Anyone else crazy enough to build their own retro-gaming machine?
Anyone else crazy enough to build their own retro-gaming machine?
(figured I'd 'do my part' and make my first Lemmy post...!)
I love this thing too much to part with, but I'm gonna have to be honest: I barely use it. More often or not I retro-game on my Steam Deck...slightly more portable!
Has anyone else built their own units for retro-gaming though?
Well, personally I turned a NES cartridge into a RetroPi console
That sounds really cool. Do you have any pictures?
Yes, I will upload a photo of the project soon on this community :)
About 13 years ago, I made this fella.
https://i.imgur.com/hZYFEmC.jpg
It was a huge amount of fun to build and I was very happy with the result. I hardly play it, but sometimes just put it on and let it cycle through games to fill the house with an arcade-y ambiance.
It started off life with an old PC in it, but currently runs a Raspberry Pi 3.
That's a sick cabinet
Sure, I built a retro arcade cabinet from a raspberry pi, crt tv and arcade parts. It's fun af.
where did you source your arcade parts?
I’m definitely thinking about it. I played around with the idea a while back, but remember getting frustrated with the key mapping.
We've got a full-size arcade cabinet in our kitchen. Was a DIY passion project of my husband's before we met, and it was fun for a while because the various niblings would play with it when they came round for the big family breakfasts we used to do. Sometimes if I was alone in the house I'd leave it on demo mode just to have some comforting background noise.
Niblings grew up, I got used to the quiet of a small town, and I don't think it's even been turned on in about five years because we've also got way more portable options 😅
It's my little one that gets the most use out of mine too, that's for sure.
As @[email protected] said elsewhere I think I enjoyed building it more than actually sitting down to replay something specific. It doesn't help that I have a million other little projects (game programming, music production, model painting, sim-racing...!) that become more interesting as I make progress on another...
Still, I'm glad my darling daughter and her friends get use out of the machine!
I picked up a little bartop cabinet from a local arcade convention a few years back for a few hundred bucks. Ended up ripping out the Pandora's Box (overseas piracy device with a bunch of dumped ROMs) and threw a Raspberry Pi into it. Got everything wired up with RetroPi.. then realized I needed to add more buttons.
It's been in that state for years lol
I’ve always wanted to but it seems dauntingly expensive and tricky to do. Any tips?
Things are certainly pricier these days, that's for sure. Depending on what country you're in you might be able to find a decent arcade supplier for the sticks/buttons -- and even the cabinet itself (I used Arcade World UK.
For the actual system itself there's plenty of options these days, and a Raspberry Pi is more than capable to power most emulators. For the wiring of sticks/buttons, YouTube has a good chunk of resources.
Given cost, it might to wise to start with the RPi set-up, and if you're happy with how that works, look into getting the arcade 'shell' for it :)
Making a top-level reply as I seemingly cannot reply directly to anyone who posts from kbin.social? Is this a federation issue -- or have I somehow set something up wrong?
I annoyingly couldn't see your image until I viewed your comment on kbin itself. Anyway, you say 'simple', but you may have put more effort in than me ;)
There are quite a few nice RPi projects, that's for sure...! Other than a RPi4 mini NAS-like server, I've got a couple of RPi Zeroes around the house for a house-wide music system.
If you find your RPi again and you wanted to make it a retro machine, as others here have mentioned you certainly don't have to go the whole hog; you could just install a pre-sorted distro (like RetroPie), hook it up to a TV, and use USB controllers.
Same, I'm on Lemmy.world and the image in their post image doesn't show up. That's annoying!
I built a small Batocera machine a couple months ago using an Odroid N2+ board. Pretty simple to get up and running and plays anything oldschool I could ever want. I get the urge to play it pretty regularly too, so I’m happy it’s ready to go when I am!
It's on my to-do list, but the arcade hardware itself can get quite pricy. I may end up just using USB controllers instead of the buttons, sticks, and trackballs.
I received a raspberry pi as a gift a few years ago. I had so many plans. Currently I don't know where it is, but I know it's full of dust.
I'd like to, but space, cost, and amount of time I'd actually spend using it make it impractical.
Nothing fancy but I built and painted this one for my son for ~$100. Used one of those Namco arcade controllers, a cheap lcd from Craig's list, some wood and paint.. simple but it turned out pretty awesome 🤘
Oh my god, using one of the little plug'n'play Namco boxes is GENIUS.
I did about 7 years ago. Bought pre-cut wood and built a 'barcade'. To be honest I got more use out of it as a digital pinball machine as I had built two buttons on the sides which I used for the flippers. Now I got myself a candycab (Namco Exceleena II) complete with original CRT. Has a PC inside hooked up to JAMMA controls via a J-PAC. Can't beat having a proper arcade CRT!
I completely agree; not getting a CRT was my biggest regret. I think the various shaders you can apply have come a long way, but you can't beat an actual CRT.
Nothing wrong with not using it a ton. Sometimes it is about the journey not the destination. The thrill of building cool stuff vs the thrill of using it are two different things.
That Killing Joke trim is perfection!
The only downside was I had to cut up a copy of Killing Joke to achieve it...!
I had a Raspberry Pi setup with a little screen attached. Got some good usage but then decided to repurpose the Pi as a media server.
To be fair, that's all this is -- it's an RPi3 with a monitor, with the sticks/buttons plugged into a USB device. I originally wanted to build a proper tall cabinet for it, but I knew I'd never really have the room for it!
I put together a RetroPi installation and used it quite a bit actually. Got my son playing Super Mario with it, took it on vacations and played lots of old stuff with friends.
That's where the retro pi shines, multi player. So many fantastic multi-player games. The deck is great, I love mine and I haven't played my gaming pc since I got it, but you can't get four guys playing NBA jam on it.
I think I spent maybe 60 bucks on the pi, a case, an SD card, and another 20 bucks on some remotes. You don't need to go build an arcade cabinet to get it. I keep mine in a drawstring bag, tangled to hell and back.
Have a full size arcade cabinet in my bike shed, use it alot actually, quick boot up play some games with the kids, does double duty as the slicer station for the the 3d printer. treble duty as storage for bike parts technically.
I bought an 17 y.o. laptop recently to run 2000~2010 OS's (not just for gaming, although it is pretty good for that still), and I'm dating PC-98 machines on eBay every now and then, so I guess I'm halfway there. =)
I've MacGyvered a makeshift arcade machine in my computer room. I've got a Legends Gamer Pro (a little somethin' somethin' I bought during the pandemic), set on a stand under a small TV mounted on the wall. It's far from elegant, but when the mood strikes for old-school video games, it's always there, ready to meet that need. And that mount is a Pipishell, so I can turn the TV on its side and play vertical games with their proper aspect ratios.
@llIIIlIlIIIIlIIl I too have always felt that the ideal way to play Chrono Trigger is standing up the entire time.
...more or less. More of a "flex" thing rather than 24/7 to be honest. As in, I'd flip the switch only when there is a party happening in my spot.
Hoping to build a retro driving games one next year
For classics like Out Run, or something else?
Out Run, Spy Hunter, Super Sprint, etc.
I had a crazy idea for a stand up machine, with a fairly large 16:9 TV screen, mounted so it can either be oriented like a normal TV, kinda sticking out of the arcade machine on either side, or lowered a bit and tilted backwards so a portion of the screen can be reflected into a mirror toward the player, like the old arcade machines did. Arcade mode would give a more authentic experience when you wanted that, while Full Screen mode would be good for sitting back and playing with a controller. idk if I'm describing this very well, I'll never have the extra money to do it anyways.
I want to do it, but my wife is negative to the idea. To be honest, she is probably right...
I play a lot of fighting games and would love to have something like this at home. Too bad I'm broke 🥲
I have a Windows 95/98 dual boot PC that I cobbled together with spare parts over the years. I keep it around to play things like Lego Rock Raiders and older PC games. Probably could just virtualize or something, but its fun having some older hardware.
