Seamless retro gaming with the Raspberry PI
For years I have been kind of obsessed with trying set up a HTPC that will not only play movies, but also run retro games from systems like the SNES, Sega Genesis / Mega Drive, Neo Geo or the NES.
It was never enough for me to just be able to play games — I wanted to boot up my HTPC and be presented with a slick (do people still say that) UI without seeing Windows’ Desktop or that of any other OS.
For a long time I have been using XMBC Live, a Linux distribution that will boot directly into XBMC (now Kodi), and tried out various plugins to display roms and run emulators directly from the media center.
A while ago I got in touch with some alternatives and today I will briefly review 3 options for making this possible with the Raspberry PI. These options are RetroPie, Lakka and Kodi.
RetroPie
Homepage: http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/
The RetroPie setup is pretty simple, just download the disk image for your Raspberry 1 or 2, install it on your SD card and the system is set up.
The system will boot directly into EmulationStation, an arcade front end, where you can select the consoles and other system you want to emulate. It is not necessary for you to install emulators, most emulators you need are pre-installed. However, you need to add roms yourself (duuuh) — before your emulators show up.
Rating ★★★★☆
It works great but I do not fancy the UI design so much.
Lakka
Homepage: http://www.lakka.tv/
Lakka, just like RetroPie, can be downloaded as a disk image for your Raspberry Pi. However, the website claims it is not fully stable und RasPi2.
Its interface looks much like Sony’s Playstation interface ‘XMB’ (duuh again) — with a pretty retro touch. It’s built on top of RetroArch so it will play most consoles out-of-the-box, well at least eventually. It is still under development, so not everything is working yet.
Rating ★★★☆☆
It’s still work in progress so I can’t give it more stars, but I see a bright future.
Kodi + Adv. Launcher
Homepage: http://kodi.tv/
So, Kodi is a media center software, not an arcade front end and neither made to be distributed as a Raspberry Pi disk image. But: People made distributions / disk images for the RasPi: OpenELEC, OSMC and XBian.
Here’s the disclaimer: It is a struggle and will probably always be a struggle to set this up and have a seamless experience and it does require some nerd-skills. And from my experience a high level of frustration.
So why would you want to do this? Because this is a media center software it will also play all your videos, streams, music, show picutes and will do tons of more stuff — and you can boot roms directly from Kodi, with box art images to select your games and everything. Also you have a wide selection of skins to choose from.
To start your games directly from Kodi and have cool box art images your select your games with, you need to manually install emulators and install and configure the extensions ‘Advanced Launcher’ or ‘Rom Collection Browser’. Box art images will be scraped automatically.
Rating ★★☆☆☆
Do this only if you are up for a challenge and you want a full media center.
Conclusion
To put it in a nutshell: Use RetroPie if you want a no-hassle solution that just works. Watch out for Lakka, it might become pretty cool. If you feel like trying out stuff, why not give it a spin. If you are pretty much of a nerd and you crave that one device that will do everything you need for your home entertainment, go with Kodi, but be warned, it will drive you mad at some point.
