How To Build Your Own SNES Classic Emulator Friv 0

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How To Build Your Own SNES Classic Emulator

Nintendo’s SNES Classic is all the rage right now. Unfortunately, it isn’t set to launch until September 29, 2017, and it's almost impossible to pre-order right now. Fortunately, we can show you how to build your own little SNES Classic emulator using a Raspberry Pi mini-computer right now.

What You’ll Need

Super Tinytendo Case with Cooling Fan
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
iBuffalo classic USB gamepad
5V 2.5A power supply
Micro SD card
USB stick
HDMI cable
Philips head screwdriver

Note: We want to strongly state that we do not condone piracy in any way. This means we will not provide ROM download links in this story. It is vital to ensure that you’ve purchased legitimate copies of any ROMs you intend to download.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

Developed in the UK, the Raspberry Pi is designed to be a small single-board computer geared towards tinkerers. We’re going with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, which is the latest version of the computing device. With its 64-bit quad-core 1.2GHz Broadcom CPU and 1GB of RAM, it has more than enough firepower to run any 16-bit game you throw at it. It also supports four USB ports, a full-size HDMI connection, and has a Micro SD card slot. The fact that this much computing costs just $40 is icing on the cake.

Price: $39.99

Super Tinytendo Case

This is the Super Tinytendo Case. It’s designed by Collector Craft, and as the name implies, it’s a super tiny homage to the SNES chassis. It measures 4.7x1.5x3.9 inches and has cut-outs designed to work specifically with the Raspberry Pi 3. It also comes with an internal fan, which helps keep the Pi cool.

Price: $29.99

iBuffalo Classic USB Gamepad

While you can use almost any USB controller with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, it won’t feel like an authentic SNES experience without the proper controller. That’s why we went with the iBuffalo Classic USB Gamepad, which is modeled after Nintendo’s variant.

Price: $15

Canakit 5V 2.5A Raspberry Pi 3 power supply

While the Raspberry Pi 3 is almost a steal for its price, it unfortunately does not come with a power supply. To power it, you’ll need a 5V 2.5A adapter. We recommend Canakit’s solution.

Price: $9.99

Micro SD Card

Super Nintendo ROMs are often very small, so you don’t need a high-capacity Micro SD card. We went with SanDisk’s Ultra 16GB module, which offers plenty of storage.

Price: $9.95

USB stick

The easiest way to transfer ROMs from your computer to the Pi is with a USB stick. You can use any USB stick as long as it’s formatted as FAT32 or NTFS. You can use Windows Disk Management to reformat it in the event that it isn’t formatted appropriately.

The Building Process: Open Up The Case

The first thing you’ll need to do to build the SNES Classic emulator is to flip the Super Tinytendo Case upside down and remove the four Phillips screws. This will allow you to open up the chassis.

The Building Process: Prep The Pi

Once you have it open, you’ll see an additional four screws inside. Unscrew these so you can seat the Raspberry Pi into the chassis.

The Building Process: Seat The Pi

With the screws removed, lay the Raspberry Pi down. Make sure that the ports on the Pi align with their respective cut-outs on the case. From here, tighten the four Phillips screws back into place to secure the system.

The Building Process: Plug In The Case Fan

From here, plug the case fan cable into the Pi. You’ll need to plug it towards the top left array of pins, but make sure you skip one pin and ensure that the red cable faces outwards to the left.

The Building Process: Close The Case

From here, flip the case upside down and screw the chassis’ four screws back in. Then you can plug in the HDMI cable from your TV/monitor and controller’s USB cord into the system.

Download RetroPie

After you’ve assembled the hardware, the first thing you’ll want to do is download the latest version of RetroPie, which is our SNES emulator. You’ll want to download the Raspberry Pi 3 variant for our model.

Once you’ve downloaded it, you’ll need to use an extracting program like 7-zip to extract the .gz file so you can get access to the .img file within.

Now insert your Micro SD card into your computer. From here, you’ll need to download image mounting software so that you can mount the .img file to your Micro SD card. Windows users should download Win32DiskImager (Mac users can download the equivalent Apple Pi Baker software). From here, open up the mounting program and locate the .img file and let the software write to the card. This will begin the mounting process. Once that’s complete, insert the Micro SD card into your Pi (with the label-side facing down) and power it on by plugging in the AC adapter.

Configure The Controller

Your Raspberry Pi will take a few seconds before it boots up to RetroPie’s Emulationstation interface. With your USB controller plugged in, it will detect your gamepad and ask that you configure it. This amounts to a straightforward process where you map your buttons.

Loading ROMs onto your USB stick

Drag your legal ROMs into this folder.

The easiest way to load ROMs from your computer onto the Raspberry Pi is with a USB stick. We want to reiterate to you that we do not condone piracy in any way and would like to remind you that you should purchase legitimate copies of any games you intend to download ROMs for.

With that out of the way, insert the USB stick into your computer and create a folder called “retropie”. Now take it out of your computer and plug it into the Rasberry Pi and give it a few seconds for the system to create directories within the folder you just created.

Once this process is complete, unplug the USB stick from the Pi and plug it back into your computer. From here, you’ll notice that it has created a ROMs folder and an SNES directory within that folder. You can drag any unzipped, legal SNES ROMs you may have downloaded into this folder.

From here, unplug the USB stick and re-insert it back into the Pi. Give it a few seconds for the RetroPie emulation software to copy the game/s over. Another way you can tell if the copying is complete is if the lights on the Pi stop blinking rapidly. Once this process is finished, restart the Emulationstation software on the Pi and your SNES Classic Emulator will be good to go.

One of the great things about our Raspberry Pi system is that it isn’t relegated to just SNES games. In general, you should be able to run games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era. This includes Sega Genesis or NES ROMs, too. Just make sure that you are using legal ROMs.