Okay lets try this again. I deleted my previous blog post mainly because I found out that my original app that I was using does indeed work and the reason I wasn't seeing it was because I wasn't connecting it to the web. More on that in a bit. First you need a Raspberry Pi 3 computer which you can get online for about $35 U.S. Dollars. Now to help things along, you can get a kit from Amazon which includes the computer and power supply along with a couple of heat sinks which are needed. You will also need an HDMI cable shown on the left side in the photo below:
You will also need a wired USB controller. The reason I recommend getting a wired controller is that the blue tooth used in some of these wireless controllers aren't recognized by the raspberry pi 3 computer and if you were to pause a game to grab a drink or something, the wireless controllers tend to shut off and the only way to re connect some of them is to re boot the computer. Plus it's been my experience to see this happen with my Xbox 360 which is what led me to get the controller you see below. I got tired of this and went back to the wired controllers. Also, I do recommend avoiding the Playstation 3 & 4 controllers mainly due to the fact that it can be confusing to configure it which you will need to do later on. In my opinion, the Xbox 360 controllers seem to be tailor made for this build. You can use any controller you want as long as it's a USB controller it just seems easier with the wired Xbox controllers:
You will also need a class 10 micro SD card. If you are going to get a lot of emulators & Roms, then I highly recommend spending the money and getting a 64 gigabyte or higher micro SD card. I don't really need a lot of games and/or systems because a lot of my original systems still work. I can still play both Playstation 1 & 2 games on the Playstation 2 and my Sega Dreamcast is solid and still works like it did the very first day I bought it. So all I really needed was a 32 gigabyte micro SD card. ****It must be a class 10, do NOT get anything below that class! **** If you do get one below class 10, your games will have some serious lag time and quite possibly freeze up on you. You may also see some performance issues such as no sound like I did on my preloaded micro SD card that I bought which cost me around $54 U.S. Dollars off EBay. So try to avoid buying a preloaded micro SD card if you can because they tend to use the ones below class 10:
Now after speaking with the game wizard, I found out what exactly I was doing wrong and why the launcher didn't work. Your raspberry pi 3 needs to be connected to the Internet for it to work. Now there is a method you can use that doesn't involve a keyboard but I highly recommend getting one because it's much easier & faster to connect the raspberry pi computer to the web using one. I ended up using a keyboard due to the security features and how I log on to the Internet:
I do recommend getting a case but definitely not the one you see below. It's made by a company called "Old Skool Tools" and the only thing it has going for it is looks and that's where the positive traits end. Very flimsy and extremely difficult to assemble and it's even worse to disassemble it. It cost me $20 U.S. Dollars from Amazon which I regret buying:
Okay next you need to format your micro SD card. I highly recommend using the SD Card Formatter seen below. Here's the link for that specific utility: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ . It's free to download and pretty simple to use:
Now please pay close attention to the size of your card because if you get one that states it only has so many megabytes, you made need to re size the card which is pretty simple to do. I tend to use my digital camera to format the card and then I re format it again using this tool:
Once it's been formatted, you will see this below if you have done it correctly:
Now to get your retropie running, you will need an image. I recommend going to this specific web site's download section & downloading that image. Here's the link to that specific web page: http://www.gamewizard.ca/downloads.html . All you need to do is just download it and NOTHING ELSE. Don't extract it, open it or anything. If you do it could corrupt the image and make it impossible to be flashed onto the micro SD card which I'm about to show how to right now. Now I must say that this specific download does take about 20 to 30 minutes but it's definitely worth the wait and then some:
Now to flash the micro SD card, I highly recommend using a tool called Etcher. Here's the link for it: https://etcher.io/ . You can use another utility if you want but why would you when this one is just basically a "point & click" and watch? Here's the desktop short cut seen below:
First you need to open Etcher which is kindly slow to open but not much:
Next you simply select your image that you downloaded earlier:
After that you select the drive you want to burn the image to. Just make sure you pick the correct drive that your micro SD card is located in. And yes this does work with USB flash drives and then you simply click the flash button seen below:
It could take roughly around 5 to 6 minutes for the initial image to flash onto your micro SD card or USB flash drive:
After the image has been flashed, Etcher will automatically validate that the image was flashed correctly onto your device:
Now after Etcher is finished, a warning screen will come up saying that the micro SD card is unreadable and it will ask if you want to format the card. Hit cancel and eject the card, DO NOT FORMAT IT! Windows will automatically eject card and you will need to remove the micro SD card from the adapter and place it into your Raspberry Pi computer with the pins on the card facing up. It will boot up and then re boot a few times and you will see the screen below:
Next you will need to configure the controller you are using which is what you see below:
Next open the WiFi connection and connect the Raspberry Pi 3 computer which is now called Retropie to the Internet. After that, open the game wizard launcher. You will see a black screen and then a user license agreement which you need to accept:
Once you've accepted the user license agreement, you will see a black screen with code running on it briefly and then you will see the screen below. I picked the "full" option which includes both the Roms & the box art for the Roms & systems:
Here's the black screen with the codes running that I mentioned earlier which is normal:
Here's the Emulators which can be seen below. Now some aren't available for various reasons so don't be alarmed. Now please pay attention to the emulators you pick because some of the files use a ton of disc space and you could max out your card very quickly as I found out the hard way and I ended up starting over. Since I have a Dreamcast that still works along with a Playstation 2 that can play both Playstation 1 & 2 games, all I really wanted was the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Sega 32X, Atari7800, Super Nintendo, NeoGeo and the Sega Master system. To heck with the Nintendo 64. I wasn't a fan of it back in the day and I've heard a lot of people claim that the performance is awful on Emulation Station so there's no need for me to get a bigger micro SD card which can get expensive. Now if you chose the "Full" option earlier and once you pick an Emulator, the emulator you picked begins to download which is the longest part. Some could take as long as 2 to 3 hours and others could take 2 to 3 minutes. It depends on how big the file is which can be seen next to the emulator selection screen. After the emulator is downloaded, the Roms & box art follow automatically:
Once you've gotten everything you've wanted perform a re boot to save the changes you made. After that you will see the emulators on your screen like the one for the NES seen below. It also tells you how many games are available for that system:
Standard Punch Out for the Nintendo Entertainment System looks phenomenal. I've not tried Mike Tyson's Punch Out yet but I soon will:
I ended up writing down each system and how many games it has so I could determine how many actual games that I do have:
The total I got is 3,176 playable games which is awesome. Nintendo is about to release a Super Nintendo classic edition for about $80 U.S. Dollars which only has 21 games. Even though I spent a little more than that and what I wanted to during this build, you can build this for roughly about the same price as a Super Nintendo Classic Edition. No joke. Nintendo simply doesn't get it. Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on the latest video game & all of the extra content and why would I spend upwards of $300+ dollars on a new system that has almost no video games available for it when I can either buy a retro trio for about $60 dollars or simply do this build here for about $80 to $90 dollars and have a lot more games? Retro Gaming is where it's at. Nintendo, Microsoft & Sony could be making a ton of money off retro gaming machines right now but unfortunately, they're too greedy & ignorant to see what they're missing out on.
