adapter and HDMI cable, a cute case to house the Pi (complete with a tiny fan to keep the CPU cool), and an SD card, which you need because the computer doesn’t have a built-in hard drive. That kit costs £94. The Raspberry Pi 4 is fine for running emulators of older machines, though, so if you opt for that, you could be set for retro gaming for around £60.
The emulator
This is where things get a little more complicated. There are a variety of Raspberry Pi-compatible retro gaming apps out there, with the main contenders being RetroPie, Recalbox, Batocera and Lakka. They are all effectively collections of different emulators, mostly open source, and all allow you to play games from a huge variety of systems, whether very old home computers or later consoles like the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Want to experience Manic Miner on Oric or Rainbow Islands on Wonderswan? Want to play UtopiaThe Dragon 32 game I made with my friend Jon back in 1987? Now you can. They also support MAME, which runs hundreds of classic arcade games. There are some differences between them in terms of how they run games and the number of configuration options they offer – you might want to tweak the visual settings, perhaps adding authentic-looking scanlines, for example. There’s a really good comparison of them here herealthough most people agree that RetroPie is the best in every aspect.
Getting everything up and running is easy enough. You first plug your SD card into a PC or Mac using a USB SD card reader, then download the Raspberry Pi Imager, which is a small program that installs the operating system onto your card. It’s very easy to use, with three drop-down menus for making your selections. When you click the Choose OS button, you can specify that you want to use the machine as a retro console, and it can automatically download an emulator for you – currently, the options are limited to Recalbox if you have a Model 5, or RetroPie or Recalbox if you have a Model 4. (Retropie doesn’t have a native version for the Model 5 yet.) To get any of the others, you need to separately download their own installation imagers, then select Custom OS in the Raspberry Pi Imager.
Look, don’t be scared, there are plenty of guides online that can help you with this.
The games
Well, this is the In fact Tricky part. To run retro games on these emulators you need game ROMs, which are software versions of the original programs, chips and cartridges. Downloading them from ROM sites on the internet is, in effect, piracy – it’s illegal. “Computer games are protected from copying by intellectual property laws,” explains Alex Tutty of law firm Sheridans. “Generally speaking, in the UK and around the world, a game would be protected by copyright and this would prevent anyone from copying it without the owner’s permission.
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“There are several exceptions to copyright laws, such as making private copies, but that does not allow emulating games and making them available online. Even if a game no longer exists, copying it is not allowed, as the copyright will still apply even if it is not used.”
He is It is possible to find games that have had their copyrights removed by the developers; these are usually found on abandonware sites and software archives. (And I won’t sue you if you download Utopia, although you might want to sue me when you play it.) Either way, I’m not going to tell you how to find ROMs, but I will say that it’s a risky business. Game archives saved on unofficial sites can be riddled with viruses and malware, they may simply not work, or they may be versions in other languages.
Also, getting them onto your Raspberry Pi from the computer you downloaded them to can be a bit tricky. The basic method is to plug your Raspberry Pi’s SD card into your PC and download the ROMs directly to the board, but there are more elegant solutions using SD Card Share or file manager apps. To be honest, I struggled with all that.
In conclusion
Here’s how you can build a retro gaming machine for under £100. I still prefer the more expensive but legally unambiguous routes: keeping the original consoles; buying retro games compilations, such as Sega Genesis Classics or Rare Replay; downloading digital versions of older games from, say, Steam, Gog or your current games console’s online store; buying mini retro machines that run fairly stable versions of the games you loved.
However, I am a big Raspberry Pi fan and think it is worth buying one to experiment with. If you are worried about downloading retro ROMs, there are A vast library of games made specifically for the device, or you download it TwoBox or newest DosBox-X programs that let you play hundreds of old PC games, many of them shareware. Otherwise, you can use the Raspberry Pi to access cloud-based gaming services like Xbox Cloud GamingYou can even Stream games from your PC to your Raspberry PiDiscovering games on new platforms is fun, and having something that works on a computer that fits in your pocket is a fascinating experience.
