Raspberry Pi As An Emulator Console?

[THTB]

For those that don't know what a Raspberry Pi is: http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-a-raspberry-pi/

Essentially, this little device is capable of a lot of different things, notably emulation gaming. You can program it to where it can easily be used as a portable emulation console, capable of using a USB controller.

What I had in mind is possibly using this for tournaments running arcade tournaments such as UMK3, or the new UMK2. There's starter kits being sold for ~$50-80 on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Basic-Clear-Supply/dp/B00DG9D6IK/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1397254373&sr=8-7&keywords=raspberry+pi

The setup for the gaming part is pretty easy: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192

After all that setup, just go ahead and play.

It's pretty sweet what we'd probably be able to do with this thing. And it wouldn't be limited to just arcade games...you'd be able to run a number of other games, as well...and since there's an HDMI port for this thing, it's not like you'd have to spend that much more on cables. I think it'd be a fine investment.

Thoughts?

 

[Mikemetroid]

I have a friend who does this! Its pretty gnarly.

 

[Konqrr]

Yeah those things are awesome... I thought they were $35 or so... the price went up?

 

[THTB]

Yeah those things are awesome... I thought they were $35 or so... the price went up?

They still are, for just the board itself. You can buy a starter kit that comes with the Pi, a casing for it, a power cord, and an SD card loaded with the OS for the price I listed.

 

[MKK hanzo]

This is interesting. Aside from crappy YT vids, anyone can confirm how good is the level of emulation we can get here? Im counting on SNES perfect level emu, but Arcade MK might be impossible.

 

[EMPEROR PRYCE]

So is it possible to emulate more power consoles? Such as ps2 (MKDA. anyone?)

 

[FrothyOmen]

So is it possible to emulate more power consoles? Such as ps2 (MKDA. anyone?)

On a Raspberry Pi? I.. kind of doubt it. I'm not sure it could even do N64 games. I'd be interested to hear from somebody who knows for sure

 

[RiBBz22]

so what operating system does it use? I am assuming it is loaded onto a SD card?

 

[THTB]

so what operating system does it use? I am assuming it is loaded onto a SD card?

It uses Raspbian, which is a variant of an existing Linux distro (Wheezy, I think it's called).

 

[RiBBz22]

It uses Raspbian, which is a variant of an existing Linux distro (Wheezy, I think it's called).

Yeah I read about it, basically you can install whatever sort of thing you want on it and it just runs it off the SD card you get. So you can load XBMC on it or the emulator one you were talking about. I might get one just to play around with since at worst it can be a pocket media player.

 

[THTB]

So, remember this thread?

So, I took the plunge and picked up a Pi 2 to put RetroPie on. I'll be testing to see how MAME (more specifically the MK games) runs. Let you guys know in a week lol.

@Konqrr @Shock @9.95