If you are interested in building your very own DIY arcade system using the awesome RetroPie gaming emulator, you may be interested in the new Instructables tutorial created by member “pjnovas”. Check out the video below to learn more about the project and see it in action. The project builds on a previous smaller arcade device by adding a variety of enhancements and making the joystick and buttons more accessible and ergonomic to use.
Before building the project a number of factors needed to be considered to make the DIY gaming arcade a success in Pjnovas eyes. These include :
– Built in system: plug & play with a TV by HDMI
– Small size: easy to carry and store
– Scalable: plug into it another joystick for more players
– Joystick only mode: ready to use only the joystick for any other system by USB
– Best option I’ve found is by using a RaspberryPi with RetroPie plus an USB HUB and a custom made USB signal switch. BUT I didn’t want to expose the raspberry pi, I wanted a closed box with all IO ready to use.
Pjnovas the creator of the project explains more about inspiration for the design. “I have already built an arcade joystick before and it was huge (60x30x12 centimeters for 2 players), also hard to use cause you would need a PC with all the emulation ready for play, etc .. so that one ended up being stored somewhere I can’t remember collecting dust but I still wanna play old school games with a stick and big buttons. I know this is nothing epic original but I just wanted to document and share all the stuff I came up with for each part of the build so you can build your own, improve the one you already have or even use it as inspiration for your next project.”
To learn more about this excellent project jump over to the full project page by following the link below. If you enjoy building Pi projects you might be interested in our comprehensive list of Raspberry Pi displays, HATS and small screens.
Source: Instructables