Navigation Menu

Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Setting up RetroArch on Raspberry Pi 4 and building emulator cores

Guide for myself and others to get RetroArch running on the new Raspberry Pi 4 while projects like RetroPie get an image out for the rpi4.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert and this may not be the most optimal build possible, but it works.

Inspiration taken from:

@AlexMax
AlexMax / retroarch.md
Last active March 21, 2024 20:10
Setting up RetroArch on a Raspberry Pi

Setting up RetroArch on a Raspberry Pi

I just put the finishing touches on my Raspberry Pi 3 emulation machine running RetroArch. I was not a huge fan of RetroPie due to the reliance on Emulation Station - more moving parts meant that there were more things that could potentially break. I just wanted something that would run raw RetroArch, no frills.

This tutorial is mostly recreated from memory and was most recently tested with a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian Stretch and RetroArch 1.7.7. If there is a mistake or a broken link, PLEASE message me and I will fix it.

Step 1: Install Raspbian

I used Raspbian Stretch Lite from this page. Write the image to your SD card using something like Win32 Disk Imager, or if you're using OSX/Linux follow a tutorial on how to write the image using dd.

@glennblock
glennblock / fork forced sync
Created March 4, 2012 19:27
Force your forked repo to be the same as upstream.
git fetch upstream
git reset --hard upstream/master