Interested but not informed on Raspberry Pi

[marlowe221]

Emulation on the Raspberry Pi is super easy - you just need to load up either RetroPie or RecalBox. Once setup you just transfer your roms across and away you go.

In terms of a cabinet there are small options such as the PiCade or the Porta-Pi - both of which can be purchased at different kit levels depending on your budget and want to build yourself.

You can also get kits to build just a controller - like an arcade control box with the Raspberry Pi inside - basically just a cabinet without the screen - gives you the arcade feel but means you don't have a large cabinet taking up space when not being used.

While the Raspberry Pi may not emulate as many systems as a PC can it does pretty much all the popular ones and with the release of the Raspberry Pi 3 is getting even better.

How is accuracy/fidelity these days, particularly with the Pi 3? Personally, I am mostly interested in the 16-bit era and earlier.

[Tanooki]

The Pi 3 has integrated WiFi as a big selling point over the previous models. It also has 4 USB ports built in, and the AC adapter is USB power - if you have spare cell phone adapters around, you may have one that works for the purpose. Similarly, you might have a micro SD card you can put an image on that works.

I don't disagree that a bundle can be a good idea, but it does depend on what you have around already.

Well I have some of the stuff, but some of it is in general use. I don't have much of any of those spare USB/AV boxes for power, plus you'd need the right variances for it or you got problems. I have one hdmi-minihdmi cable but my tablet uses it for the TV but that isn't a problem. I have a 4GB I think mini-sd lying around as I pulled it from the New3DS for a 32GB but if I wanted to really load it up with games, MP3s, some video, it would burn out fast so the 32GB that bundle I linked was a plus. The other parts though with the clamshell and stuff are good to have so it does kind of vary on mileage and parts you already have.



I think also it's just the jump factor. I saw there's a couple solid emulation choices, one of them also does XBMC so you can fire up video and mp3, while the big one I usually hear of retropi just does games (I think that other was recalbox or something.) Before Android decided to get stupid with how they handle those expanded SD cards in their newest model I would have just used my shield tablet, but now they lock down the SD card so you can't access it behind an encryption wall. If you choose not to do that, then you can't install much to it, especially via google play which sucks so I'm stuck with just a couple GB at best empty space on my system of untouched room. This Pi3 though wouldn't have this wall in the way and I think you could just drop whatever on there. Get that bundle, throw a buffalo SNES copycat USB controller on there (or a legit one with a USB dongle) and it's party time.

[Bucketman73]

The latest versions of RetroPie and RecalBox both come with a version of Kodi (XBMC) so you can just enable it if you want to use it as a media player.

As for power - if your TV or Monitor has a free USB port you can use that to power your Raspberry Pi. I personally use my Denon Amp which has some USB ports at the front to power my Raspberry Pi 3 when attaching to my TV.

The official Raspberry Pi case is still the best case and will fit both Pi2 and Pi3.

While you can get away with using a 4GB SD Card you'll run out of space pretty quickly and won't get a lot of games on there. I would say 16GB is the minimum - especially if you are wanting to download artwork and meta data for all your game.