Since Childhood, I loved to take my GameBoy on Holiday Trips to enjoy Video Games. This hasn’t changed much, except now I’m also taking my Music and Movie Libraries with me.
The Raspberry Pi is a wonderful piece of Hardware to do exactly this.
I have 2 micro SD Cards, one is setup with Lakka (Retro Games Emulator) and the other one has Kodi (Media-Center). Now why 2 different cards? Couldn’t I just use one and dual-boot ? Yes I could, but this has failed me once in the past. One update from a System can break dual-boot, so this is definitely easier. Plus it’s no big deal to swap the micro SD Cards.
I love to use the 8Bitdo’s Wireless Controller for Lakka, and for Kodi i like the good old Playstation 3 Bluetooth Remote Control.
Both systems work great with this controller setup out-of-the-box.
I also make sure to have a HDMI and analogue Video Cable (if the Hotel still has those really old TV’s, or has the one available HDMI cable glued to the TV)
Here’s what inside my “Digital Leisure Bag” when we go on vacation :
- Universal USB Power Supply with micro USB Cable (charges Phone and Controllers)
- Raspberry Pi3 (or Raspberry Pi2 with USB Bluetooth Dongle)
- Secondary micro SD Card with either Lakka or Kodi
- USB Thumb Drive for storing Movie and Music Libraries
- A pair of 8Bitdo’s Wireless Controllers, NES30 and SFC30
- 3.5mm Mini-Jack to RCA Audio/Video Cable, with an additional RCA to SCART Adapter
- HDMI Cable
- Bluetooth Remote Control
See it in Action:
My Kid and I we love to enjoy a short Game of Super Mario 3 while waiting for our Lady to get ready for dinner. (and for those of you who are married you know this can take quit some time)
2 comments
Hello Hiscorebob!
Great bag – filled with great things 🙂 I feel good now. Because i see: i am not the only freak on this planet who’s packing a separate “retro bag” for Weekend/Holiday Trips. This is always the most(!) important bag of our luggage.
Years ago i bought an GPD G5A (running an 64GB sdcard). I take my GPD G5A with me at Weekends/Holiday Trips. Most time i play retrogames directly on my GPD G5A but i can connect it to a TV via HDMI and use an OTG-USB Cable for my snes-USB-Adapter connected with two original SNES Gamepads 🙂 I am using this device for atari, snes, nes, c64, dreamcast, MAME, DOSBOX (installed Windows 3.1 🙂 🙂 – its running in Fullscreen on my Android-Device), …
And you can play your favorite Retrogames in your bathtub! Or at the Pool.
Sometimes i play Bomberfriends on Android because of the Multiplayer-Thrill. The only thing i am sad about is the lack of Amiga-Gamebase/fs-uae arcade or c64-Gamebase GUI. On PC/mac its really nice to see the Screenshots/Information and start a game with one mouseclick. On my GPD i have to choose a .d64/zip and start it. But i dont see the Screenshot/boxart…
But since a few weeks i own an Raspi3b and trying to setup everything i prefer (nes, snes, atari 2600/7800, sega mastersystem, n64, c64 (gamebase 14), Amiga, MAME (0.78)).
But this seems to be hard work – it seems c64, Amiga, Mame (incl. Filtering Games) is not easy to setup to get a platform/GUI like Gamebase64 – i wonder why…. But i keep trying and i hope one day i will see all of my fav devices and Games on ONE Screen.
For now i am using lakka. But i am not really shure which platform is the best for my goal….
Did you ever integrate c64, Amiga to your “Retro-platform” (like recalbox, retropie, lakka)?
Greets
Alfonx
Author
Hi Alfonx,
Rest assured, this bag is always the first one which gets packed when we travel 🙂
I do not use Lakka for Amiga or C64, so I have no experience in setting up these systems. I mostly use consoles from the 8/16 Bit Era. As for MAME you have to make sure to use the correct romset, this is very important. MAME2003 uses a different romset than MAME2010. I recommend FBA for the “Arcade” Experience on the Raspiberry.
Greetings!