Rasberry Pi Mame box recommendations

[Tarma]

There are still lots of old arcade games out there that I want to play and, sadly, are never likely to see the light of day on a modern home console, or the pcb's are now prohibitively expensive a and / or just to too hard to find.

I've decided to go the mame route, using a Rasberry Pi so I've got a mame box i can connect up to my TV.

But I'm a bit confused about which route to take and what I need besides the RaspPi (and an enclosure).

What's the best set up to build? I see sets on Amazon come with a fan and enclosure - are these any good? I see complain that the packaged fans are too loud and / or not suitable for cooling the Pi.

Do I really need retro pi? I only want to use mame - I'm not interested in emulating retro consoles, just arcade stuff.

Advice and tips would be gratefully received as I'm a complete novice to this method of gaming, and I don't want to shell out money on shit I don't need or stuff that isn't up to the job!

[Dochartaigh]

I used to build hundreds of these years ago. I've forgotten more than I used to know, but a couple months ago dove back into it and built a new Raspberry Pi 4 (RP4) – that's the newest version - been out maybe 1.5 years now though. People crap on the Raspberry Pi's for emulation, but straight-up it's perfectly fine for like 99% of the world. NEVER had anybody complain about it (and again, that's from literally hundreds built).

Anyway, when I was researching this time around I found these cool cases which move ALL the wires to the back of the RP4 just like they should be (which even the Mister, OSSC, and looks like the OSSC Pro STILL can't get right - those have/will-have wires sticking out on EVERY side of them which looks unprofessional and horrible). These cases look good, nicely made, I've never heard the fan, and the install script for the fan control (which ONLY turns on the fan if it's getting too hot) literally involves hitting "F4" then a line of code or two and it's installed and you never have to touch it again. The "V2" cases are supposed to have an IR sensor in them, and they're supposed to be releasing an IR remote for it soon which lets you turn on and off the RP4 remotely which is AWESOME:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WP ... UTF8&psc=1


Outside of that I would suggest RetroPie for the operating system. Keep in mind no matter what ANYBODY says these are NOT plug and play. You'll still have to follow a tutorial if you've never done it before and they can still be a bitch to get running 100% (getting it running in a basic sense CAN be pretty easy though... but I always want at a minimum like game descriptions and artwork and other cool things like that loaded up). RetroPie forums can help if you have issues (or post here).

You'll mostly be using FBNeo (that's new name for "FB Alpha") emulator for arcade games. Just like any arcade/mame/FB-Neo-Alpha emulation setup you HAVE to match the emulator to a certain EXACT romset or the games won't work. FBNeo uses "FinalBurn Neo (v.1.0.0.0)" roms – these are easily available on certain archive sites...

Couple games won't work on that which you'll use the older lr-Mame2003 emulator, and that romset is Mame 0.78.

People have also started overclocking to get some of the later Cave games (and others of course) to work on the RP4, but those have been so crappy for me (NOT overclocking my RP4) that I gave up on that. If you want to experiment those use Mame 0.161 for the lr-mame2015 emulator, and there's some video settings you can tone down to get them closer to 60fps.



One thing I've learned with emulating arcade games (with either MAME of FBNeo), is that even the brand-spanking newest builds of Mame, played on the fastest desktop computer, STILL can't play a shitton of games, some even super popular titles (or they're marked as 'has issues with xyz' or whatnot), so don't think you'll have free reign to play everything, especially on a low powered 'computer' like a RP4. I still have an ever-growing list of games I want to play which I try out ever so often whenever I download the latest MAME version.

Here's a quick breakdown of my favorites I load up on every RetroPie system. I have a separate folder for like all Neo Geo games (which FBNeo plays nearly every single one of those), CPS1/2/3 folders, a Capcom folder, etc., but this will give you a good glimpse on the type of games you can play on a RP4:

https://pastebin.com/JMQEcfUF




For a controller to use with this, if you're ONLY going to play arcade games, and like the actual arcade joysticks/buttons I HIGHLY suggest using a Fightstick - there's even mini HORI Fighting Stick's for like $50, or cheap full-size ones by Mayflash for $50 as well, to $100+ (sky is the limit) higher-end ones made for PS3/4 XB360/One. Just do a quick google search as not all play nice with the RP4/RetroPie over USB.

If you like regular style (wired) controllers the best, there's everything from a Buffalo SNES style pad, to adapters for real PS1/PS2 controllers, and a whole skew of RetroBit and the like Genesis, Saturn, etc. USB controllers.

For wireless (PS/XBox style) controllers the ONLY ones which are (dare I say it) 100% hassle-free (ok, like 99%), ALWAYS connects ~100% of the time correctly, is an Xbox 360 controller with a USB wireless adapter. Some people don't like their D-Pad (I like their latest iteration with the 'transforming dpad' just fine). You can also connect everything else from PS3+ to wireless 8BitDo controllers to these as well, but at one time of another EVERY single one of those has given me issues (when they're perfectly fine on every other non-Raspberry-Pi device I've used).



**EDIT, also wanted to note that people will prob also chime in and say that for around the same cost as a RP4 you can buy a old ex-office Dell or whatever desktop computer which will be exponentially more powerful than a RP4 (and thus able to play WAY more old games) - and they're not lying... but I'm just more familiar with the RP4 side of things (especially since they're so much smaller and fit into my rooms better, travel to peoples houses better, can bring it down to my parents shore house with me better, on work trips better, etc. etc.) – I also HATE RetroArch which is commonly used on desktop computers - such a horrible program to get setup and running and look even 1/10th as nice as a RetroPie setup can look like (yes, I know RetroPie uses RetroArch on the back end... but RetroPie takes out a LOT of that configuration hassle and makes it easier on a RP4 IMO... again, could simply just be because I'm more familiar with the RetroPie side of things).

[Fudoh]

Thumbs up for the Argon One case. Great looking and not worth saving $10 to buy some other crap.

[Tarma]

I used to build hundreds of these years ago. I've forgotten more than I used to know, but a couple months ago dove back into it and built a new Raspberry Pi 4 (RP4) – that's the newest version - been out maybe 1.5 years now though. People crap on the Raspberry Pi's for emulation, but straight-up it's perfectly fine for like 99% of the world. NEVER had anybody complain about it (and again, that's from literally hundreds built).

Anyway, when I was researching this time around I found these cool cases which move ALL the wires to the back of the RP4 just like they should be (which even the Mister, OSSC, and looks like the OSSC Pro STILL can't get right - those have/will-have wires sticking out on EVERY side of them which looks unprofessional and horrible). These cases look good, nicely made, I've never heard the fan, and the install script for the fan control (which ONLY turns on the fan if it's getting too hot) literally involves hitting "F4" then a line of code or two and it's installed and you never have to touch it again. The "V2" cases are supposed to have an IR sensor in them, and they're supposed to be releasing an IR remote for it soon which lets you turn on and off the RP4 remotely which is AWESOME:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WP ... UTF8&psc=1


Outside of that I would suggest RetroPie for the operating system. Keep in mind no matter what ANYBODY says these are NOT plug and play. You'll still have to follow a tutorial if you've never done it before and they can still be a bitch to get running 100% (getting it running in a basic sense CAN be pretty easy though... but I always want at a minimum like game descriptions and artwork and other cool things like that loaded up). RetroPie forums can help if you have issues (or post here).

You'll mostly be using FBNeo (that's new name for "FB Alpha") emulator for arcade games. Just like any arcade/mame/FB-Neo-Alpha emulation setup you HAVE to match the emulator to a certain EXACT romset or the games won't work. FBNeo uses "FinalBurn Neo (v.1.0.0.0)" roms – these are easily available on certain archive sites...

Couple games won't work on that which you'll use the older lr-Mame2003 emulator, and that romset is Mame 0.78.

People have also started overclocking to get some of the later Cave games (and others of course) to work on the RP4, but those have been so crappy for me (NOT overclocking my RP4) that I gave up on that. If you want to experiment those use Mame 0.161 for the lr-mame2015 emulator, and there's some video settings you can tone down to get them closer to 60fps.



One thing I've learned with emulating arcade games (with either MAME of FBNeo), is that even the brand-spanking newest builds of Mame, played on the fastest desktop computer, STILL can't play a shitton of games, some even super popular titles (or they're marked as 'has issues with xyz' or whatnot), so don't think you'll have free reign to play everything, especially on a low powered 'computer' like a RP4. I still have an ever-growing list of games I want to play which I try out ever so often whenever I download the latest MAME version.

Here's a quick breakdown of my favorites I load up on every RetroPie system. I have a separate folder for like all Neo Geo games (which FBNeo plays nearly every single one of those), CPS1/2/3 folders, a Capcom folder, etc., but this will give you a good glimpse on the type of games you can play on a RP4:

https://pastebin.com/JMQEcfUF



**EDIT, also wanted to note that people will prob also chime in and say that for around the same cost as a RP4 you can buy a old ex-office Dell or whatever desktop computer which will be exponentially more powerful than a RP4 (and thus able to play WAY more old games) - and they're not lying... but I'm just more familiar with the RP4 side of things (especially since they're so much smaller and fit into my rooms better, travel to peoples houses better, can bring it down to my parents shore house with me better, on work trips better, etc. etc.) – I also HATE RetroArch which is commonly used on desktop computers - such a horrible program to get setup and running and look even 1/10th as nice as a RetroPie setup can look like (yes, I know RetroPie uses RetroArch on the back end... but RetroPie takes out a LOT of that configuration hassle and makes it easier on a RP4 IMO... again, could simply just be because I'm more familiar with the RetroPie side of things).

Thanks for the advice - most of the games I want to play were made between the mid-80s and mid-90s, so if it can do that without an issue then that'd be great!

I don't really want to buy a PC just to play roms on, it just seems a bit extreme, and will take up space I don't have (I do my personal computing on Mac Book Pros so have no need for a PC).

[pcb_revival]

Pi400 is a passive cooled throwback - keyboard + internal RPi4 and can be overclocked to 2.2GHz within warranty.

Various regional keyboard layouts are available.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/