It does not take powerful hardware to emulate old games. One of the most well known systems for retro gaming is RetroPie that targets the Raspberry Pi 4, which can be had for less than 50 bucks depending on the specs. Needless to say the more recent the system you want to emulate the more powerful the hardware you are going to need. I love using the phrase “needless to say” followed by the thing you did not need to say. Why is that even a thing? Anyway.

I went with a mid-range mini PC packing a Ryzen 7 and onboard Radeon 780M graphics. Overkill much? Yep. But I wanted to include some more modern offerings and this hardware does very well for pretty much anything thrown at it so far. It has 32GB of RAM, 16 of which can be allocated to the GPU, and it came with 1TB of NVME storage + an open NVME slot to add more.

I never thought when I started this project it would need more than 1 TB of storage, but I was really (really) wrong about that. Of course I also did not think it would consume my every waking moment of free time in some sort of psychotic mad dash to emulate all the things, so I was wrong about that too. My advice is overestimate the storage you need, just sayin.

For inputs we have a Nintendo Pro Controller tethered via USB-C, and an Xarcade Tankstick. The Tankstick has mixed reviews but I’m happy with it. I did swap out the joysticks and some of the button switches to slightly nicer hardware since the orig is a bit lackluster. You can get modest arcade hardware upgrades pretty cheap relatively speaking. The very first time I played Robotron with the swapped out sticks I got my highest score ever. So that’s like, just science man.

The display is handled by a Westinghouse 30″ 1920×1080 monitor, nothing super fancy but it’s bright and big enough for my aging eyes. It’s mounted on the wall with an inexpensive mount that has 1 important feature: The screen can be rotated between landscape and portrait. You can get a LOT more usable screen real estate for vertically aligned games and systems, like say Galaga, when the screen has a vertical orientation.

With the monitor mounted on the wall, next I attached a “floating” desk below it, bolted the PC underneath, and just dropped the Tankstick on top. I wanted the system to be entirely joystick operated but some systems need a proper keyboard and mouse, so squeezed in underneath is an inexpensive keyboard tray. It’s propped up with some 2″ wooden posts since the weight of it all threatened to rip the desk from the wall. To round it out there are some speakers, a second USB-C powered screen for an informational display below the main monitor, and a cheap ass bookcase underneath to store some other controllers and old game systems.

Low and behold, my cobbled together built into the wall retro gaming machine in all it’s glory!

Maybe this year I will build a cabinet. But first I of course have to finish emulating all the things.