Question 4.6: You want to use a games emulator on a Raspberry Pi to make a......
You want to use a games emulator on a Raspberry Pi to make a vintage game console.
There are a number of emulators around for old game consoles from the 1980s. One of the most popular is Stella, an emulator for the Atari 2600 (Figure 4-8).
It is worth noting that even though these games are ancient, they are still owned by someone. The ROM image files that you need to play the games on an emulator like Stella—although easy to find on the Internet—are not necessarily yours to take. So, please stick to the law.
To install Stella, simply enter the following command in a Terminal window:
| $ sudo apt-get install stella |
Once it’s installed, you will find a new program in Games on your Start menu. Do not run it yet—you need to obtain the ROM image for a game.
If you are outside of the US and own the actual game, you are entitled to take a copy of the ROM image for backup purposes in many, but not all, countries. You can also find ROM images for some games that have been released without any license restrictions.
Now that you have the ROM image for the game you wish to play, create a folder called roms and place the ROM image in that folder. Then start Stella.
Click the image file to start a game. By default, the cursor keys are mapped to the joystick controls and the space bar is fire. You can change a number of settings for the emulator —for example, you almost certainly want to go to Video Settings and set it to fullscreen mode.
You can also use Input Settings and the Emul Events tab to map controller buttons to your keyboard.
Discussion
The emulator uses a surprisingly large amount of the Raspberry Pi’s meager resources, so you may find that you need to overclock your Pi for best performance (Recipe 1.14).
If you search the Internet, you will find that many people have taken this basic setup and added a retro USB controller, like the widely available and quite low-cost Nintendo Retrolink USB Super SNES Classic Controller, and built the Pi and a monitor into a big arcade-style housing.
See Also
There are a number of other console emulators available—at various stages of maturity, and thus reliability—on the Raspberry Pi. One to consider is Mame, which emulates a number of different game platforms.
For more information on installing with apt-get, see Recipe 3.16.
