One of my personal favourites is the Raspberry-Pi and the power that comes with it. I've covered Kodi, adblocking, Bitcoin and even recommended the little beast as a school computer. But the Pi can be so much more.

Remember the time you played on Sega, Nintendo, Atari, or your Commodore back in the 90s (and even before)? Well, I do, and it was a lot of fun. Giana Sister, perhaps Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and like.

My son is always trying to get me excited about Steam and the platforms he uses. But now I've turned the tables and made him play my childhood games. And he loves it. We even started to play real board games like chess and backgammon and no, not on a Pi, but on a real board. But that was part two, let's comes back to part one where you can turn your Pi into a RetroPie.

First RetroPie is a project that transforms your Raspberry-Pi into an easy-to-use, arcade retro gaming monster in one platform. RetroPie boots into a graphical interface and let's you use a gamepad or joystick and allows you to manage and easily add digital copies of your favourite games. It is super user-friendly and everyone who uses it should get the hang of it in no time.

The best of it is that you can change themes, use Kodi and you can have the power from over 50 systems!

Once you boot up the Pi, you can launch directly into a game, and exit as easily all from your gamepad.

Setting up the 'console' or RetroPie is super easy, all you need to do is download the latest copy:

https://retropie.org.uk/download/

Then follow the installation guide:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

Or even more easily you can download the official Raspberry Pi Imager and select RetroPie and let the magic happen!

Operating system images – Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny and affordable computer that you can use to learn programming through fun, practical projects. Join the global Raspberry Pi community.

Raspberry PiThe Raspberry Pi Foundation

Once you have done the installation of RetroPie to your SD card or the hard-disk you using on the Pi, add the HD to the Pi and boot the baby up.

You will be greeted by a welcome screen that lets you configure your gamepad or joystick, follow the setup process, and you are ready to go.

You can now transfer ROMS to your RetroPie:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Transferring-Roms/

If you own old ROMS for any of your old consoles you can easy transfer them to your RetroPie. This is way more convenient than having an old gaming console standing around and blowing into the cartridge to make them work again…we all did that and never figured out why we were actually doing it. Probably because the cartridges were dusty and the game just works better.

Each game console is located under its personal gaming console folder:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/<consolename>

Once you have added the games you already own, or the ones you got online (yes plenty of ROM sites, and Reddit (Teddit) posts on how to download them), you can rescan them by pressing start and choosing the option to restart EmulationStation. When it restarts, it should automatically add menu entries for the ROMs you've added.

The rescan updates your RetroPie inventory but if you don’t press rescan you won't see your ROMS!

There are a few things to add, PlayStation Portable (PSP) games do not perform well, and Sega Dreamcast barely run at all. However, original PlayStation games run smoothly and so do Commodore, Atari, and the likes.

The biggest regret about using a Raspberry-Pi and making it a RetroPie gaming machine will be that you didn’t do this earlier. For all the old geeks out there who still have their old consoles, consider transferring them to digital, you can bring the Raspberry-Pi anywhere you might go. And leave behind your Mum's basement hahahahaha

And for everyone who just wants to go back to the old gaming days, the arcade days, the time when gaming was simple yet so much fun, get your Pi ready. You won't regret it and if you have kids and are from my generation, you might get the new kids on the block to become retro gamers and never go back to their new PlayStations and Steam accounts.

Privacy and fun and all in a little Pi!