Raspberry Pi and Retropie in Korea – Our Experience

Before we start a couple of quick things. The Raspberry Pi is an awesome single board computer and is well worth the money. Secondly emulation is basically illegal and although some versions are OK, a lot aren’t. Simply put Emulators are legal, but most roms aren’t. However in my opinion if it’s for personal use and you own the system and games then it’s not an issue. On the flip-side if you profit from roms and emulators then that’s illegal, it should be free.

Last summer we purchased our first Raspberry Pi (a model 3B V1.2 for 40,000 ($35)) and since then we’ve certainly gotten our moneys worth from it. Either via Retropie or Kodi. In Korea the Raspberry Pi as well as Retropie aren’t very well known, but there is growing interest in retro gaming and there has always been good interest in coding.

Here are the basic steps to setup your Raspberry Pi with Retropie and our experience so far;

Raspberry Pi / Retropie Setup

The parts that we used / are probably required;

x1 Raspberry Pi
x1 HDMI Cable
x1 Micro SD Card plus Reader
x1 Ethernet Cable or Wifi connection
x1 USB Power Cable
x1 USB Stick
x1 PS3 Controller (PS4, XBOX or basic USB controller will also work)
x1 Case and Heat Sinks

The best place to start for the software side is at the Retropie Website (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/). Here is the step by step guide to the Retropie setup. Also here is a useful YouTube video showing the steps;

Here are a few pictures of our experience with the setup;

Raspberry Pi / Retropie Gaming

After the setup then comes the fun part the gaming. Of course not everything will work on via the Raspberry Pi / Retropie, but still the NES, SNES, Mega Drive, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance and PlayStation 1 all work fine. But some systems don’t work well like the N64. Neo-Geo and MAME all mostly work but it a little more trial and error.

The Raspberry Pi is an excellent emulation computer and it frees up your computer or laptop. At the end of the day it’s a nice little toy and it a great way to play old games on modern TVs as well as introducing retro gaming to kids.