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Retro Games Console


Der Kaiser

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Has anyone bought any retro games console, Raspberry Pi type setup recently that they would recommend...and more importantly a reputable website?

 

My laddie is interested in finally parting with his birthday money and this seems to be his ideal choice. Looking at one of the ones that has the 30-50 thousand games going from Spectrum through Commodore, Amstrad, Amiga, Megadrive, Nes, Neo Geo etc. (Yes....I will also be playing on it as I just want to play Cannon Fodder and Chaos Engine again)

 

He's got about £250 to play with (maybe more if we put it off for Xmas) and we've seen a few online but often after a bit of research it shows some websites to have unreliable after care and mixed reviews from "Wow my childhood is back" to "WTAF did I waste my money on".

 

My youngest got the table top arcade style one 2 years ago (like the top of an arcade controller part) that had 1500 games, mostly arcade games.

 

Anyone?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Edited by Der Kaiser
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RetroPie is pretty popular.

 

But as it's all open source, there are hundreds and hundreds of raspberry pi based retro machines out there at the moment, with more coming out every month.

Some are kits, some come in 3d printed retro cases, all vary wildly in quality.

 

I'd perhaps find some retro gaming forums or reddit to canvas opinions.

 

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I got a fully kitted RaspberryPi which had Retro Pi and all the main consoles installed for about £150 from retrogamingbox.com but they seem to have stopped operating.

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If you've already got some old controllers kicking about you could put this together for about £30-40 I'd think. I built one a few years ago, literally just bought a Raspberry Pi, case, memory card and power source and got the software from https://retropie.org.uk/. It's about the size of mobile phone, just quite a bit thicker. I synced a PS3 controller with it, I'd expect it'd be just as easy to sync a more modern controller.

 

I'd recommend going down the cheaper route, I found that once the initial nostalgia high had passed I wasn't that keen to play the very old games as more modern ones offer a different experience that I'm used to now. Quite a fun project for your kid to research and put it together as well.

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Can’t you just buy a Raspberry Pi kit and load it all yourself? There are huge numbers of instructional websites and YouTube channels. It could be fun for you both putting it together and the satisfaction of getting it working. I bought one for my work to run looped video displays though a projector and it works a treat. Really powerful little machine in terms of what it is but don’t expect a proper mini PC. But the fact they come preloaded with everything you need to do start off right away and with full Wi-Fi and HDMI video for not much money is great. 

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3 minutes ago, SupaJT said:

If you've already got some old controllers kicking about you could put this together for about £30-40 I'd think. I built one a few years ago, literally just bought a Raspberry Pi, case, memory card and power source and got the software from https://retropie.org.uk/. It's about the size of mobile phone, just quite a bit thicker. I synced a PS3 controller with it, I'd expect it'd be just as easy to sync a more modern controller.

 

I'd recommend going down the cheaper route, I found that once the initial nostalgia high had passed I wasn't that keen to play the very old games as more modern ones offer a different experience that I'm used to now. Quite a fun project for your kid to research and put it together as well.

i did that last year and used a non official ps4 controller. considering i did not have one it cost me about £80 all in. just make sure the raspberry pi you get supports bluetooth. it is easy enough to find the roms and load them yourself

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2 minutes ago, milky_26 said:

i did that last year and used a non official ps4 controller. considering i did not have one it cost me about £80 all in. just make sure the raspberry pi you get supports bluetooth. it is easy enough to find the roms and load them yourself

I think the price you're quoting is more accurate than mine now, mine must be an older model with less RAM. One thing I find with mine is that syncing two controllers at once caused games to be unplayable (me and my gf wanted to play SNES bomberman!) but maybe the newer ones don't have that issue

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11 minutes ago, SupaJT said:

I think the price you're quoting is more accurate than mine now, mine must be an older model with less RAM. One thing I find with mine is that syncing two controllers at once caused games to be unplayable (me and my gf wanted to play SNES bomberman!) but maybe the newer ones don't have that issue


The one I had allowed four remotes to connect. Was ideal for playing arcade games like Simpsons, TMNT and X-Men 👍🏻

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17 minutes ago, SupaJT said:

I think the price you're quoting is more accurate than mine now, mine must be an older model with less RAM. One thing I find with mine is that syncing two controllers at once caused games to be unplayable (me and my gf wanted to play SNES bomberman!) but maybe the newer ones don't have that issue

the one i got (3B+) was around £35 but the extra stuff brought it up to 80-100. a newer pi the 4 is now £65. 

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£250 is plenty to cover that. 

My concern is that the idea of it is often better than the reality.

Does he like playing the arcade games his brother got? 

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29 minutes ago, hughesie27 said:

£250 is plenty to cover that. 

My concern is that the idea of it is often better than the reality.

Does he like playing the arcade games his brother got? 

 

Yes. Like any young teenager he will flit back to it from time to time. I have xbox game pass so he downloads random stuff from time to time on his xbox as well.

 

Like a few others have said it might be quite fun to do it ourselves. Already watched a 20min video now on YouTube and you get talked through the process well so next time he's here I'll run the idea by him.  My own PC at home is pretty old though so maybe setup might take a while.

 

Who knows....if it goes well I'll get him to make plenty and get selling them.

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