Smokey Posted January 1, 2023 Share Posted January 1, 2023 Would you ever buy a cheap desktop PC/mini PC for the sole purpose of having it be a gaming/emulation box running something like RetroArch? I see more and more people on youtube doing this nowadays. I was considering it myself at one point too, but I don't have the space to pull that off. Is this something you'd do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kane99 Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 I have done it and would do it again. I had a Raspberry Pi PC that I had installed Emulation Station and other things to make a little emulation box, but it died on me a couple months back. I think there was a short somewhere and poof, it died. But yeah, it's a popular thing to do these days. You can buy even handheld consoles where you can add emulators. Or ones that already come pre-installed with them. And there are people selling kits with pre-made emulation boxes. Of course there's some legality there with how some sell the roms with the devices, which is a no-no for the most part, but it's usually a product from China, so Nintendo or other companies probably won't be able to do much against them to stop it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Empire Posted January 4, 2023 Share Posted January 4, 2023 Get an android stick and a couple of bluetooth/2.4ghz controllers. 100 tops, and as long as it's a dual core with 1g of ram, should run 64/psx fine. Evening better, get hold of a raspberry pi system and ahve good amount of SD memory and build a box/case and BANG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killamch89 Posted January 20, 2023 Share Posted January 20, 2023 Nope and that's just because I have more than enough space to run it on my gaming laptop. I'm currently in the process of building my own cloud server though so I can backup my own data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shortie Posted January 24, 2023 Share Posted January 24, 2023 If I had the space and the funds to be able to do this I definitely would. Not only would I love to be able to play the games but I know my kids would as well so this would be perfect to have in a room for everyone to use. Hopefully one day I will be able to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kane99 Posted January 27, 2023 Share Posted January 27, 2023 On 1/24/2023 at 3:43 PM, Shortie said: If I had the space and the funds to be able to do this I definitely would. Not only would I love to be able to play the games but I know my kids would as well so this would be perfect to have in a room for everyone to use. Hopefully one day I will be able to do that. You could build a raspberry pi and add RetroPie and emulation station. The raspberry pi and the rest of what you need should go for less than $100. If you want more space or ram, I believe you can pay more for a better board. But it's the cheapest way to build and emulation box or device. A raspberry pi is essentially a compact PC, that you can buy. You can use it like a real PC if you want as well. Usually it's sold as just a board. You will need to buy or build your own case, and buy a power chord, mouse, keyboard etc. It's really fun to build but is great to use as a PC. I had two SD cards, one with an OS, to surf the web and such. And I also had another SD card with the emulators on it. I just switched them out whenever I wanted to play or surf the web. Shortie 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shortie Posted January 27, 2023 Share Posted January 27, 2023 1 hour ago, Kane99 said: You could build a raspberry pi and add RetroPie and emulation station. The raspberry pi and the rest of what you need should go for less than $100. If you want more space or ram, I believe you can pay more for a better board. But it's the cheapest way to build and emulation box or device. A raspberry pi is essentially a compact PC, that you can buy. You can use it like a real PC if you want as well. Usually it's sold as just a board. You will need to buy or build your own case, and buy a power chord, mouse, keyboard etc. It's really fun to build but is great to use as a PC. I had two SD cards, one with an OS, to surf the web and such. And I also had another SD card with the emulators on it. I just switched them out whenever I wanted to play or surf the web. This is interesting, thank you for this. I think I will look into this as it does seem like a more affordable way to do it over trying to do it in a more expensive way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kane99 Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 On 1/27/2023 at 12:39 PM, Shortie said: This is interesting, thank you for this. I think I will look into this as it does seem like a more affordable way to do it over trying to do it in a more expensive way. The cheapest way would be to download emulators and roms to your PC. But, if you want a device itself dedicated for that, the cheapest alternative is to build one via a raspberry pi. I know some people can make emulators out of old consoles. You could probably make one with an Xbox 360 or even an original Xbox. Xbox 360 would probably be better because of the hardware. But if you don't want to go the route of having to mod any of those old consoles, a raspberry pi would be good. There are also guides all over the web on how to set it all up too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazycrab Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 (edited) 15 minutes ago, Kane99 said: The cheapest way would be to download emulators and roms to your PC. But, if you want a device itself dedicated for that, the cheapest alternative is to build one via a raspberry pi. I know some people can make emulators out of old consoles. You could probably make one with an Xbox 360 or even an original Xbox. Xbox 360 would probably be better because of the hardware. But if you don't want to go the route of having to mod any of those old consoles, a raspberry pi would be good. There are also guides all over the web on how to set it all up too. There's probably cheaper ways then a Raspberry pi. I've been looking and right now I'm struggling to find the latest Raspberry Pi 4 8GB for less than £200 (~$250) and that's without a case, power supply, fan or any extra storage. Even that model struggles to emulate anything past the PS1/N64 era. I'd to look more into it but there probably is a cheaper and/or better way. I've heard of a lot of people installing homebrew on a XBox Series S and it's apparently able play XBox 360 and even PS3 games! Edited January 30, 2023 by Crazycrab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
