The Raspberry Pi Has Revolutionized Emulation

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Raspbian config changes I found essential:

  • those saucy brits behind the Pi set the default keyboard to UK layout. Change it to :flag_us: :hash::one: via dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

  • you will want a larger font for a 1080p display, change it via dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. I recommend TerminusBold at the setting just under the largest available size.

RetroPie config changes I found essential:

  • disable “quick system select” via the select menu so ← → don’t move you away from the game select page.

  • turn off that incredibly annoying “flipper” menu sound via the select menu. Sound OFF here just means sound in the emulation station UI itself, not in games. Note that holding the stick up or down for a while will move very rapidly between letters, which exacerbates the flipper sound problem.

  • disable “launch menu” for games in the retropie run command config page which can accidentally get activated by eager button mashers.

  • turn off overscan override via disable_overscan=1 in the config.txt file – this let the Pi naturally scale perfectly edge-to-edge on my modern HDMI LCD

  • Remove unusued emulators. Zork and ScummVM are bundled out of the box .. really? really? press f4 and use mc to visit the retropie/roms folder, then delete any files in these folders. They’ll stop showing up.

Controls

It’s worthwhile to understand the default shortcuts in the shared retroarch / libretro emulation layer. Starting with these basic buttons (an exhaustive list of system controllers and mappings is at the bottom of this page)

retroarch-snes-default-buttons.png530×255 38.8 KB

You can use these common controller shortcuts in any emulator based on libretro which is almost all of them!

select+start — exit
select+x — retroarch GUI menu
select+b — reset game

select+r shoulder — save state
select+l shoulder — load state
select+→ — state slot inc
select+← — state slot dec

Additionally in emulation station, it isn’t obvious, but:

  • Jump directly to any game list index letter (a,b,c etc) via the select menu.
  • Hold up or down a while to begin scrolling the game list extremely fast
  • Use r shoulder and l shoulder to skip up and down a page in the game list

RetroArch / Libretro keyboard shortcuts

Any emulator that uses libretro will also work with the following RetroArch keyboard shortcuts, if you have a keyboard attached:

f8 take screenshot
o movie record toggle
p pause
h reset game
m next shader
n prev shader
e slow motion (hold down)

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