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Built my dad a retropie on an old pi 3 with just aboot every nes and snes rom I could find on it. I think I struck Xmas gifting gold. (self.casualconversation)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by 11111one11111 to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My father is not a gamer by any sense of the meaning. He plays the mobile game kinda platform style shooters here and there but that's it.

Was racking my brain for something to get him when for no reason I found myself digging up memories of being 4 or 5 years old sitting on his lap playing some flying shooter game. Him and my mom were 17 & 19 when they had me so I often forget how much of life they missed raising a little shitbrick that early in their lives.

So I really went out on a limb and felt like I was reaching with this present. Going so far as to get an extra Amazon card either for someone else if he liked it or for him if he didn't like it.

Holy shit did he like it. Took me by full surprise. As soon as I showed him the library he was like a kid in a candy shop. So many stories and anecdotes about this game and that game. Told me how the "idiots" at megaman made sequels 1-8, then for reasons before he could google them, they skipped megaman 9 and went to megaman x, megaman x2, and megaman x3.

Told me how when I was around 6 or 7 I was obsessed with tecmo bowl, tecmo super bowl and tecmo superbowl 3. Which I remember. But what I didn't remember was that I used to shut the Nintendo off anytime I (playing only as the Buffalo Bills) was about to lose the game, would quickly shutoff the Nintendo so not to ruin my perfect seasons. Then would throw a bitchfit tantrum over losing that my parents would have to take away the controllers from me cuz part of my tantrum would be biting the soft rubber controller cords. Which were not in their broke ass budgets at the time.

Anywho... that's all. What I thought was a risky Xmas gift turned out to be a wonderfully appreciated gift accompanied by an amazing walk down memory lane with the rents.

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[–] 11111one11111 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yo it is sooooooo unbelievably easy to do. Especially if you are going for PS1 and older games. I'm not super tech savvy so maybe it's the same for the newer console games but I havent ever done it so I don't want to say one way or the other.

Raspberry Pi 3 Case Power source (Just get one of the kits off Amazon. Eliminates the searching for part compatability issues.) SD card Flash drive 7zip software

Follow the instructions in the link the other comment posted but basically you'll download the Linux OS image to the SD using the version in the linked instructions.

Put it all together (couple screws here and there)

Put in the SD card and fire up the Raspberry pi

The older pi models aren't guna have or need a power button without more work to them so just plug it in to fire it up.

The image you put on the SD card shouldn't need much if any troubleshooting. Just set it up to have internet access either via cable or wifi.

On your actual pc, Google "snes roms" or whatever the desired system. There are loads of sites with rom libraries to go thru. Select the games you want. Download them.

Then plug the flash drive into your pc, create a folder named "retropie-mount" eject it from the pc and just plug it into the running Pi, leave the flash drive plugged into the Raspberry pi once the retropi is all done installing for like 30 seconds. Unplug the flash drive and plug it back into the pc. It will now have the folder system of the retropie.

Unzip all your downloaded compressed game files into the folder of the console that matches the game.

So for Mike Tysons Punch Out, you'll unzip the game's files to the /retropi/roms/nes folder.

Can put the whole library on the flash drive. When you're done, plug the drive into the pi and let it sit to transfer the files.

Restart retropie and play all the games your heart desires.

[–] grue 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

On your actual pc, Google "snes roms" or whatever the desired system. There are loads of sites with rom libraries to go thru. Select the games you want. Download them.

I recommend just looking on a BitTorrent tracker for an archive of "every NES rom" (or whatever platform you want). At least until you start getting into platforms new enough to use CD-ROMs, the entire platform catalog -- including every US/EU/Japan version of every game, and even obscure stuff like games downloaded from Satellaview or Sega Channel -- is only going to be a gig or so.

You might even be able to find a single torrent with ROMs for every pre-CD console game ever made (including for arcade machines and oddball consoles like Intellivision and TurboGrafx-16), if you look hard enough -- that'd be even more convenient.

(Getting a one-and-done complete collection of old home computer games -- Windows, DOS, Mac, Apple II, Commodore 64, etc. -- is harder because there's no authoritative and discrete list of every game for those platforms, since they didn't require first-party walled-garden licensing.)

[–] 11111one11111 1 points 1 week ago

Eh might be easier for initial set up but would be more inconvenient, for me personally, to have to scroll thru preloaded game libraries to get to the games I would like to play. I take value from the personalization of the game library over speeding up the setup. But if that isn't the case for you, I totally agree the pre loaded libraries are great. They even come in tiers from what I've seen. So you can get, for example, 200 games for console X, 500 games for console X, or 750 games for console X. And go console by console.