My brother and his wife came to our house for Thanksgiving this year. At the end of the night while we were sitting around feeling extremely bloated he asked me if I had any of our old video game consoles. When we were kids we would spend endless nights (because we couldn’t play during the day, fair enough) playing video games. It was the best. And it turned out that I actually did have all of our old systems though none of them could actually plug into our projector due to cable incompatibility (if I had a nickel).
But then I remembered about a posting on Lifehacker and decided to quickly throw it together using a Raspberry Pi that I had bought to make a wireless speaker with. Using the RetroPie image I was able to get a mini game console up and running pretty quickly and he was able sit back and play the classics.
If you’re interested in doing this yourself here’s how I did it and what I bought. Follow the guide as it helps you setup the controllers…
Lifehacker How To (google any questions as there are plenty of resources)
Raspberry Pi (I suggest the B+ model, Amazon also has bundles, though I used the A+ and it’s a bit slower)
Micro SDHC Card (32gb should be more than enough)
Wifi USB (for updates and cover art)
Power cable with On/Off Switch (I like having a switch)
Controllers (I found the SNES ones to be the most versatile)
ROMS (you need to find these yourself)
As you can see, I took an old Atari joystick and crammed my Raspberry Pi in and after some shoddy dremel work I have my very own retro-retro console!