My RetroPie experience.

Over the past few days, I’ve been tinkering with my Raspberry Pi and trying out a few fun projects.

The first one I tackled was RetroPie, which essentially turns the Pi into an emulator for systems like the GBA, N64, SNES, and other classic consoles. Installing it was pretty straightforward — just a bit of terminal work and a few Linux commands. Nothing too difficult, though the installation itself took nearly an hour. It was pulling in a ton of data, and I’ll admit I started to worry something had gone wrong. But apparently, that’s normal.

Once it was set up, I used WinSCP to transfer ROMs (game files) from my laptop to the Pi. That part was seamless.

I tried running Super Smash Bros., but the only controller I had was a keyboard — not exactly ideal for N64 gameplay. Then I tested out a hacked GBA game called Pokémon Jupiter, but it wouldn’t open. I’m guessing the emulator didn’t recognize it since it was a modded version of an official Pokémon title. The only game I actually got to run was Pokémon FireRed, but even that glitched out once I reached Pewter City — the game got stuck in what felt like a permanent fast-forward mode. Not the worst thing since I was speed-running through it, but still, it would’ve been nice to slow it back down.

That said, I’m not really much of a gamer anymore. After about 30 minutes, I lost interest and moved on to my next project: setting up an ad blocker using Pi-hole.