Plug this replacement JAMMA box in, and bam: you now have your own virtual arcade. You could buy some old broken down husk of an arcade game cabinet, anything at all as long as it's a JAMMA compatible arcade game – a standard introduced in 1985 – with working monitor and controls. These things are are an entire 60-in-1 to 600-in-1 arcade on a board, with an ARM CPU and built-in ROMs and everything … probably completely illegal and unlicensed, of course. Add additional ROMs and game images to taste.Ĭhinese all-in-one JAMMA cards are available everywhere for about $90. The distribution comes with some free games on it. Just download the RetroPie bootable OS on a $10 32GB SD card, slot it into your Pi, and … well, basically you're done. It's fast enough to emulate N64 and PSX and Dreamcast reasonably, all for a whopping $35. The Pi is now on version 3, which adds critical WiFi and Bluetooth functionality on top of additional speed. The ascendance of Raspberry Pi has single-handedly revolutionized the emulation scene. I discovered that emulation builds are so much cheaper and easier now than they were when I last attempted this a decade ago. He enjoyed it so much that I found myself again yearning to share that part of our history with my kids – in a suitably emulated, arcade form factor. I recently took my son Henry to the California Extreme expo, which features almost every significant pinball and arcade game ever made, live and in person and real. My two arcade emulator builds in 2005 satisfied my itch thoroughly.

I was thrilled that I could drive myself to the arcade any time I wanted. When I finally obtained my driver's license, my first thought wasn't about the girls I would take on dates, or the road trips I'd take with my friends. I think I spent most of my childhood – and a large part of my life as a young adult – desperately wishing I was in a video game arcade. The Raspberry Pi Has Revolutionized EmulationĮvery geek goes through a phase where they discover emulation.

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