Enjoy your old video games by building your retrogaming console using a Raspberry Pi and a dedicated distro.
Whether you missed the boat or deliberately refrained from plunging into Nintendo NES Mini madness for lack of games interesting enough to your liking, nothing is lost. Enjoying your old favorite video games is still possible and there are many solutions. If you’re lucky enough to own a Raspberry Pi, building a cross-platform retrogaming console is a snap. There are indeed dedicated distributions, easy to set up, which allow you to enjoy dozens of consoles, computers and arcade machines, and the best titles in the history of video games. Telecharger.com has selected the best distributions to transform your Raspberry Pi into a universal retrogaming platform.
RecalBox
Among the distributions dedicated to retrogaming, RecalBox is undoubtedly the best known. Compatible with all versions of Raspberry Pi – by overclocking the processor on the Raspberry Pi 1 – it not only offers to create a retrogaming platform, but also to enjoy your multimedia content thanks to the integration of the Kodi media center.
RecalBox excels with its extreme ease of installation which allows it to operate almost instantly once installed. The distribution relies on RetroArch to provide a unified emulation platform. Its perfectly polished interface is based on EmulationStation2 and allows you to switch from one system to another with great ease.
RecalBox integrates 52 consoles and arcade machines, with for the most famous, the NES, the Super Nintendo, the Master System, the MegaDrive, the Playstation, the PSP, the Amstrad and even the Dreamcast since the last update. These are often automatically installed OTA.
The system also draws its strength from its many features that the most demanding players will love. RecalBox allows five players to play, natively supports several console controllers (Xbox 360, PS3, 8bitdo, etc.) and automatically retrieves from the Internet all the information of the games you have imported. Starting a game and resuming it later is no longer a problem since a save system has been integrated, even on consoles that did not have one, and it is possible to rewind the game in order to modify an action that could have you be fatal.
Download RecalBox for Raspberry Pi (Free)
RetroPie
With RecalBox, RetroPie is the other big reference in terms of retrogaming on Raspberry Pi. Built around Rapsbian, Retropie also relies on EmulationStation for the interface and on RetroArch for the emulators. The system, very similar to that offered by RecalBox, also integrates the Kodi media center to enjoy your movies, series and music library on your TV, and its installation is also trivial.
RetroPie also offers compatibility with console controllers including that of the SNES, Xbox 360 or PS3 and allows you to customize the controls according to the controller you connect. More than fifty consoles, arcade machines and other computers are supported by the system including the Amstrad CPC, Nintendo NES, SNES, GameCube, N64, Game Boy and Wii, but also SEGA Dreamcast, Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear, or the PS1, PS2, PSP.
Download RetroPie for Raspberry Pi (Free)
Lakka
Inspired by RetroPie and PiMAME, Lakka is based on RetroArch as well as on the architecture of the LibreELEC distribution from which it uses the interface. Rather sober, the latter is unified and has many advantages such as the use of the automatic configuration system of the joystick controls present natively in RetroArch. The system also natively supports several wireless controllers such as that of the Xbox360, the DualShock 3 (PS3) as well as the 8bitdo controller.
As for the emulated consoles, we find among the best known, the Nintendo NES, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, N64 and DS, the SEGA Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear and Dreamcast, or the PlayStation and PSP.
Another advantage presented by Lakka is that the system, which weighs around 300 MB, is read-only and therefore cannot be modified. No risk, therefore, of crashing your entire installation. As for updates, they do not rely on packages, but on the complete replacement of system and kernel files.
As with competing distributions, Lakka allows multiple players to play simultaneously. It also offers the possibility of rewinding a part to allow you to modify an action which would have made you lose.
Download Lakka for Raspberry Pi (Free)
HAPPI Game Center
Like RetroPie, HAPPI Game Center is based on Raspbian and revolves around EmulationStation to provide an intuitive user interface. Presented as the simplest retrogaming distribution and offering “the closest rendering to the original machines” by its developer, HAPPI Game Center uses emulators that may be different than those offered in other distributions.
HAPPI Game Center integrates no less than 25 consoles (NES, Super NES, N64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Master System, Mega Drive, PlayStation, etc.), 5 arcade terminals (Neo Geo, MAME, etc.), 5 computers (Amstrad CPC 6128, ZX Spectrum, Atari 8 Bit), and offers several additional bonuses including the ability to stream and control Steam games installed on PC from the Raspberry Pi. An ideal solution for enjoying Steam games on a large TV screen, as long as you have a PC with an NVIDIA GameStream compatible graphics card.
The distribution natively supports several controller models such as the PS2 (with USB adapter), PS3 / PS4 (wired), NE / Super NES USB, N64 USB, Xbox 360, Wii Classic, and more.
Download Happi Game Center for Raspberry Pi (Free)
ChameleonPi
ChameleonPi is a Raspbian-based distribution powered by a house interface developed in Python, displaying a carousel for scrolling through included systems. While some console emulators are offered in ChameleonPi, the distribution specializes more particularly in personal computer emulation.
We thus find a Gameboy, NES, SNES and Megadrive emulator, but above all an emulator for the ZX Sepctrum, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC 464, the Atari ST, or the Atari 800. The system offers nearly twenty machines.
The installation of ChameleonPi is carried out in the same way as a traditional manual installation, by writing the image of the system directly on the memory card inserted in the Raspberry Pi.
Download ChameleonPi for Raspberry Pi (Free)
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