The Gameboy made by Nitendo was the dream of every kid’s Christmas back i the 1990’s. If you love to play with the Gameboy you will feel disapointed because the close the production. But with Retropie you can turn your Raspberry Pi into a Gameboy.
You can turn your Raspberry single board computer into Gameboy using the retropie system and emulator, with other accessories required to put together a Gameboy design. These include:
- Gameboy design case
- A decent Gameboy sized screen compatible with Pi
- USB charger
- Amplifier
- GPIO cord, PCB, tactical buttons and switches ( Gameboy design)
- A Micro SD card and a small speaker
Retropie
RetroPie allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi, ODroid C1/C2, or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite Arcade, home-console, and classic PC games with the minimum set-up. For power users it also provides a large variety of configuration tools to customise the system as you want.
RetroPie sits on top of a full OS, you can install it on an existing Raspbian, or start with the RetroPie image and add additional software later. It’s up to you.
Emulator
As the name suggests, an emulator is any piece of code or software that causes one computer to act or respond like another different computer. A good example would be playing a Nintendo classic game on a modern PC. Here the emulator enables the computer to behave as if it were a video gaming console. Although the retropie downloadable image comes with many emulators already installed, you can get other newer emulators installed within the retropie system at any time.
Sold at just $35, the Pi is the best SBC you can use to build your Gameboy using Retropie system. It is very easy to do and does not require in-depth Linux knowledge. Even if you don’t have any Gameboy around, you can buy all items needed to put together your old school themed Gameboy from Amazon( usually sold as a kit) and install the retropie Os to the SDcard, after which you need to do simple file sharing to complete the setup on your main computer. You should note that playing old school games on your Pi requires two components, namely an emulator and the ROM of the game to be played.
Things you’ll need to build your Gameboy
To build your portable gaming console, you’ll need:
- Gameboy design case
- A decent Gameboy sized screen compatible with the Pi
- USB charger
- Amplifier
- GPIO cord, PCB, tactical buttons and switches (Gameboy design)
- You’ll need a Pi 3 and above to get the best functionality, performance and connectivity. The latest raspberry is Pi 3 B+. You can, however, install retropie on older versions such as the Pi 1 and Pi 2.
- A Micro USB power supply
- A Micro SD card and a small speaker
- You may need a USB and mouse just for the initial set up.
- You’ll also need a separate Windows, Mac or Linux PC to copy ROMs and set up your SD card.
The installation process
First, you need to head over to https://retropie.org.uk/download/ and choose your raspberry model’s retropie download file. Note that you should select the Raspberry Pi 0/1 image if you are using Pi 1 or 0. Download the SD image file ( about 700MB) and extract the file named “retropie-4.4-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz.” You can extract using programs like 7-zip or WinZip. After the extraction process, you should end up with an image file type (.img).
The next important step in the process is to format your SD card. The best way to do this is by downloading the SD card formatter from the following link; https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html. Just select your operating system, download and install the software on your PC. After this step, you should be able to pick the SD card to be formatted and format it. Alternatively, you can try formatting the SD card using your operating system directly. Note that you may need an SD card reader(micro SD card reader) if your PC doesn’t come with one.
To install the retropie system, simply use either Win32DiskImager or Etcher. Follow the following steps to install the image file using Win32DiskImager:
Make sure your SD card is correctly inserted to your PC (you may need to use an SD card reader)
Select the extracted .img file on the app.
Select the SD card drive letter to which the image is to be installed.
Click on the write button and wait for the process to complete.
Upon starting your Pi, you should be welcomed by a configuration menu for both RetroArch Emulators and Emulationstation controllers. Not that the first boot may take a short while as the filesystem expands automatically. Simply follow the on-screen prompts to configure your keyboard or gamepad controller.
After this step, you will be taken to the emulation station home. Note that at first, you may not see the Gameboy system as this ROM file should be downloaded and copied to the SD card using a flash drive. The same process applies to all compatible ROMs for various gaming systems including SNES, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Entertainment System, Neo Geo, and PlayStation.
Here’s how you can transfer your favorite gaming system ROMs via USB to your portable Gameboy.
- Make sure that your USB drive is formatted using NTFS or FAT 32.
- Then add a new folder called retropie on your USB drive.
- Plug the USB into the Pi and leave it there until it stops blinking.
- You can then insert it back to the PC and add ROMs to the file path: ‘retropie/roms’ after which you can re-insert it back to your Pi.
- Leave it on for about a minute and restart your Raspberry Pi.
Setting Up your Wi-Fi
Retropie latest version comes with many options to tweak various Pi settings, including WiFi and memory. Setting up your WiFi is easy, especially with the Pi 3 B+ which comes with inbuilt WiFi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet with PoE capability:
- Simply scroll to the Configure WiFi option then click the ‘A’ button on your controller
- Choose “Connect to WiFi Network” and type in your WiFi password then click okay.
You can also set up other parameters of your retropie system including theme and Bluetooth controller (if you want to connect your Gameboy to the screen and play on your external controller). You can also manage files in this section, just be sure that you know what you are doing as most games should work fine in default settings.
Another important detail to note is while transferring ROM files to your SD card; you can quickly type ‘\\retropie’ from the Windows file manager or ‘smb://retropie’ on Mac finder app (by selecting Go > Connect to Server).