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How To Turn Old PC Into Retro Game Console
Wondering if you will be able to turn your old PC into a retro gaming console? The answer to that thought will be “Yes”. You will be taken into a few guidelines of what you need to have in order to enjoy playing games on that one old PC and never miss out.
Items needed to get started right away:
- Optiplex 3050 with 8 gigs of ram comes with a 128-gigabyte SSD that you are going to be using to install ‘Batocera’
- A controller which can be wireless or wired (ps3 controller or a higher quality USB controller). Batocera will also work well with ps3 or ps4 wirelessly as long as you have BlueTooth or dongle wifi or wired with the xbox 360 or xbox one controller.
- Seperate hard drive to install batocera on
- Sata to usb adapter. It will turn your hard drive into a USB drive therefore making it a lot easier to get batocera installed.
- Seperate USB drive (2.0 or 3.0 drive)
- keyboard for the initial setup but once that is set up you can navigate with the controller
- You will be doing all this process on Windows PC and it will still work with Mac or Linux
- A separate windows PC where the installation will happen
Before installation can begin these items are needed. Now here are steps that you will need to follow for a successful process of having to enjoy your favourite retro games on that old PC that you thought you will never use.
Follow these steps below to start installing applications needed to to get your games transferred over to your old PC:
- Install Batocera
You will be installing batocera on ssd or hard drive. Plug in your ssd using usb to sata adapter. You can rename it to any name of your choice. If you renamed it to 128 ssd that will also be advisable but always remember where to find it. Remember, since you are working with an older PC you will download x64 for your desktop.
Move over to transferring of Games to the separate usb drive that you have
Once completed installing and extracting you will then flash the image files to your ssd hard drive or the USB drive. Once flashed you are going to need to add your games which will all be within batocera but when it comes down to it the easiest way to do this is to transfer your games to a seperate USB Drive.
Next will be the PC setup
This is where you will be using your controllers ( wired or wireless controllers ). Online video gamers recommend having 2.4 gigahertz dongle, optiplex 3050, have your ssd adapter where you will install batocera on and finally your USB drive where you have games on.
BIOS setup
Upon first boot, you may need to go into your BIOS and change a few settings. Since your PC is running from an ssd it actually just boots directly up.
- First Boot
Boot option otherwise known as “Boot Sequence” to change it to ‘Legacy Boot’ instead of UEFI. Next you can change your boot priority or the first boot
drive that your PC detects and tries to boot from and set it into your internal hard drive which is that ‘ssd’ you have flash ‘Batocera’ to.
- Controller setup
Once your PC is running you will need to set up your controller. It can be a wired controller and plug it into one of the free usb ports.
- Adding games on batocera
From this point forward, you will transfer the games from the separate USB drive where you previously copied your games.
- Adding box art/ scrapping art work
You will later notice that some of the games that you have transferred over to batocera may not have artwork. At this stage you will have to scrape the images that will go along with your games.
- Adding and changing batocera
You may notice that at this stage there will be no sound on your games and this is where you will need to go through sound settings to add sounds on your games.
- Configure Dolphin emulator controller for gamecube games
You will be setting up your controller properly for the standalone emulators like Gamecube games and ps2 or any games you have transferred on batocera.
- Changing default emulators
Best Emulation Machine
RetroArch is a cross-platform frontend for emulators, game engines, video games, media players, and other applications that is free and open-source.
OpenEmu is a free and open-source macOS multi-system game emulator. It includes a plugin interface for emulating console hardware such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Genesis, Game Boy, and many others.
Dolphin is a GameCube and Wii video game console emulator that runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android.
Old Computer Emulator Online
After conducting extensive research on the best old computer emulator online games, ‘Afterplay.io’ was identified as one of the best online retro games built in with your favourite emulators which you can choose from and start having fun. Counting from Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Super Nintendo as free emulators with games that can be played online without downloading. However, each of the games you will be playing will necessarily require the upload of ROMS for the game you wish to play. Just make sure your ROMs are ready, unzipped, and ready for the upload. If Nintendo DS emulators are one of your favourites, you will need to pay a subscription to gain access to all of the games under Nintendo DS. The same applies to Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Wii, and so on.
Old PC Emulator
PS2 emulator will work just fine on an old PC, even Gamecube or Wii emulator as long as you do make sure that you have 8gb of Ram, either ryzen 2200G integrated graphics ( so it comes with the cpu, does not need an extra gpu).
