Episode: 4161
Title: HPR4161: Building a retro gaming console with a Raspberry Pi
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4161/hpr4161.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:33:10

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4161 from Monday the 15th of July 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Building a Retro Gaming Console with a Raspberry Pi.
It is hosted by Kevvy and is about 26 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Kevvy talks about his experience of building a Retro Gaming Console.
Hello, hello, this is Kevvy from the Toxjam Podcast.
And today I want to continue the series I've been doing on Raspberry Pi's with talking
about my experience of building up a Retro Gaming System using a Raspberry Pi.
Now I actually covered this on Toxjam a few months back.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to play that bit from Toxjam.
And then at the end I'm actually going to come back, because this was a few months ago,
and give you a wee update on my thought, do I still use it?
And basically what, you can rate respect, what improvements would I make now?
So right now, like I said, I'm going to switch over, but I'm going to come back at the end
of this with an update.
After trying out Retro Pi, I tried it out on the Pi 400, but the Pi 400 was bought for
a reason, to test out Pi distros for Toxjam.
And the week I really got into Retro Gaming, so I decided, I'm going to actually build
a dedicated system.
I went out and had a wee look at what's available, and I came across now.
Although it's not my first, my first console was 2600, the Atari 2600, but the
one I probably spent the most time on, if I'm being honest, was the SNES.
So I've got a real software for the SNES, because I kind of, I got the 2600, and I had
that for years.
I love that.
So I bypassed the NAS master system era and went straight to SNES.
So that was my next thing for as far as consoles went.
So I decided, yes, let's build up a SNES themed Retro console.
So I purchased the Super Pi case, along with two USB controllers from the Pi head.
Now everything I had was from the Pi head.
You can go elsewhere, if you go to the Pi head and type in SNES, nothing will come up.
It's called Super Pi.
Type in Super Pi case, and then it links you to the controllers as well.
I got a few of the necessary cables and things I got at.
Now the idea with this was, because it's a Pi, obviously it's light, it's cheap, but
it's also light and weight.
So I thought, right, the Wii guys always complaining, he doesn't get to play games when he's
a Wii.
So I thought, let's make this so it could be something I could be travelled with.
As you guys have already said, the old AV connectors, a lot of tailies don't have them, especially
modern tailies.
But nearly everybody connects stuff via HDMI.
So what I did was I picked up a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter.
So that just means all you have to do is have a cable in the back of the tele, and that's
it.
Just attach on to that.
Main reason I actually thought of this was because where do the majority of people have
their tailies these days?
Living room.
On the wall.
So a lot of times you can't actually get to the controls at the back.
So this actually sorted that because all they had to do is have HDMI cable in it, which
everybody practically does.
That was a nice Wii feature that I thought, yeah, this is going to come out.
I purchased everything that was recommended.
I purchased a few things that were additional, HDMI adapter was being one of them, and started
putting it together.
Everything fits in nice and snugly, but it does not have enough room.
I will pre-floor it near with this.
Started putting it together and I was reading the instructions and it said, right, before
you put the pie in, insert the fan, I'm like, okay, fan, where is it?
Where is this fan?
There's no fan here.
And then, of course, went to the back and started the instructions, fan, not included.
Okay.
Do I need to fan?
Let's type, I will interview for them some things and just people's things.
Not only do they highly recommend the fan for good retro gaming, but they also recommend
heatsinks.
Neither of these were mentioned on the recommended stuff, not even advisory stuff.
So I was like, okay, that's really annoying.
So I went back online, ordered a fan, ordered a heatsink, and of course, we're not talking
anything major here.
So I think when it came to my order, the postage cost more than the two-dash small components
that I bought.
So I was like, ah, anyway, I want to do some of it.
Let's go for it.
The pie hut or pie meroni do not have a branch in store in a way.
So that was kind of like the window.
Weighted for that to arrive, the fan clip nicely in place and it's just below.
Now, when you open up the pie case, it's got a PCB already in it.
The PCB has got the on-off switch, the reset switch.
It's connected to the two USBs which control the controller and it's also got a fan connection
for the fan that I didn't know I needed.
Popped it in, it actually fitted underneath.
So the thing was I was glad it clipped because although the fan came with its own screws
and there was screw holes in it, you actually couldn't get to them without removing this PCB
board.
I think that it was actually attached to the front of it.
I was thinking this could be a bit dodgy if I was to try and remove this and I damages.
So I thought, let's just see it sitting.
So put that in.
I stuck the raspberry pie and all went in nice and easy, the water warning when it comes
to attaching the pie.
You've got the, as you're looking at the front of the case pointing at you, the top
right does not get screwed in at the time you put the pie in because that also doubles
up as one of the screws for the casings.
So I'm sure the screw here, no actually, it's you don't put that one in.
The other thing is there is a WSB cable from the printed circuit board that goes into two
of the pie USBs and that is actually quite awkward, purely because it's a really thick,
heavily insulated cable that's rigid and it fits perfectly like a jigsaw piece but the
problem is to tie and fit that into a USB connection through to actually be quite awkward,
wee bit fiddly but it did work out.
Once the cable and everything was in, screw the thing into the case and slot it in the micro
sd card, switching on the pie itself.
It's exactly the same function as if you were going on the snaze.
The button on the top, you press it, you press it up to switch it on, it's a slider switch
for the power, you've got the reset button which works, it's an active button for it's
a normal push button, then you've got the HDMI and also the USB-C at the back for the
power, all that fits nicely, however there is a weak slot that comes out on the side and
you actually have to literally take this piece off and that'll expose two more USBs and
also the Ethernet.
There's a word of warning to be had here, I thought I'm going to update it, no baller,
so I stuck that Ethernet cable in, to hit update, this is what I came across the first
problem, this is not designed for an Ethernet cable at all, yes it exposes it but it's
in a recess and when you plug the thing in, you know you've got the we plastic lever on
Ethernet which is for to release it, yeah, that was jammed right up against the side but
you could not actually get your finger in to actually release this and I'm going, how
do I get this out, I don't want this to be a wired console, so try a few different things,
I gave up with the actual tools I've run and went to the kitchen and I managed to find
a really thin butter knife and I managed to take it in and it was strong enough just
for me to push it up and release the Ethernet cable.
So that was a really bad design but I don't think it was mainly designed to be the fact
it's covered over, it actually tells me it's not really designed to be used like this
and the powerful does have Wi-Fi so I should just have connected it wirelessly.
But there is another issue about space, somebody has not tried some of these things, if you
press the eject, there's like a fake cartridge, it's on top of it, that's just a magnet
you can lift it off but if you press the eject button it pops up the slot and it says
this is the ideal place to store your micro SD cards, yeah it might be and micro SD cards
are used on the small side and so is this slot, your problem is your fingers aren't and
I could not get my fingers into the dash thing to actually get these things out.
So I was here thinking okay that's just annoying, so I could have tipped it upside down but
the prompt was it's not just a straight drop, it actually goes down and opens wide to
a wee bit so things were getting stuck so I ended up getting tweezers to actually lift
these dash things out so I'm like no I'm not storing anything in there, that's just
two wee gripes in the actual design of this, but firing it up one thing I did notice
was last time when I did this with a Pi 400, now I wanted the Pi 400 does not have a
three and a half audio output, my monitor, this purely a monitor, it doesn't have speakers
connected to it, I wanted to get Bluetooth audio and that proved a bit of a pain in the
neck, I really had to work on that, this time though I was using it with a tele, HDMI
sound output, perfect, worked out of the box, that was the default setting, I was using
on a tele, so one thing I didn't have was the blackboard around it because that only
shows up on monitors, not tele's, so again I didn't have to worry about that at all, it
started in exactly the same way, when you put it up it goes through all of the different
drums you've got and then shows the eminent just that it requires to run these, doesn't
show you any, doesn't show you any of the eminent just got, and then it says found to
controllers, okay, so the first one and I key mapped it, and then it just started on
the home screen and I'm going, wait a minute here, it said I found to controllers, what
about the other one, this was a wee bit annoying, I wish it had just said to me do you want
to configure the second controller now or wait for later, but it didn't, it just vanished,
so I had to go into the configuration screen, run Raspiconfig and remap the second joypad,
you guys were talking about lag, this is one thing that we have experienced none of, we've
only done snares rooms though, because myself and we guys have actually been playing this
an awful lot over the Christmas period, to the point where every time I've got free time
you want a battle in Mario Kart, you want a GP in Mario Kart, absolutely no lag, and the
best of it is because it's a USB connection, there's absolutely no controller lag, lag at
all, it's totally responsive, we've played a variety of different games on it, more than
happy with this, the only thing I haven't done was to see what it's running at temperature
wise with the addition of the fan and the key sinks, so we would be quite instant to see
that, but I guess that's kind of minor at the moment, it does seem to be working very
well, we haven't had any splutter, now one thing I did think of was, let's think of games
that had really bad slowdown or the original snares, and the first one that came to me was
Super R type, fantastic game, which was actually a clone of R type 2, not the original R type,
it was a fantastic game in my mind, I really liked it, but it suffered terribly with slowdown
and spluttering on the original snares, worked like a charm, I was like this is one should
have worked like on the snares, but so that made me think right, so it's not very true to
the original, if I'm being failed, but that's a good thing in that game, if you're thinking this
is something I fancy, then I broke down everything that I bought and links it in the show notes,
if you want to head over there, so for each part, so you had the pie case, now I got this through
the pie hut, just purely because I couldn't get the pie case anywhere else, and I just got
everything, they actually had everything else, so you had the pie case, 22 pound 50, two
snares controllers, 27 pound, I went for the 8 gig, a pie 4, that would be 75, the heatsinks,
3 pound 50, the fan, 3 pounds, a 30 mil fan by the way, a lot of these things you probably won't
need to buy, to be honest, you probably have a pie floating about if you're in, then like me,
several of them, the power supply, if you want, if you need to buy a pie, power supply's 9 pound,
HD made after 4 pound, and I bought a 64 gig microSD card, so again, 7 pound 50, so based on those,
most people will have loads of these microSD cards around, most people probably have several power
supplies that'll be up to the task, but if you're buying everything from scratch, this is coming
in at 151 pound and 50 pence, now you may think, whoa, that's not cheap, but if we compare like for
like, put it into a wee bit of perspective here, the snares mini comes with 20 games, mine currently
has 4200 games, which I own every cartridge of, just, I've misplaced them just now,
also the snares mini is unavailable to buy from any official source, now currently on Amazon,
the cheapest you will get it is 280 pound, looking out on eBay, the buy it knows for a new one now,
there are ones in use conditions, but for a new one, the buy it knows range between 200 and 500
pound, but even the pre-owned ones, the ones that have active bids on them are 80 pound plus at
time of recording, so in retrospect, it's actually not mega pricey for what you get, I feel,
but like I said, it's not one that's going to be just for pocket money, that is a considerable
expense, do I feel it's worth it? Absolutely, would I do it again? Yes, is it worth it for everybody?
Depends how much you're going to play, my honest answer, one thing I would say I did think, oh,
let's do this pro, for let's go scraper and scrape the artwork for this, yeah, I honestly
believed I was going to sit through 4,200 rooms today, I persevered for a good 40 minutes and
got through 200 rooms, and I was like I've had enough, I'm done, because you can't just say accept
all defaults, no, no, no, no, no, it has to say scrape, ROM 1, is this the cover art you want?
Confirm, ROM 2, is this the cover art you want? Confirm, it's like Confirm, Confirm, Confirm,
and then quite often you'll get there's three cover arts, for three totally different games,
I don't get it, what the scrape wasn't great to be honest for some game, most games are okay,
but it would be like let's just say for example you had golden axe, right? Then it's scraped,
and it might give you something like golden axe, golden sword or axe battler, which one do you want?
Well it's called golden axe, so let's go with the golden axe, just things like that kind of was
rather odd, but I really think they need with that accept default as a total thing and then just go
back in and edit it later, if you need to, but yeah there was no way I was doing that for 4,200 of them,
yes, so that was my experience and that was my kind of treat to myself, that sounds very
interesting, yeah I was, I remember when you were looking at it, you mentioned how frustrated you
were about the heat sink and the fan, and I went and had a look and I have to agree with you,
for things which are well next nearly essential for a decent experience, it didn't make it very
clear on the website when I looked at it that you really ought to buy these things, and then of
course like you see you get a stone for shipping twice, which is not much fun, yes, which is annoying
more, especially with such a small order, companies generally don't like, I know one thing I will
say though is I did think right when I'm in it, I'm applying member, and the exact same things from
Amazon were actually more than the pie hut with the shipping, so I was like you guys have put my
lot on of upmark onto pie accessories there, I missed it, what did we say about the power, how do you
power it, is it good, no battery or something? No, I've got just got a USB-C, in fact I actually,
because I knew fine well I probably end up losing a good phone charger to it, I bought the
official pie charger for us. I would always recommend doing that, always, to the fact that it is
so faithful to the original SNES design, even the controller, you could be forgiven,
apart from the fact that it says retro flag on it, you could be forgiven if I think it is actually
a SNES controller, it's beautiful. Totally, and the whole thing it's about, I would say it's
double the length of a standard pie case, it's like two pie side beside if you get the idea for
size wise, yes, but it's what it's got two HGMI at, well the pie does, that's probably, yeah the
pie for what, yeah, I mean to be honest the only difference between that I could see part through
the obviously the word Nintendo, between this and the SNES Mini is, the SNES Mini had cover over
the front USBs that actually looked like the SNES controller interfaces, that's a completely different
side I can see, yeah, but you still had to take them off anyway to control the USB controllers,
yeah, but it looks apart, that's absolutely, I'm in awe of this, it's really beautiful,
it really is nice, you want to spend money on it, you can, you could probably spend
daft money if you really wanted to, you could shove this inside like an old arcade machine,
if you really wanted to, if you wanted to go mad, yeah, with a decent size screen, this would scale
up nicely, I tried it on the 65 inch tally, it was too big, it was just too big, you couldn't,
you didn't look good, that's when I actually started using it, would it be better?
Yeah, it would probably be fine there, you know, but the controls didn't reach that fast,
but like so, we guys got like at 28 inch or 32 inch, something like that, tally in this room,
and it was, it was perfect for that, that was perfect, but he was the one who actually wanted
to play it in the big tally, and I said it wouldn't work, for a start, there's our reason gamers
don't use humongous screens, okay, so you have heard my initial thoughts, and after a few
months of a plane about with this, and I, it has actually had plenty of play time, I have to
confess, I'm going to now just go over just essentially what things looking back I would do
differently, now the first thing I would say is that I would, I bought the control pads to replicate
the snails ones, and that there's nothing wrong with them, they're absolutely perfect, however,
with the Pi 4 and 8GB RAM, you do actually have the power to play things considerably more than that,
one of the problems that I found was I did install some PlayStation 2 ROMs, and they actually played
okay, but the problem is everything from PlayStation upwards uses thumbsticks, so initially I purchased
the 8B2 SN30 Pro gamepad, and this one to give you an idea looks exactly like a snails gamepad,
the difference is there are two shoulder buttons on each side, so you've got those, and it has
two analog thumbsticks, and this does absolutely everything, however the problem I found with it
was that the snails was designed for you to use the buttons and the deep pad, it was not really
designed for you to be using these two thumbsticks that well clearly weren't even on the original,
and what I was going to find was that my hands were crammed up to be honest, it's great for
traveling, it's very thin, but not something that I would actually recommend for prolonged play
personally, my co-host Dave Lee, he actually tried the same gamepad and did not find this, so
maybe I'm just been overly fuzzy, however I do have to confess after some quite extensive
experience now, I have found 8B2 to be one of those companies that the quality of the stuff I'm
impressed with, they really do seem to as a good work cost balance, actually I have to confess
that I didn't actually order this next one, but I actually wish I had, because I decided to go
with the Razer Woolverine, and I purchased that, which is based on the Xbox 360 controller,
which doesn't bother me at all, because it's one of the most comfortable controllers in my mind,
however I paid over £100, I think it was £150, I paid for it, and then it was only after
I discovered that 8B2 have the Pro 2, essentially it's much more similar to like a PlayStation 2 controller,
and this is available for the much nicer price of, I think it's currently a £32 I'm seeing on
Amazon, you go to the website and it just sends you to an Amazon link, so £32 for the wired version
or £38 a time of recording for the Bluetooth version, I would actually strongly recommend this,
why, because it's actually got the support through the handles, and when you're actually playing
especially with prolonged periods when you're using the analog thumbsticks, that this doesn't end
up with Western dirty didn't end up with me clamping at all, so it was far more comfortable,
now the other thing I would actually suggest is, given the amount I paid at the time
for the Pi 4 with the 8GB, and the thing is it's only a couple of pounds more for the Pi 5,
so I would strongly recommend at this stage that you actually go for the Pi 5, because it's far
more powerful, and trying out the Pi 5, I found it when it did come to the kind of slightly,
now I haven't got any Xbox One games running, or PS5 games running for it certainly,
but certainly for the things like the PS3 and the Xbox 360 games that I've tried,
it actually run quite a bit better, it's not perfect, but it does run these quite a bit better,
so it gives you the option for that, now so yeah I've been given the costing,
I think it's worth it, the other thing I would suggest now is after trying out the Pi 5 with the
NVMe hard drive on it, I would dare say I would probably recommend going for the Pi 5 with an NVMe,
now bear in mind if you do get the Pi Meroni one that's fine, it works perfectly, but there aren't
currently no cases available for it, so if you're going to use it as a console, especially if you
want to take it around or cut it around, take it away and holiday that kind of thing, this may not
be ideal, so that there are NVMe cases, which I would actually, I haven't tried myself, but I would
highly recommend you get one of these, just so that your Pi is enclosed, that'll keep protected,
and to be honest I think I just, a case just looks nice aesthetically, so that's the other thing,
so there you go, so this is another one of my Pi projects, this is actually probably one of my
more used Pi projects, I'm quite a serious gamer, it's yet my main, one of my main pastimes,
so I'm quite happy to have spent £150, £160 on this console, am I really that happy I spent
£150 on a one controller, no not really, but I do love the controller, so it just goes to show you,
there's a budget there for everybody, but if you are on a budget, there's plenty of
there that can be used, if you're wanting to spend a bit more money, there's also plenty of
options out there to accommodate you, right then, so that is me checking off for the next time, so
this I believe is probably the last of my gaming Pi projects, I don't think I've got any more,
one may well crop up, so now the next few things, yeah I don't want to spoil it for you,
but the next few things are, let's say, they're going to be slightly more serious, so and maybe
more functional rather than actual gaming, so please do that once again, this is an appeal, please
do record an episode of each Pi art, especially if you haven't done one for quite a while,
or if you've never done one before, then all you literally need is a mobile phone and hit record,
I mean that is literally, that is it, it's that straightforward, yes you can record on the PC,
yes you can edit it, but that's actually not necessary, we know the script with
each Pi art when the show runs out, the show stops, and that's not something I want to see,
I do enjoy making these an action joylists into other people's as well, so until next time,
this is Kaby St. Chidio.
on the Sadois status, today's show is released on their creative commons,
attribution, 4.0, international license