Raspberry Pi emulators

[nebraska182]

Hi guys,im after a plug and play unit which basically plays every old 80's/90's consoles and games - is the below item the best bet to get?

https://www.piretrogaming.com/product/superior/

 

[RIC172]

that's a LOT of money. My advice would be to buy a Raspberry Pi 3 model B for about £30, case, PSU, Micro SD with plenty of storage, compatible USB keyboard and USB retro games controllers. In fact most of that you can buy in a bundle from the pi hut etc. Then flash a retropie ROM to the micro sd, transfer the thousands of games (ROMS) you find online, and bobs your uncle.

Doing it this way, you'll save about £150

 

[nebraska182]

that's a LOT of money.

Not if its a birthday present hehe - i just want something to plug and play straight away,its not like youll want to add future games if theres 35k on there!

I really want to collect the classic NES/SNES/C64/MD mini consoles aswell - mainly because they would look cool on a shelf hehe.

BTW,what is MAME? Is that a coin-op emulator...

 

[Jack!]

If someone is selling emulators for £200 then I'm about to start a new business venture.

 

[RIC172]

Not if its a birthday present hehe - i just want something to plug and play straight away,its not like youll want to add future games if theres 35k on there!

I really want to collect the classic NES/SNES/C64/MD mini consoles aswell - mainly because they would look cool on a shelf hehe.

BTW,what is MAME? Is that a coin-op emulator...

Lol fair enough. Although I'm surprised they're able to sell it as a bundle with thousands of copyright protect games included.

MAME is an open source emulator which allows arcade games to be played (so yeah coin-op games)

 

[RIC172]

Btw I used to use a Pi as a retro games machine (albeit the method I described) and while fun, it did lack a bit on more graphically intensive games. You'd be surprised how advanced games like star fox were back in the day. I then switched to a modded Sony PSP Go which had a lot more graphical grunt under the hood and plays both retro and PSP games at home or on the go! All for peanuts again

 

[Daz...]

If you want something to plug into a tv then a pi running retropie will play most classic games, and cost about £60 for everything from scratch.

Or...as @Cup172rich said, a PSP will work and it’s more likely to be used.

 

[Darren S]

Btw I used to use a Pi as a retro games machine (albeit the method I described) and while fun, it did lack a bit on more graphically intensive games. You'd be surprised how advanced games like star fox were back in the day. I then switched to a modded Sony PSP Go which had a lot more graphical grunt under the hood and plays both retro and PSP games at home or on the go! All for peanuts again

Interesting with the PSP. Is that along the lines of Pandora and running an arcade emulator that way?

I only ask as my Pandora'd PSP is shoved away in a drawer somewhere and never sees the light of day. If I revamped it to run stuff like this, that could be fun. I have a RetroPi too - but as you say, some of the graphically intensive games (N64 ones in particular) - really show the limit of the Pi hardware and struggle accordingly.

 

[RIC172]

Interesting with the PSP. Is that along the lines of Pandora and running an arcade emulator that way?

I only ask as my Pandora'd PSP is shoved away in a drawer somewhere and never sees the light of day. If I revamped it to run stuff like this, that could be fun. I have a RetroPi too - but as you say, some of the graphically intensive games (N64 ones in particular) - really show the limit of the Pi hardware and struggle accordingly.

The PSP works a treat for retro games. It even plays PS1 roms! https://www.lifewire.com/top-system-emulators-for-psp-2792759

While you can obviously run PSP roms on it natively, I end up using it more often for the retro stuff, like super mario and Zelda.

It's worth mentioning mine is a PSP-Go though, so I didn't need to use a Pandora to mod it