This RetroPie really happened: Watch (above) as our own Adam Patrick Murray and Alaina Yee build a RetroPie system after they weren't able to buy an SNES Classic. Go ahead, laugh at (and learn from) our mistakes. For the past 20 years, retrogaming enthusiasts have dreamed of building a "universal game console" capable of playing games from dozens of different systems. Their ideal was inexpensive, easy to control with a gamepad, and capable of hooking into a TV set. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3 hobbyist platform and the RetroPie software distribution, that dream is finally possible. For under $110, you can build a very nice emulation system that can play tens of thousands of retro games for systems such as the NES, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, and even the PlayStation. All you need to do is buy a handful of components, put them together, and configure some software. You'll also have to provide the games, but we'll talk about that later.

This RetroPie really happened: Watch (above) as our own Adam Patrick Murray and Alaina Yee build a RetroPie system after they weren't able to buy an SNES Classic. Go ahead, laugh at (and learn from) our mistakes. For the past 20 years, retrogaming enthusiasts have dreamed of building a "universal game console" capable of playing games from dozens of different systems. Their ideal was inexpensive, easy to control with a gamepad, and capable of hooking into a TV set. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3 hobbyist platform and the RetroPie software distribution, that dream is finally possible. For under $110, you can build a very nice emulation system that can play tens of thousands of retro games for systems such as the NES, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, and even the PlayStation. All you need to do is buy a handful of components, put them together, and configure some software. You'll also have to provide the games, but we'll talk about that later.

For the past 20 years, retrogaming enthusiasts have dreamed of building a "universal game console" capable of playing games from dozens of different systems. Their ideal was inexpensive, easy to control with a gamepad, and capable of hooking into a TV set. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3 hobbyist platform and the RetroPie software distribution, that dream is finally possible. For under $110, you can build a very nice emulation system that can play tens of thousands of retro games for systems such as the NES, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, and even the PlayStation. All you need to do is buy a handful of components, put them together, and configure some software. You'll also have to provide the games, but we'll talk about that later. To make our "ultimate console," we're going to run software emulators and video game ROM files on a single-board computer: the Raspberry Pi 3--an inexpensive computer designed for hobbyist and educational use. To make this process easy, retrogaming enthusiasts have combined all the software programs we need into a free software package called RetroPie.