☆ Me and My Beautiful RetroPie ☆ #RaspberryPi #Retrogaming

Over the last few days I have been consumed by the Raspberry Pi and a little something called “RetroPie”

RetroPie is like the ultimate retro gaming emulator software. It’s got everything you want from an emulator in terms of a nice user interface and whole ton of compatibility with all sorts of consoles and other computers from back in the day. Basically RetroPie is the SwissArmyK^1f3 of the emulation world. It does the lot.

I sourced a Raspberry Pi2 model and decided that I needed to get cracking on my project to create the most awesome emulator out there to date.

I got cracking initially by seeing what bits of computer paraphernalia I had laying around the house. I have a cupboard full of computer peripherals and wires from years gone by. I rarely get rid of anything even when it has diedAdeath there is usually something useful to salvage.

As I trawled my cupboard I came across exactly what I needed…….

An HDMI Cable

A Dell Wired Keyboard

A Wireless USB Dongle

An old blackberry charger

A wired USB mouse

A 4GB Micro SD from my old Android phone

With all this treasure in my grasp I set about trying to set the RetroPie machine in motion.

First port of call was downloading a good piece of software to format my Micro SD card – SD CARD FORMATTER from the SD ASSOCIATION

Now the SD card was ready to have the RetroPie software transferred to it. I downloaded the RetroPie software from http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie-downloads/

Once it was downloaded I extracted it to my desktop and then I had an img file to put onto the SD card.

Using another tool called Win32DiskImager I was able to transfer the img file directly to my SD card (through the use of a card reader plugged into my PC)

This was pretty simple and took all in all about 30 mins to do as the download and transfer take a little while.

Now it was a case of inserting the sd card back into the Pi and hooking up the power, hdmi, keyboard etc

Then………………………………..NOTHING………………. L

Hmmmmmmm

As always with these things it never works first time.

After a bit of head scratching I realised a couple of things……..

1.       I had downloaded the wrong version

2.       I hadn’t extracted the image properly to my desktop using WinRar

So………I headed to bed and decided to hit it with a fresh head the following day.

Having learned from my mistakes I whizzed through the steps the next evening and had it up and running in no time!

But again it was late and I didn’t have a game pad ready to test it with…….

My next foray will be involving a game pad and an extended play session.

I can’t wait to get stuck into this emulation awesomeness properly!

Have you used RetroPie yet?

Let Me Know In The Comments Box Below