Well after some thought, I decided to re flash the micro SD card & rebuild my Retropie video game system. I was excited to see that Game Wizard had a new image available. To get the Roms & Emulators or game systems, you need to go to
http://www.gamewizard.ca/ and download the image. Now you can either transfer the roms manually which could take forever or you can do what I'm about to show you and have a lot of games. So lets get started. You will need a keyboard. I have a wired USB version but a wireless with a USB adapter will be fine as well. You will also need a micro SD card with an adapter which is not a problem considering that they usually come with one. I highly recommend getting a
class 10 with 64 gigs or higher micro SD card. The reason is because some of these systems you will see will require a lot of data but not have a lot of games & the reason you need a class 10 or better is mainly because of functions:
Next you will need a controller. Any USB and/or bluetooth controller will work. I've determined that the best controllers after connecting and/or configuring are the Xbox controllers. The main reason is when you decide to pause a game and step away for a bit, the Xbox controller will turn off to save battery but all you have to do is press the Xbox button and you are back in business. Plus these have zero lag & do not require re configuring in the system after it shuts off. The current Xbox One controllers have built in bluetooth but they do offer a USB adapter if you are using a wireless Xbox360 controller which is pretty easy to find on Amazon:
Next you need to format your micro SD card. I use what you see below and I format it to FAT32. This preps your card and makes sure that you get all of the data instead of just part of it:
When you select "quick format" you will see the screen below:
Click yes and the formatting will be done rather quickly and you should see the screen below. Notice how the amount of data is 29.53 gigs of data instead of 32? Don't worry this is normal:
Next you need to flash your image onto your micro SD card. I highly recommend using Etcher which is also free to download. It's truly point & click and total time to flash is about 10 minutes from start to finish give or take a little:
Etcher does take a minute or 2 for it to come up on your screen once you open it but this is what you should see when it does open:
Next you need to select your image. I chose the newer Game Wizard RC3-Pi3 that you see below. I was using the RC2 Pi-3 official below which was great. But the newer image does have more games & features than the older one does:
After you select your image your etcher screen should look like this. Click the flash button:
As I've stated it takes about 10 minutes & not the time you see below. You will see why here in a moment or 2:
The beauty about using Etcher is the fact that after your initial flash is completed, Etcher takes the time to validate that your image was flashed correctly which takes an additional 3.5 minutes of time after your initial flash which is a very good thing:
The micro SD card adapter will automatically eject so don't be alarmed. Plus you will see the screen below. You now have the goose that lays golden eggs:
Next you insert the micro SD card into the Raspberry Pi 3 computer which has wifi & bluetooth built in. I have a 32 gig micro SD card at the moment & this specific case requires me to take it apart to gain access to the micro SD card which is fine because it is fun to do:
Next go ahead & assemble your case. Now there are some custom cases out there that you can buy that are equipped with a safe power on/off button & a safe reset button that won't mess us your micro SD card. But they require a script to be added for them to function properly. How these scripts work with the game wizard launcher is unknown to me at this time. So I will be sticking with the standard case at this time:
You will also need an HDMI cable which can be found where ever electronics are sold & a power supply. The kits that Amazon offers include the power supply along with a basic case & the Raspberry pi 3 computer. Try to avoid the ones with the Micro SD cards because they often don't have the correct one. Next plug in your controller & keyboard as seen below:
Next plug in the power supply. Your Retropie will reboot a couple of times and then you will see the screen below. This where the fun begins:
For the next step, you will need the keyboard to configure your controller:
Press the enter button and this menu should pop up. Use the arrow keys & go down to the "configure input" and press the letter A on the keyboard:
It will ask you if you want to configure input press the letter A on your keyboard to select yes:
Once you select yes you will see a screen where it says "1 game pad detected press & hold a button on the controller to configure it" do that and you should see the screen below. I just press each button as indicated below and when I get to the L3 & R3 buttons, I just press the joysticks themselves followed by the appropriate direction for each joystick. Now if you are using a basic controller that's not equipped with these joysticks and/or left & right triggers, you simply hold a button down and it should say "not defined" that's if you are using something similar so lets say an original Super Nintendo controller:
Now before you can use the Game Wizard launcher app, you will need to connect your Raspberry Pi3 computer to the Internet via its wifi connection. *This is not an option* if you want the systems & roms that go with it. Go to the Retropie menu & select wifi:
Select your wifi network & enter your password for that network. It's best if you use your keyboard to connect your Retropie to the Internet. You can go through the Retropie itself but it's simpler & much faster to use a keyboard instead:
Once connected return to the main menu & select the game wizard in the menu selection and then select the game wizard launcher:
Once you've selected the game wizard launcher you should see the screen below which is the game systems install. This usually takes about a minute probably not even that:
Next you will see the EULA or the End User License Agreement. Select accept:
Once you see this screen go ahead and select the grab your ROMs here:
Now you have this screen which has 3 choices. Naked, scraped & full. Select the "full" option. The naked option is just the games themselves & nothing else. While the scraped option is just the games & a picture of the actual game. The "Full" option is everything including box art, cartridge art, flyers & video previews of each & every game for the system you choose. It does take longer on the download once selected but it's so worth it:
Next you will see this screen below which the actual game systems themselves:
Once you select a system, the game wizard launcher does the rest automatically. Each line you see below is an actual game along with the features I mentioned earlier if you selected the "full" option. How many games or ROMs you want will depend on what size micro SD card you have but beware. Some of the file sizes are very deceiving. Some require obscene amounts of data & only yield very little games. A prime example would be Sega CD add on ROM set. It requires 11.9 gigs of data but only has maybe around 60 games at the most. It will take time to download these games:
Once you are done downloading your games you will see a "reboot" option on the game select screen below. Go ahead & select it. This saves the changes you've made to your Retropie:
Your Retropie system will reboot & you should see this screen below once finished:
Once the reboot is finished you should see this screen below:
You need to exit so press B on your controller which should take you back to the main menu where you will find all of your systems & games:
^ Underneath each system it will tell you how many games you have for each one. Now there are some other options out there such as EBay & Amazon who sell memory cards preloaded with systems & ROM's such as what you see below:
^ This specific one I bought off EBay for around $60 dollars came preloaded with 95,000 games. The problem is in the sound. I have to select a system & then exit to get the sound to work. But other than that, it's okay. At the time that I bought this preloaded memory card, I couldn't get the Game Wizard launcher to work & I had to get the owner to tell me what I was doing wrong which was not connecting my Raspberry Pi3 to the Internet via a wifi connection. Once I did that, everything else came really easy. Right now I'm using a 32 gigabyte memory card but I do plan on using a 128 gigabyte memory card here pretty soon. This is legal folks. 95% of these systems & ROMs have no copyright claims anymore and/or the patents have also expired. All of the porting licenses have either expired and/or have been sold as a bankruptcy settlement. So there should be no legal problems.
