Introduction and software
The Raspberry Pi 2 is great. It offers up to six times the power of the first-gen model, yet doesn't cost any more or take up extra space.
Step back a minute and you realise it's only about as powerful as a budget phone like the Motorola Moto G. But that's plenty to give you enough scope to do some amazing things.
Our favourite? The Raspberry Pi 2 makes a fantastic retro gaming console thanks to the efforts of the bustling indie dev scene that surrounds the computer and its predecessors. Read on to find out how to do this yourself.
- Check out the rest of our PC Gaming Week coverage
Downloading the right software
We're going to make this as simple as possible, so we'll be using a piece of software that boots straight into the emulator interface. This can be dumped right onto the Raspberry Pi 2's microSD memory card, meaning you don't need to do any fiddling about with Linux, Raspbian or anything else.
It's all quite easy – and note that original Raspberry Pi owners can use this software too.
The best emulator platform for Raspberry Pi at present is Emulation Station, ported over to Pi as part of the RetroPie project. Emulation Station is a front-end for a mass of go-retro game emulators – absolutely loads of the things. It's designed to be pretty and bold enough to work visually on your lounge TV, rather than just on a monitor where you'll be sitting close-up.
It's just what we're after, in other words.
You can download this software from either the RetroPie or Emulation Station websites. RetroPie offers SD card images for both Raspberry Pi generations 1 and 2. The two aren't 100% compatible with each other, much as the hardware is similar.
Download the right version, then unzip it. At the time of writing RetroPie is distributed as an img.gz file, not a bog-standard zip file, but it's nothing 7-Zip will sweat over. That's a versatile compression program available for Windows and Mac OS X, if you don't have it already.
Making our retro brain
Now we have our image, we need to prep our microSD card. This can be done within Windows easily enough, but for the sake of consistency, if you're not an SD card pro just download the SD Card Formatter tool from the SD Association website. It's available for Windows and Mac OS X.
It has a pretty simple graphical front-end. After running it, just select 'Overwrite' in the format type and select a name for the card. 'RetroPie' will do the trick – or whatever you fancy.
Next we need to write the image to the card. Using Windows? Just use the Win32 Disk Imager software available to download from Sourceforge. For Mac OS X there's a dedicated Raspberry Pi writer software that works very well, called RPi-sd card builder v1.2. Pi Filler is an alternative app.
As these both have graphical interfaces you can't go too far wrong, as long as you keep track of where your RetroPie image is kept, i.e. where it went when you unzipped it. Just make sure that when you're finished writing to the card, you eject it rather than just yanking it out of your computer to avoid data corruption.
Boot-up
Put the card in your Raspberry Pi, boot it up and you should see a rainbow screen followed by the Emulation Station boot screen. If you don't, something went wrong.
To start with, though, the interface will seem very empty. As part of the Emulation Station's accessible UI style, gaming machines only show up if there are ROMs available for them. In the version we used it starts off with just ScummVM, Dosbox, and some ports of the shareware versions of Quake III and Duke Nukem 3D. We don't have our Raspberry Pi 2 retro dream machine just yet.
Next you need to get hold of some gaming ROMs. One of the best retro gaming sites on the web, if not the best, is Emuparadise. Pro tip: don't be a pirate. Pirates are bad.
Once you have the files, you can't simply drag and drop them over to the microSD memory card and expect them to work. That's not how the RetroPie file system functions.
Instead, hook the Raspberry Pi up to your router using an Ethernet cable and it will show up in the home network section of Windows Explorer or Mac OS X's finder on your laptop or desktop. In its file system you'll see BIOS and ROMs folders. The latter is filled with sub-folders for every system supported by Emulation Station, into which you can drop the respective ROM files.
Games and emulation quality
After all this, reboot the Raspberry Pi and you'll see the relevant systems show up in the Emulation Station interface.
Which systems are supported? Virtually everything the Raspberry Pi 2 has the power to handle, actually. Old systems like the ZX Spectrum, NES, Intellivision and C64 work, right up to systems from the 90s.
Support stops roughly at the end of the 90s, though. The Nintendo 64 and first PlayStation console work, but the Xbox, PS2 et al are not covered. However, not only is the emulation of these newer systems not very far advanced, it would be far too much for the Raspberry Pi 2 to handle anyway. One exception is the Gameboy Advance, which works very well on the system despite being a handheld from the 2000s. However, it's not a very high-power device.
Operating Emulation Station
We initially used a keyboard and mouse to operate the Emulation Station. Just plug them in, follow the software wizard and it'll let you choose the keys you want to use as part of the setup process.
However, we've also tried the controllers of some of the main consoles. Just plug in a DualShock 3 (PS3) or a DualShock 4 (PS4) controller using a mini-USB cable and the Raspberry Pi will be able to see it. You can then configure its inputs from the Emulation Station menu.
With Xbox 360 controllers, things seem a little more complicated. Wired pads should work, but we didn't have much luck getting the Raspberry Pi 2 to recognise a wireless Xbox 360 pad with the USB charge cable attached.
The system has full gamepad support, though, so you should be able to get just about any plug-and-play pad working.
Up to speed?
How good is the actual emulation? For the most part it's great. Sega Mega Drive/Gensis games run at full speed, as did all the SNES games we tried. There were some visual glitches in Super FX games like Star Fox/Wing and Stunt Race FX, but that's more down to the state of the emulator rather than anything specific to the Raspberry Pi 2 or Emulation Station.
In fact, Emulation Station actually includes multiple emulators for the trickier systems. There are three SNES emulators, two MAME emulators and two N64 emulators on hand to experiment with.
The only consistent slowdown we saw was with N64 games. Many run very well, including Mario Kart 64, but fan favourite Goldeneye 007's frame rate was inconsistent, taking a real dip in more open areas. It's playable with patience, but only just.
There are some games that flat-out didn't run though, sadly including the much-loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Some retro gaming tinkerers have had better luck than us, however, with videos of it working on Raspberry Pi 2 already available on YouTube.
A lot of retro games look pretty great too. Emulation Station doesn't go overboard with fancy filters to smooth out older games, but you can choose the output resolution for each system, letting you pick between a more pixelated or blurry look.
N64 is a case of various hits and misses, but every other system we tried works very well on Raspberry Pi. It really does make a great base as a retro gaming system. PSX emulation is particularly impressive, seeming virtually perfect with the handful of titles we tried.
Perfecting your project
To apply the final spit and polish, there are a few extra tweaks you might want to make. First, a case – you can buy Raspberry Pi cases for a few pounds/dollars online, and they'll help ensure your Pi doesn't get damaged or dusty. Plus it just looks nicer.
Next up, you might want to make the Raspberry Pi 2 wireless. A Bluetooth dongle will let you use a wireless controller, well, wirelessly, while you can also use a Wi-Fi dongle to avoid having to plug into your router to add more games.
Most wireless USB dongles should work, but one RaspberryPi.org recommends as definitely reliable is the Inateck Bluetooth 4.0 adapter. Also, why not get yourself a nice large memory card? The microSD cards used by the Raspberry Pi 2 cost as little as £20 for 64GB these days, enough for a lifetime's worth of retro gaming memories.
