WOLFANOZ IS BACK and what an amazing image to return with , not only a fully loaded image boasting over 179,000 playable games, but for the latest in the Raspberry Pi boards, The Raspberry Pi 5. Check out our awesome preview video now, and get your downloading clients set to GO!
FROM THE AUTHOR
Since I obtained my Pi5, I have been busy with the next image for the latest and greatest. Heard and seen a lot from folks in the streaming community regarding performance of systems and figured I would keep a lot of that in mind when building this beast. This image is not overclocked but if you want to squeeze out a bit more, make sure you have a cooler in place.
This thing gets around 54C just sitting, even with a fan and cooling pads on it. I would recommend scraping off the pads on the factory made cooler, cleaning off the glue with alcohol (or Goo-Gone) and adding a good thermal paste to your Pi (all this at your own discretion, of course). It will drop 3C-5C adding it at the least as I have seen it personally. You will need to for overclocking, much less needing a cooling solution as stated before, cannot stress that enough. I was able to get it to extreme settings within the GUI (2900GHz). Your mileage may vary a bit.
An X-box based controller is highly recommended as always.So, for this image, I am going to break things down into good news and bad news. Good news always goes first with me so:
The Good (ok, GREAT News):
Remember with the Pi 3 and 4, most console and arcade games with 3D elements that you loved from driving to fighting would just run like complete butt? Well, worry no more. Crus’n USA / World (Exotica had weird artifacts sadly, but N64 is fine), Tekken 3 / Tag Tournament, the 3D Street Fighter EX games (and of course Killer Instinct 1 and 2) to name a few runs great as well. Blitz and the Gauntlet Legends / Dark Legacy games still unfortunately do not run well for arcade so there are console ports on this for those.
As for a first for a retro SBC image, I have Die Hard Arcade and Simpsons Bowling running and working fully (with controls) for arcade (left stick throws the ball FYI). Took a little finagling but figured out there is a process to reset the game bios with Simpsons bowling.
About 80 overall consoles and PCs here combined, 2600+ Arcade sets between FBNeo and MAME, Daphne, etc. (Always further refined, usually find a game or two that will not work in FBNeo that ended up in MAME as it is from a “working” current set, but some games do not seem to be the case after going through them. You will see doubles for Arcade only because MAME makes it easier to set the controls for those if it is not to your liking. All the two player and four player game iterations for arcade are here as well (TMNT, Simpsons, Gauntlet, X-Men, etc.) and have been evaluated.
You will need a keyboard and mouse for anything PC for some (or most) things, but games mostly collaborate with a controller or have a virtual keyboard with the controller as well.
Atari Jaguar, N64, Sega Saturn are running great now (wish Jaguar had BigPEmu implemented for Libretro but that is allegedly in progress, would be even better). GameCube, Wii, and PSP run mostly well. The mentioned overclock should give you a mostly noticeable difference. You do not need to, but it will give GameCube and Wii somewhat of a boost as it is not completely perfect. But they run ok. So that now brings me to….
The Bad
PlayStation 2 will not run well at all with PCSX (aka Play) or any other emulator on this SBC. I have evaluated and assessed for a while, and “the experts” can say it is going to, (and I really hate to be the bearer of unwelcome news), but no, it will not ever run 100% (much less well) on this SBC due to hardware limitations. The hardware will have to progress with newer Pi’s before you see any noticeable change where it will mostly run with no slow down or graphics artifacts whatsoever. AetherSX2 (the top emulator for SBCs now for PS2) runs some 2D games decent (and we’ll see once it hits Batocera), but who wants to play from a desktop fully? You will not get those speeds with it from a front end as well. Front ends are the way to go!
The Pi hardware simply just is not there yet for it unlike GameCube, Wii, and PSP. And there is not much in the way of groundbreaking emulation updates lately (as it seems) geared more towards SBCs.
It took some years as of now to get there with games that formerly did not play (and still are not 100%) but they are playable on the GameCube, Wii just due to the hardware boost alone.
If you have a cooling solution, you can safely go to turbo overclock within Batocera with it (your Pi 5 may vary). You do not need to, but it will give a bit of an extra boost for sure.
GameCube, Wii had games that would barely run. Broke my heart that Zelda: Skyward Sword and the Rogue Squadron games (some of my favorite Star Wars games) for Gamecube did not run great at all on here, but such is life (or just play them on PC).
Alas, with 18000+ games, you are not going to be bored.
Batocera is my preferred platform for the Pi, but it has its small warts (see below):
*HIGHLY IMPORTANT*
If you have issues with sounds cutting in and out, change / play with the auto output and profiles settings under system settings and see if that fixes it. It is on auto for now as each person’s television / sound system. You will need to tweak this under System Settings in the menu. This is one of the constantly known problems with Batocera, regarding sound driver issues.
RetroAchievements are included in this build but turned off as connecting to their website has been down for a while. Once that is back, you can connect your account, scrape all the games that have achievements within the Batocera UI and turn it on under Game Collections to show up in the overall list.
It has been fun (and frustrating at times) putting it together but feel it is one of my most solid images to date. (Total Recal was as well, but now with more working, I feel more accomplished configuring and assessing it all).
Enjoy, God Bless and Happy New Year!
(Sorry, tried to get this out before Christmas)Sincerely,
Wolfanoz
P.S. This image has about 4GB leftover for added controls, saves, installs, etc. I would recommend getting an SSD and attaching it to your Pi and using Batocera to notice an external drive in the GUI (or just use Etcher or Win32DiskImager to the SSD directly with the image, if not using a microSD, of course) so you can add more if you want (or if what you want is not here and want to add more.) Easy enough to do!
I added a 2TB drive by imaging the direct personally to add more Saturn and Dreamcast because…why not?P.S.S. If you are like me, the Pi 5 will work in a NESPi 4 case, but you will have to drill / Dremel a small hole where the power switch is on the Pi 5, otherwise it will not turn on with the front power button as the power button on the Pi will be pressed against the case without the hole. (There’s YouTube How To’s for this with LeePSP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efanPSgTQFI). (Thanks Lee!)
Also, Ethernet will not work with the Pi 5 in this case so Wi-Fi it is! Or you can order this cable and try to wedge it in the case so ethernet does work (and I mean wedge). (I personally just use Wi-Fi anyway)
Link to Ethernet Cable for case – https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2261800162334868.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.662d1802dOIhEJ&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdaptThe NESPi 4 script to shutdown does not take at this time so you will have to shut down the system from the GUI and then turn off the system via the power button if using the NESPi 4 case. I have my Samsung 2TB SSD solely booting to it via the NESPI 4 case and was tested with this image, so you are good to go to image and use an SSD from the start, if you like. But you can also image your microSD cards as well (may take longer to image these FYI).
** Just do not use both the SSD and microSD at the same time (solely) unless you are attaching a newly formatted SDD after the fact as an external drive (setting it up within Batocera) while using the microSD as your main image boot solution **Make sure to use an official RPi 5 power adapter if using the case and all (or the Pi on its own). Proper voltage is of utmost importance for this more than anything.
Lets be honest here – Wolfanoz is up there with the best loaded Pi creators so you know this is going to be good, he’s open and honest above in what the Pi 5 can and cannot do, and we share his heartbreak in realising the Rouge Squadrons (Wii) cannot be played (yet??!?) but all in all this is a decent image, and with other -known- image creators out there promising images soon, 2024 is shaped up to be a good one, Wolfanoz Setting the standard right here!
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