July 27, 2017 @ 14:28
Reclaiming my sunshine-deprived youth with an OrangePiPC
There was a time in my life when, if I walked outside on a bright day, the glare of my white skin would set trees alight. It was a glorious time of realising most adults were wrong most of the time. I spent a lot of time avoiding adults and playing video games.
When I was a kid, there was this game called Bubsy. It was b-grade funny, with puns like “a bridge too fur”... It’s about a cat who has nine lives, and, so many ways to die.
Bubsy kind of fits into this space close to what Sonic aimed for; alternative ways to get to the end, and the option to go really fast at your peril. The issues with the game are the same as Sonic, though, including dying if you run too fast and not making use of absolutely massive and detailed levels. That actually makes the game cool, though, since you can replay each level with a different experience each time.
The people in this video don’t like Bubsy.
It’s one of my favourite games on the SNES, so those guys are clearly wrong.
When my sister said Nintendo was releasing a Mini SNES with two controllers, but it didn’t have Bubsy on it, I thought I’d see how affordable I could make a similar system with Bubsy installed. It also didn’t have The Lost Vikings, which is another underrated SNES game. I think they must have compiled the list based on the best sellers. But where is Chrono Trigger?
To be fair, the Mini SNES looks like a great deal if you love those games, but this is for people who want to play Bubsy and other SNES classics on a budget.
Making a cheap-ish gaming system (and by cheap I mean roughly $60)
Righto, so as a disclaimer, I’m not saying you should go out and download games you haven’t paid for. My father actually purchased these SNES games at some point, so I see this as redeeming the thing that we already owned. Yes, I’m a software developer and I know that software doesn’t work like that.
OK, so the first thing I noticed was, the Nintendo Mini SNES was going to cost $110 or so. If it had Bubsy I would have just bought one for my sister, but no, no Bubsy and no time to spend the nights at home with a glass of scotch thinking about the good times. I needed to play that game and experience all the ways I can die while running really fast. I think there's roughly 100 ways to die in the game.
I started scouting around for ways to make retro gaming systems. I found on Ebay you could buy a RetroPie system for $100, and it comes with two controllers, heatsink and fan, power supply, etc.
I wanted to do it cheaper.
So here’s a material list:
1 * Orange Pi PC - $18
1 * plastic case, fan, heatsink, power supply - $16
1 * Australian power adapter - $2
1 * 16 gb micro sd card - $13
2 * controllers, SNES-style, usb - $6
Most of the above I got from AliExpress. I really do recommend the heatsink and fan too, because the Orange Pi PC can get hot.
The board is roughly the size of a credit card.
Next, take your MicroSD card and download an image of RetrOrangePi. All of the guides for installing RetroPie apply to RetrOrangePi, from what I can tell.
As background, RetroPie is a Linux distro that is optimised for playing games, and the RetroOrangePi is specifically for using that on the OrangePi board.
You can use whatever you like to write the image to the MicroSD, but I use Etcher on my Linux Mint laptop. It's a lot easier than using the terminal and this is one of those (rare) cases I'd opt for a GUI vs the CLI. It's really easy.
It should install three partitions onto the card for you. Thanks PC.
The Linux file system should be about 4gb. Don’t worry if it’s all taken up. Just go and place that MicroSD card into the OrangePi and fire it up. The first time it loads, it should resize the partitions for you. Righto, the rest of it you can do with a little research. I'm not going to show you how to download the roms or various BIOS files, as those are easy to find explainers for.
The result: I can play Bubsy, and my sisters are getting the same cheapish system for their birthdays.
It's a pretty sweet Linux distro, and supports EmulationStation. ES is a GUI that hides all the Linux stuff from you. I mean, this is good, since asking some people to open the terminal and type a bash command is less likely than catching a submarine to work. It lets you plug in Xbox usb controllers, the SNES usb controllers I've talked about, and you will very rarely (if ever) need to use the terminal.
So that's it.
If you're wanting to avoid sunlight and not ever have any reason to go outside ever again, this is it. I mean you will have to answer the door when the postman delivers your boxed components. You may also need to attend Centrelink when you haven't showed up to your job for a month and they've stopped paying your wages. You may even fall out of contact with everyone who cares about you, but at least you'll have Bubsy and his awful puns, furrever.
Edit
I should correct myself, this is not a distro in itself. The image you download sits on top of Raspbian and the RetroPie/RetrOrangePi is extra software. I think that means you can install it on an existing system, but I've found the dedicated image to work really well.