Vintage Game Setup
Childhood memory is something that is cherished by all adults, everyone has their favorite childhood memory it might be playing cricket, chilling with cousins when the gang is together, etc.
Today will talk about my favorite childhood memory i.e. playing video games.
Build up
Ever since I was a kid I was fascinated by the console and how they’ve managed to make such cool games over 8-bit architecture (That’s some hardcore shit!). Playing contra, Super Mario Bros, Wolfenstein, etc was just a warmup.
Recently, I had the urge to live my childhood again. So, I researched online, and voila.
After getting myself socially validated (social media) over the different platforms, I got tons of messages asking about the setup. So, here it is.
Pre-requisite
What do you need to start playing vintage games? Still scratching your head. Please don’t do that and start reading.
1. Raspberry Pi — It’s a miniature CPU.
2. Gamepad
3. SD Card — Anything above 8 GB is good.
4. Ethernet Cable — Optional
5. HDMI Cable
6. Type-B USB cable and charger.
7. Raspberry Pi Case — Optional
Procedure
Let’s talk about the steps on how to set up your Raspberry Pi to play vintage video games.
We will be using RetroPie it’s a library to emulate video games over Raspberry Pi.
Step 1 - Hook Raspberry Pi.
Put your Raspberry Pi into the case and hook HDMI cable, ethernet cable, charger, and gamepad. Put the other end of the HDMI cable into your display system (i.e. TV/Monitor etc.). Connect the USB to another end to the socket and once you switch it on. You will get a green light glowing over RPi (Raspberry Pi). Switch off the RPi.
Step 2 - Download the RetroPie image.
Select the appropriate image for the RPi. Find the link by hovering over the download.
Step 3 - Format the SD Card to the FAT file system.
If your SD card is 32GB or smaller, we’ll format it as MS-DOS (FAT). If your SD card is 64GB or larger, we'll format it as ExFAT. The formatting SD card will destroy all the data present over them. (Be smart and take backup, don’t be like me)
Step 4 - Install RetroPie image.
To install download a third-party application called Etcher. It’s available for both Mac and Windows.
Download and install Etcher, open it, and select your SD card drive and downloaded image to flash the image to your SD card.
Step 5 - Insert SD Card to Raspberry Pi (RPi).
Safely eject your SD card from your laptop/desktop and slide it in the RPi.
After the SD card has been inserted, switch on the RPi and wait for the RPi to boot.
Step 6 - Configure your controller.
You can use any type of USB controller.
Pro Tip: Do not keep hotkey as empty.
Step 7 - Finding game ROMs.
A ROM is an entire port of a particular video game. RetroPie contains a copy of EmulationStation, which both provides the user interface for your new retro gaming rig and interprets these ROM files appropriately.
Some of the site where you can download the ROM:-
https://roms-download.com/
https://www.romsgames.net/
Step 8 - Installing ROM.
ROMs can be installed via SSH/SFTP (over your network) or by plugging a USB flash drive into your USB port.
How to SSH? Please find the link attached.
Go to the following directory /home/pi/RetroPie/roms and upload each game folder into its respective game system folder. For example, if you had a Contra ROM, you would upload the game’s folder into the “nes” directory.
Step 9 - Reboot the system.
Restart the RPi system so that settings are configured.
Step 10 - Time to play the game!
Conclusion
Pro Tips:
- While playing a game if you want to quit the game and play another game all you need to do is press the hotkey + start button.
- While buying a Raspberry Pi case please make sure that buy a case that has a heat sink attached to it. Playing a game can be rough for RPi.
- You can SSH on RPi. Just like how you do it for your AWS/GCP/Digital Ocean server.
