*Cue the angelic music with harps… lots of harps
So how can this be done? How can you reclaim your passion for video games? All you need is to take a trip down memory lane, by using a Raspberry Pi loaded with the RetroPie. Raspberry Pi is a mini computer which has many potential uses for home users. It’s cheap, powerful, and small. You can use it at a home to make any TV a mini web browser, a media server, or many other fun things. It has a Network Interface Card, so you can connect it to the internet and/or your home network for file sharing. You can SSH into it if you need to. And best of all, you can use it to create a standalone emulation station for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Nintendo64, and many other platforms. Horray! Technology has finally become advanced enough for us to do a weird kind of… gamer time warp, if you will. It’s kind of like that movie Quantum Leap, only with sweaty palms and more acne.
No joke here; just a picture of the goods
SO here’s the deal. I’m not going to give you the walkthrough of how to build and install this thing. (That’s already done by this guy on Lifehacker, here). I also won’t tell you how to get ROMS… you can figure that out on your own. That Lifehacker walkthrough I linked to is actually what I used to set this up, and it works great.
What I will do, is give you the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front for you non-military folks) and give you my personal guarantee that this thing definitely does not suck. I spent 2 hours playing Breath of Fire II on my projector the other night after my Trifecta responsibilities were complete for the day, on a Super Nintendo Controller, and realized that my nerdiest dream had come true. Then I switched to Super Metroid, and the intro theme song hit me like a fully-armored Samus Aran fist to my hippocampus (not to be confused with hippopotamus).
Pictured: Not a hippocampus
I was able to mentally relive those simple days when the problems and challenges of the adult world were not yet understood, nor cared about, by my awesomely game-hungry younger self. For a moment, it was just little me wrapped up in my controller-frying, static-electricity producing blanket on that shag-carpet floor, listening to something about Desert Shield and Desert Storm on the radio while mom cooked some mac and cheese (with hotdogs!?!) for dinner and I squashed endless Goombas for the good of all mankind.
So that there’s no weird questioning of my motives for writing this, I will disclaim that I am not affiliated with whoever makes the Raspberry Pi, RetroPie, or any other derivations of the word Pie used elsewhere. I just think the product is awesome, and the price-to-utility ratio is insanely favorable.
So if you’re a guy or gal looking to reclaim some small part of your youth, you can go buy a Huffy bicycle and take it for a spin (no helmet; you’re super cool) and realize how out of shape you actually are, OR, pay $35 and regain a little bit of that magic. Because who doesn’t like magic?
Besides this guy
And just special for you… a video demo!
This is my first real article about anything, ever, and it just wouldn’t be right if I failed to give credit for the format (end paragraph with funny comment, place in funny supporting picture, etc) to all the awesome writers over at Cracked.com. If you haven’t been to that site, you’re really missing out.