If you’re using a Mac, use something like Apple Pi Baker. If you’re using a PC, use a program like Win32DiskImager. Once you’ve downloaded the program, you’ll need to write it to your microSD card. Partly a free program and partly a bundle of a lot of other emulator and controller programs already floating around, it’s remarkably easy to get set up and running, and supports emulation on over 50 systems, everything from old Amiga games to MAME, which lets you run many old arcade cabinet titles.įirst download RetroPie here. Luckily, there’s a program made for just this purpose: RetroPie. If you’ve ever set up any video-game console or even, like, a Roku box, all of this should be second nature: The HDMI cable goes into the TV then you hook up power supply to an outlet, and plug the controller into one of the four USB slots provided.Īfter that, it was time to load up an emulator. If you have any of these things, you could easily get away with spending under $60, and maybe even just $50 for the basic starter kit if you also have a microSD card lying around.Īfter snapping the case around the Pi board, I hooked it up to a TV, controller, and power supply. I also could have cannibalized one of the many HDMI cables I have, and just used the micro USB cord that came with my PlayStation 4 instead of buying a new one. This Vilros Raspberry Pi 3 Basic Starter Kit, for example, includes a Pi 3, a case, a power supply, and two heat sinks for $49.99, when I paid $54.56 for essentially the same parts. And I should say, I went about this slightly stupidly there are bundles that include a lot of this stuff for comparable prices. If I didn’t have a keyboard or game controller I could use, I would have spent $91.97. Not Pictured: A 19-inch Panasonic CRT TV in the guest room at my parent’s place and a MacBook Pro I used to download some software and write to the microSD card.Īll in all, I spent $73.49 on everything. If you can’t lay hands on a USB keyboard, you can get this Gear Head USB keyboard for $5.99. A 2001-era USB EZ Keyboard meant for FinalCut Pro that my father had in the back of a closet ($?). Keten Raspberry Pi 3 Power Supply ($8.99)Ĩ. SanDisk 16GB MicroSDHC Card with Adapter ($5.95)ħ. If you don’t have any of those, these Baigeda Game Controllers are $12.49.ĥ. I should note I already owned one of these, and any USB controller will work here, so any Xbox 360, Xbox One, or PS3 controller will all work fine. Emulating a PlayStation 1 on it is comparatively trivial.Ī quick rundown of what everything is, and how much it cost.ġ: 10-foot Micro USB cord from Anker ($6.99), mainly so I could use a wired controller from a comfortable distance from the screenĢ: SB Components Clear Case for Raspberry Pi 3 ($5.58)ģ: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Board ($35) and LoveRPi Performance Heatsink Set for Raspberry Pi 3 ($4.99)Ĥ: PS4 DualShock Controller ($46.99). People have strung multiple Pis together to form a supercomputer, created working weather stations with them, and sent them up in weather balloons to take photos from the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. Running an emulator, a program designed to let a operating system behave like another one, is actually one of the more basic things you can do with a Pi. (It’s powerful enough you could reasonably, with some work and compromises, use a Pi as your main work machine.) But for $35 you get a computer with a 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM, about the same specs as an iPhone 5 or some Chromebooks. It costs $35, though that only gets you the computer itself - there’s no power supply, no onboard storage, no keyboard or mouse or way to connect to a monitor. To back up for a second: the Raspberry Pi is a single-board, super-simple computer that can do a surprising amount. So, I decided to build a little emulator myself, using a Raspberry Pi 3. I could have put an emulator on my laptop and plugged away, but I wanted something a little more like what I remember: an old CRT screen and a wired controller. Not coincidentally, I also had some time to kill. (It was things like this that led to me being voted “He Goes Here?” in my high-school yearbook.) Back at home over the holidays, finding myself reverting to teenagerhood, I had an itch to play Tactics again, because there’s nothing more life-affirming than someone in their 30s trying to re-create their youth. One of the better winters I spent as a teenager was playing the classic 1998 PlayStation game Final Fantasy Tactics and listening to Built to Spill’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love on endless repeat. I went looking for old retro games for art but have no idea what game this is, so let’s call it Super Princess Ship Quest.

Pi emulator mac