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Cheapest retro machine?

Started by Barry Admin, October 09, 2017, 12:59:09 AM

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Barry Admin

What's the easiest and cheapest way to get set up here if you don't have a PC? It's been doing my nut in for weeks now. My windows tablet seems like it's just about able to handle MAME games upto CPS2 and maybe a bit beyond, but actually getting the games is a nightmare. They are invariably not compatible with the newest version, and I don't have enough space to download all the roms at once. I'm basically spending all my time trying to download stuff, and no time playing. I want to play old arcade, gameboy and C-64 games without fucking about with all these multiple browser pages that crash my tablet and make me wait for ages while they load adverts.

If I get a retropie for xmas would that do? Could I just plug my joystick in, connect the thing to my telly, and actually play games? Are there any crazy waiting lists or anything to go through?

biggytitbo

The hardware is easy to get, no SNES mini style stock issues, and the software is a free download. I gather it's a bit involved to get it all set up though, but there are tons of step by step guides on youtube.


For the games it can be such an arseache downloading them individually i'd recommend just getting the big megapacks. Even the snes one is less than a gig for every game ever released.


I'm using retroarch on a NUC which is quite good. The big issue i've had is the megadrive mega pack i've got includes every variation on each game, EU, JP, US, some games having like a dozen minor versions, and the UI insists on listing them all so you have to scroll through vast lists of duplicates.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Barry Admin on October 09, 2017, 12:59:09 AMgames upto CPS2

For my money, still the greatest title in the Crown Prosecution Service series.

hewantstolurkatad

Thats more an issue with mame in general than your hardware, isn't it? I've always found it a misery to deal with and the requirements in general seem to be way higher than those for home machine games of the same technology level (I assume purely because more effort has gone into emulating each major home machine than any arcade variant)
Damn near anything that has a computer chip in it at this stage an emulate gameboy to some extent.

Depending on the range of machines you want to emulate, I'd still recommend a PSP. You can probably get one for about $30 at this stage and that'll take you up as far as the PSX/GBA and whatever is seriously less powerful than those. No keyboard obv.



I'd've thought a Windows tablet would be very good for emulation overall though, 20 solid years of attempts at making .exe emulators at your disposal. I was thinking of getting one purely because of that.

biggytitbo

I'd recommend setting up retrocarch on something like this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/T8-Licensed-Computer-Graphics-Bluetooth4-0/dp/B06ZXSMJZJ/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1507539646&sr=8-16&keywords=mini+pc

And use this - http://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/

You can then tuck it away under the telly without a mouse or keyboard and have a fully fucntioning windows 10 emultation machine for under £100. Ive got one with the same atom chipset and its more than powerful enugh to run any old school emulator all the way up to the Gamecube, although it falls short for the PS2.

MikeShaft

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 09, 2017, 07:41:44 AM
the software is a free download if you're willing to steal it

Corrected that for you.

biggytitbo

The emulaters are free I mean, you'll have to obtain the roms by making 'backups' of the cartridges you legally own yourself, there literally is no other way.

QDRPHNC

I just got myself a raspberry Pi with 2 usb SNES controllers for about $150. Installed retropie, plays pretty much anything you can throw at it. As a bonus you can install Kodi right from retropie too.

Installation is a bit of a pain, but there's software out there that'll format and install the OS on an SD card for you. If you have a usb keyboard handy it really speeds things up.

Once it's up.and running it's a piece of piss. Roms can be transferred over wifi from your laptop.

Spiteface

Quote from: Barry Admin on October 09, 2017, 12:59:09 AM
What's the easiest and cheapest way to get set up here if you don't have a PC? It's been doing my nut in for weeks now. My windows tablet seems like it's just about able to handle MAME games upto CPS2 and maybe a bit beyond, but actually getting the games is a nightmare. They are invariably not compatible with the newest version, and I don't have enough space to download all the roms at once. I'm basically spending all my time trying to download stuff, and no time playing. I want to play old arcade, gameboy and C-64 games without fucking about with all these multiple browser pages that crash my tablet and make me wait for ages while they load adverts.

If I get a retropie for xmas would that do? Could I just plug my joystick in, connect the thing to my telly, and actually play games? Are there any crazy waiting lists or anything to go through?

Nothing like that as far as I know. Think there are bundles that are geared towards using a Pi as a retro gaming thing.

Here's one: https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-kits-and-bundles/products/raspberry-pi-3-retro-gaming-bundle

Seen some NES-ish cases around, too...


Pre-Edit EDIT: likely a similar deal to what QDRPHNC mentioned just now.

QDRPHNC

On eBay and such sites you can find people selling pis with retropie and Roms already installed.

Cold Meat Platter

Archive.org has whole romsets for various MAME versions for download in 1 go.
I have a pi3 and retropie and love it. Reinstalled everything last week and took about 30mins to 1 hour.
If you have a modest amount of computer skills it's a piece of piss.

I have games for various systems on it including c64, arcade, Dragon 32(first computer), PC Engine. All work flawlessly and with less controller lag than on PC emulation (as far as I can tell). Some arseing about involved if you want CRT filters/scanlines etc. but once you know yer way around the GUI it's cool.

canadagoose

There's also the Orange Pi PC, which costs very little, and you can get RetrOrangePi to put on, which emulates quite a lot of older systems. It seems to crash on startup on occasion, but generally it works pretty well and it's dead cheap. (I think my Orange Pi was about £30.)

asids

Quote from: hewantstolurkatad on October 09, 2017, 09:23:33 AM
Depending on the range of machines you want to emulate, I'd still recommend a PSP. You can probably get one for about $30 at this stage and that'll take you up as far as the PSX/GBA and whatever is seriously less powerful than those. No keyboard obv.

On that note, I'd also recommend the original Xbox as an emulation machine, surprisingly enough. There's a fantastic bit of software you can get for it called CoinOps that does arcade emulation, as well as yer NES, SNES, Mega Drive, PS1 etc. You can get versions pre-loaded with thousands of games (not that I'd encourage such illegal practices though) and the front-end for it is great - shows every game with a little preview video and basic info about the game, can sort the games by different categories etc. It's brilliant for something on a sixth-generation console.

Sebastian Cobb

Wii's are cheaper and easier to get your hands on than the original xboxes these days. They're simple to jailbreak and run emulators on as well.

I'd still recommend a pi. Throw kodi on it as well.

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Raspberry-Pi-3-Media-Center-OSMC-With-RetroPie/

biggytitbo

I think it's worth paying a little bit extra to get one of the atom pcs, they run a full version of windows , meaning it'll run any and every emulator going, and are both a lot more powerful and a lot more flexible than a pi or repurposed console. You could even bung steam on it and use it as an indie game box.

Barry Admin

Thank you all, not sure what to do, £30 for an Orange Pi sounds good, or maybe I could get a rom set on a memory stick off eBay for my tablet, although I don't agree with paying money for stuff like this. Or maybe just keep trying to save for an Atom PC, so I'd also have something I could use for getting this place sorted. I'd been thinking of a refurbished laptop or something, but thought there might be a quick and cheap way to get MAME up and running. Wii also sounds very possible, bound to be cheap, and they're fine with arcade games yeah?

hewantstolurkatad

Wii has no digital output options, unless you want to play a ton of wii and gamecube games (which you probably should want to do?), something like a raspberry pi would prolly do the job better (ie more customisable) for roughly the same price, take up significantly less space and have more up to date emulation options (thinking more bug fixes for old games than new systems being emulated).

biggytitbo

Quote from: Cold Meat Platter on October 09, 2017, 07:50:08 PM
Archive.org has whole romsets for various MAME versions for download in 1 go.

Yes its amazing how much illegal content is on archive.org, how do they get away with it?

dmillburn

The Pi3 is a great option, purely because they are really cheap (especially if you already have a suitable power supply, old controller and sd card kicking about) and there's so many people using them for retro emulation these days so they are extremely well supported. Get the biggest SD card you can afford (but at least 32gb) and just download one of the many excellent prebuilt images that use lovely looking frontends like Hyperpie, Motion Blue etc and just write it to the SD card and you are done. 

There's a site that has loads of pre-built images which contain all you need in one place, so that's the frontend together with all the roms for the systems included, so need to to search for working clean romsets or artwork or attract mode videos or anything as other people have done the work for you. I won't link directly to it because of the roms that are included but it's an anagram of "arcade spunk". Just write the image to your sd card and chuck it in the pi and you are good to go. It will handle stuff up to PS1 perfectly, but does struggle with Dreamcast and N64 ( you'll have to overclock the Pi and drop the resolution for Dreamcast games, and even then it's not great but still playable).

I'd download a few different images and try them until you find the one you like the most, it takes no time at all to write a new one. A 128gb card will set you back £40 which is more than the cost of the Pi, but there are plenty of decent pre-built images for smaller cards - even a 16gb card will cover more games than you'll have time to play.

I'm currently using this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOsqfe9UZw

but there's loads of other options out there like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=258&v=5zB_-usWMcU

The only snag is if you don't have a working pc at all you'll have to rope a mate in to download and burn the image to the sd card for you - if you get stuck I could do it via post for you.

The Masked Unit

Excellent info there mate. Looks like I'm adding a raspberry pi to my Christmas list.

madhair60

Wii. Twenty quid, absolute trickle of piss to get hacked. Default package includes NES, SNES, Mega Drive, Master System, etc etc.

Barry Admin

Brilliant stuff, very indepth. Thanks again! Hopefully get something sorted for xmas, maybe a pi3 and a Wii. What's this about mo digital output options on the Wii though? Looks like there's a hdmi converter or am I misunderstanding? Dying to play all the Mario games I've missed, that'd be sweet.

madhair60

Quote from: Barry Admin on October 14, 2017, 06:29:19 PM
Brilliant stuff, very indepth. Thanks again! Hopefully get something sorted for xmas, maybe a pi3 and a Wii. What's this about mo digital output options on the Wii though? Looks like there's a hdmi converter or am I misunderstanding? Dying to play all the Mario games I've missed, that'd be sweet.

No clue. The best I get out of mine is with component cables, for 480p, which looks fine on my set, especially with the retro games.

asids

Quote from: Barry Admin on October 14, 2017, 06:29:19 PM
Brilliant stuff, very indepth. Thanks again! Hopefully get something sorted for xmas, maybe a pi3 and a Wii. What's this about mo digital output options on the Wii though? Looks like there's a hdmi converter or am I misunderstanding? Dying to play all the Mario games I've missed, that'd be sweet.

The Wii only does composite and component analog video natively, not HDMI, so the best you can get is 480p through the component (component can do 720p, but no Wii games ever did 720p). The HDMI converter is basically just convenience, it just takes a component signal but allows you to input a HDMI cable instead of using finicky component cables and some newer TVs have started removing component input.

480p's absolutely fine for playing arcade and retro games though.

Z

Quote from: Barry Admin on October 14, 2017, 06:29:19 PM
Brilliant stuff, very indepth. Thanks again! Hopefully get something sorted for xmas, maybe a pi3 and a Wii. What's this about mo digital output options on the Wii though? Looks like there's a hdmi converter or am I misunderstanding? Dying to play all the Mario games I've missed, that'd be sweet.
Wii has no official HDMI out options to the best of my knowledge, there's tons of cheap Wii2HDMI type things but you're talking a 480p cap and whatever potential dodginess you can get with cheap chinese third party solutions