Emulation with the RetroPie on the Rapberry Pi

[treismac]

There are a few features enticing me that emulation through the RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi offers:

HDMI or AV video output
Bluetooth and USB controller option
Attractive front end
Low cost & small size

Anyone played with one of these and have any thoughts to share?

Video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq99cf1cuk8

Link to LifeHacker How To:

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192

[jbjabroni]

Yes. I have multiple raspberry pi as well as multiple ouyas. The brand new raspberry pi 2 plays the RetroPie emulators much better than the original Pi models. The original pi plays 16-bit systems and below fairly well and almost perfect in most cases. The 32x is a hard system to emulate so it runs sluggish on the original models, as does the PSX. N64 is pretty much unplayable on the original pi's but is getting close to playable on the Pi 2. The Pi 2 also does a much better job with the PSX.

Pretty much, if you are looking for a cheap way to play 16-bit games and under then RetroPie will work for you. If you are looking for a system to do newer retro systems I would get a Ouya (you can get them used on the cheap now, I bout several a few months back for $50 including a controller). All the emu's have bluetooth support so you can get a bluetooth controller like the 8bitdo or even use the Wiimote. The Ouya has PSX emulators as well as even the dreamcast emulator Reicast support which runs fairly good for most games.

[kai123]

I personally would just spend a little more money on something more powerful for emulation. I love the idea of it but I mean my phone has hdmi out and bluetooth controllers and it has retroarch that can play all the old games and has pretty nice CRT filters. I am slightly biased towards Android for my emlation since it just works so well. I mean I can play dreamcast games on my phone now. I use a Nvidia Shield handheld for my main emulation machine. It is more expensive but is portable has a built in controller, HDMI, and support for external controllers. I just got tired of constantly tweaking a low powered machine to try and make it do what I wanted.

I love the RB Pi but I just couldn't get around the low performance compared to what you can get with something for a little bit more.

[Eternal Champion]

Thoughts on the Raspberry Pi 3 model B?

I'm actually considering selling the whole lot. Not a lot compared to most here, probably (Genesis model 1, SNES, NES, less than 2 dozen games each, approx.). But I could use the money and space. I would probably regret it, but...lately I'm feeling that it's time to give up the analog world.