I truly recommend that you get this raspberry pi if you are a true gamer like i am and you are into old School gaming I recommend this raspberry pi system it comes fully loaded with a lot of different games and a lot of different systems two controllers any power control to turn on and off the raspberry pi safely

Investigating a way to replace a PC used in my standup Arcade box. Had other things running on it as well, such as Steam and VR games. But wanted to just dedicate it to Arcade, so figured this would be ideal. I'm in the process of swapping the install out will a different version more dedicated to Arcade.

As a console platform, this is great. 2 controllers, along with the way RetroPie supports multiple controllers works great. This also has WiFi which I missed in the Raspberry Pi 4B specs (so I purchased a WiFi dongle as well), so remote management works great. Still figuring out where all of the scripts are located. Updating to the latest version was easy, though did take a while, since much of it was source compiled and not binary download.

This is a highly modified version of RetroPie. When I enabled SSH, it did not work with the default user (pi) and password (raspberry). I did not know it at the time, but this is PlayBox, so different password (PlayBox is the password). This probably affected my SMB access as well, along with messed up credential management of Windows 10 (don't enable guess share access).

After much research after going to a base RetroPie and failing misserably trying to add my own ROMS/BIOSes, I started looking for pre-made configurations, and ran across what I think this SDCard is based off of, from a guy constantly trying to retire called Virtualman and the collection called Retro-Bliss-Revolution, since the SDCard build date (along with an update at a later date) matches when this collection came out. There is even a 512GB version.

As an Arcade system, I'm still working on it. I have an older Xtension Emulator Edition Plus (3 Joystick, 2-player, trackball and spinner). I mention older since it does not have an updated firmware to enumerate itself as 2 controllers, so it just shows itself as a Keyboard. Which is fine for simple configurations. But for some reason, somewhere in the chain of using a keyboard, there cannot be 2 keyboards hooked up at once (of which Xtension is not a full keyboard), so I had to swap out the Xtension for a keyboard a few times (before I got SSH working I had to set the password at the command line). Then to get Trackball and spinner working, you have to figure out the order in which it enumerates. Even though there is a /dev/mouse0 and /dev/mouse1, these are not used, but an event version in /dev is used, but since /dev/mouse0 and 1 are also in the enumeration list, you have to go by that order. So the mouse index was something like 0 for spinner and 2 for trackball. That was difficult to figure out. Then since you can only have one mouse passed to emulator through RetroArch (My windows MAME box did not have these issues), you then have to override the games that use Trackball vs Spinner separately, for instance Centipede/Missile Command versus Arkanoid/Tempest.

Other issues, that are probably related to using Xtension (keyboard) interface rather than using the controllers that came with it. I tried Defender, and an odd behavior would happen where it would start changing the keys around or combining keys. With the buttons being A , B and X , figure there might be issues with these keys being special keys and the emulator running defender was having issues. Other games I played did not have this issue.

Virtualman (mentioned above) released a dedicated Arcade version, so I am getting that installed tonight.

So with all of that. If you are looking for just a console gaming platform. This is a great platform. If you need anything custom, be ready to spend some time figuring it out. Having previous Linux and Embedded Linux knowledge helped me tremendously, but as I keep finding out every distro of Linux is slightly different.

Also officially, to continue playing these games you should officially own them. Just because you obtained the ROM does not mean that you own the game. I own most of the ones I play, though I still need to get a few (Arkanoid, Mr. Do and Bubble Bobble 2). I own many of these games that I purchased through official channels for emulation on my PC (Atari Vault, Space Ace, Dragons Lair 1 and 2, Williams Arcade Classics, Midway Classics). Or you can purchase the actual ROMs, if UV light has not destroyed them yet. So using them here, I have no issues.

Controllers are not great and navigating the games is a bit confusing, but overall a good experience and good fun

This an excellent little game machine. The interface is really set up great too. It will drain some batteries so grab some rechargeables.

This is a completely assembled device, not a kit. The only thing I did was flip the switch to enable safe shutdown. The software is usable as is, and many games to choose from. All the ones I tried booted up, but the Amiga console games expect keyboard input, and of course there isn't one (I have not yet attempted to connect one via the USB port hidden between the shoulder buttons under the battery cover).

I cannot comment on battery life. I am currently powering the unit with the provided power cable plugged into an Anker portable charger. Online reviews I have viewed have varied from 2 to 4 hours using conventional batteries.

My only complaint is that there is no way to edit the "Last Played" list from the device. Not enough of an issue to warrant any negative rating.