My RetroPie Review... Childhood Memories Of Gaming In The 80's :)

So much of my childhood was spent in video arcades in the 80's. I'd often skip lunch at school to use the money to play a couple games of Frogger, Pac Man or Asteroids at the local pizzeria on the way home from school. I was part of the arcade generation, and have so many memories of my childhood spent at these places and with these games. Recently someone told me about RetroPie which is a Raspbian OS that's specifically setup to play old arcade games on a Raspberry Pi. Already having a Pi I ordered some retro game controls from fasttech.com, paid for with bitcoin of course and when they arrived I spent the evening setting up my RetroPie.

For the most part it was fairly easy. This is more of a review than a tutorial, but if you've set up a Raspberry Pi before, it's pretty much the same thing. I downloaded the OS here. https://retropie.org.uk/download/ and then you just flash a micro sd card like you would for Raspbian or ROKOS. I had already done this several times, so that part went smoothly.

Once the SD Card had the disk image, I just followed the instructions on the installation page. For the most part this went smoothly. I had never done it before, so I ended up watching a couple youtube videos explaining the process. I did have a couple issues getting it set up for the first time, but nothing to major or bothersome.

Now here's the catch... RetroPie is basically a platform or desktop that runs several different video game emulators. These are programs that basically act like the atari 2600, or SEGA Genesis and allows you to play games for those systems. Once you have the system set up, you have to find the ROM's or video games yourself. This is a bit sketchy because technically it's piracy. On that note I would like to say to the video game companies, if you sold the ROM's at a reasonable price I would of bought them. Some of these games are over 30 years old, you all made a fortune off them, why not sell the ROM Packs and make more money?

With that said, as far as I know they don't do that. So I had to find some ROM's with the video games I liked for platforms like Nintendo, SEGA, ATARI2600 and so on. I ended up finding a nice collection that I used here.

https://nicoblog.org/rompacks-romsets

I downloaded the ROM packs, installed them in the proper directories in the RetroPie using the file manager, and when you reboot the system, you've got games and a lot of them at that! Super Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., Asteroids, Pac Man, the list goes on and on.

So I spent the last couple days playing all the games from my childhood. It really is cool having them all on one system. It's so funny the memories I have from these games too. Spending countless hours in the basement of my parents house playing these with my friends. My mother and I would constantly be in competition to break the others high score. So many fun times. I have to admit the low graphics quality, and pixelation just kind of add to the charm of playing these old games. Many of these are the games that really started the whole gaming revolution.

Anyway, if you're into retro gaming. I strongly suggest getting RetroPie for your Raspberry Pi system. If you don't have a Raspberry Pi you can pick up full kits for around $75 dollars. The Pi is fairly easy to put together and there's a lot more you can do with it besides play video games, but man do I love that feature! So here's a couple photo's I took of the RetroPie in action.

Here's the main setup all put together. The Pi plugs into the TV HDMI, and I'm using the HDMI sound playing out of my stereo.

Don't mind the messy desk. Mario Bros. & Duck Hunt. Anyone else have childhood memories of this. God the hours I wasted of my youth playing these games. Now I can add wasted hours of my adult years too :P Hey, we all need to make a little time for fun no matter how old we get.

Getting comfy in the lounger, ready to play some games.

Once you download the ROM packs you'll have thousands of titles to choose from. I just installed a few of my favorites. The install is as simple as dropping the file into the proper emulator folder and restarting the system for your games to load.

One last favorite! Paperboy, loved this game growing up.

I should note that you're downloading games from sources you don't know. This is technically what we used to call warez back in the day. Once I got everything installed, I did disconnect the computer from the internet by turning off the WiFi feature. Don't need to add to any bot nets or anything. Probably paranoia but better safe than sorry. Outside of that, you're not really storing any personel info or anything in the RetroPie, so there really shouldn't be any other worries.

If your into retro gaming and have a Raspberry Pi, I highly recommend downloading RetroPie for hours of fun and enjoyment. Happy gaming everyone :)