Raspberry Pi RetroPie

Manual
How to Plug the Pi into the TV

Contents
How to Plug the Pi into the TV

Loading Games on to The Pi

Connecting the Pi to the Internet

Restarting and Shutting Down the Pi

Configuring the Controllers

Audio Settings

Running Games

Scraping Using Scraper v(Git) by Steven Selph

Loading games On To the Pi

Plug the provided USB into your computer. On the USB, there will be a folder named retropie
which will contain 3 subfolders named BIOS, configs and roms
NOTE: If for any reason the USB doesnt already have these files, create a file on the blank USB
named retropie and then plug the USB into the Pi, wait for the USB to stop flashing and then
follow the steps below
Click on the roms folder and there will be a list of emulators (named after the console or original
device)
Copy the rom files from your computer into the correct emulator folder
NOTE: If you dont have any rom files, there are sites online where you can download them from
Once the roms are copied into their folders, remove the USB from your computer and plug it into the
Pi. If you have a light on the USB, wait until that stops flashing, which indicates that the roms have
been successfully copied onto the Pi.
If the USB doesnt have a light indicator, wait roughly about the same time it took to copy the roms
from your computer before removing the USB.
Once the roms are copied to the Pi, remove the USB and restart the system.
NOTE: DO NOT REMOVE THE POWER CORD TO RESTART THE PI
If you dont know how to restart the Pi safely, skip to the Restarting and Shutting Down The Pi
section of the manual.
Once the Pi has booted up again, the emulator will be shown on the menu, pressing A on the
emulator will bring up the list of games which you have copied onto the Pi.
NOTE: The emulators will only show on the main screen when there are roms in the emulators ss
folder

If this did not work, try restarting the pi and repeating the process, waiting a little bit longer
to allow the roms to copy.

Connecting the Pi to the Internet

To connect the Pi to the internet, scroll across on the emulator screen and select the RetroPie
option.
NOTE: You will need a keyboard to do this.
Select the WiFi option. This will bring up the WiFi Configuration menu which has 2 options.
Select the Connect to WiFi Network option. This will bring up a list of available WiFi networks that
the Pi can connect to.
Select a network and then type in the password (if the network is password protected) and press the
enter key.
Once the Pi has connected, it will automatically return you to the WiFi Configuration menu. Select
the Cancel option to bring you back to the RetroPie menu.

Restarting and Shutting Down the Pi

To shut or restart the Pi safely, press start on your controller, which will bring up a mini menu with
several options.
Press quit to bring up next part of the menu which will have 4 options.
Selecting Restart EmulationStation will cause the EmulationStation software to restart
Selecting Restart System will cause the Pi to restart
Selecting Shutdown System will cause the Pi to shutdown, making it safe to pull the power cable
out
Selecting Shutdown EmulationStation will cause the EmulationStation software to shutdown,
allowing you to make manual changes to the Pi through Linux program codes.
NOTE: Restarting the Raspberry Pi3 will expand the file system on the sd card, making as much room on
the Pi as possible.

Configuring the Controllers

To configure any controller, pressing start on the controller will bring up the mini menu. Selecting
the Configure Input option will allow you to configure your controller.
Hold down any button on the controller to start the configuration.
Press the requested button during the configuration to assign that button function to the controller.
If your controller doesnt have a particular button, hold down any of the previously assigned buttons
to skip the configuration for this function.
NOTE: If the Pi doesnt respond to the button being held or pick up the controller, unplug the
controller and plug it back in and try again.
If the Pi still doesnt pick up the controller, try restarting the Pi and then try configuring the
controller.

Connecting Bluetooth Controllers

Existing Controllers
To connect a previously connected controller to the Raspberry Pi, first ensure that the controller is
turned off, by holding the start button for 3 seconds (this is done to turn the controller both on
and off) and then turn on the Pi and wait until the menu screen is showing.
Then turn on the Bluetooth controller by holding the start button as indicated above.
When the controller has turned on, the blue light at the top will begin to flash, indicating that the
controller is searching for a device to pair with.
Once the blue light is solid, the controller has been connected to the Pi.

Connecting a New 8bitdo Bluetooth Controller

NOTE: A keyboard is needed for this step
First turn on the Pi and go into the Retropie menu and select the Bluetooth option.
Switch on the 8bitdo controller by holding the start button for 3 seconds, ensuring that the blue
light is flashing
Select the Register and Connect Bluetooth Device option and a MAC address will be displayed in
the format of XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX where the X will be letters or numbers.
Once selected, select the Set up udev rule for Joypad (required for joypads from 8bitdo etc)
option which is the forth option in the list (option U)
Once this option has been selected, wait for the Pi to return you to the menu screen and then restart
the Pi.

Configuring the Audio Settings

To configure the audio settings, scroll across on the emulator screen and select the RetroPie
option.
Select the Audio option. This will bring up the Set Audio Output menu.
The menu will have 5 options:
Auto
Headphones
HDMI
Mixer
and Reset to default
Select the audio setting that you need by scrolling down to the option and pressing the X button
for a controller or the enter key for a keyboard. This will then bring up a message saying what the
audio output was set to.
Select the OK button and this will bring you back to the RetroPie menu.

Running Games
To run a game, select the game that you want to play by pressing the A button
(or the button that you configured with the function of the A button).
While the game is loading, dont press anything until the game has properly loaded, pressing any
button while the game is loading opens the game configuration settings
If this does happen, just simply select the Launch option, which is second from the bottom, using
the X button instead of the A button, to launch the game as normal.
To exit out of a game, press both the configured start and select buttons to bring you back to the
emulators game list.

Skipping to Letters and Sorting Games

To skip to a certain letter within an emulator screen to find a game, pressing the select button will
bring up a mini menu with three options.
The Jump to Letter option allows you to skip to a specific letter, making it easier to find a specific
game
The Sort Games By option allows you to set how your games are listed
The Edit This Games Metadata option allows you to rate the game that is currently highlighted,
change its name and enter pathways for image files (most of which have already been set by us)

Scraping Using Scraper v(Git) by Steven Selph

Scraping is when the Pi searches a specific website (The default website is TheGamesDB.net) for
cover images and information about the roms that shows when a rom is highlighted.
There are two different way of doing this.
There is the more simplified way which is more ideal for beginners, but the downside is that this
method takes a little longer than the more difficult method.
The more difficult way to do this requires you to use the program line and manually start the
scraping, the plus side to this method is that it automatically approves the scrapes for you.
NOTE: Your Pi must be connected to the internet to do this

Easy Way for Beginners

To begin scraping with this method, you first press the Start button on your controller, which
brings up the mini menu. The first option on the menu is the Scraper option, select this to open the
Scraper Menu, which will show you 3 options.
The Scrape From allows you to choose where youre scraping from. (You can change this from the
default option if you prefer a different site but the default option is one of the best sites to scrape
from)
The Scrape Ratings setting allows you to either turn this off or on. Having this setting enabled
automatically selects the best rated image and info set from the website and scrapes that rather
than any of the others.
The Scrape Now option opens a mini menu with the changeable settings that can be set to
customize how the Pi scrapes the site.
The Filter option allows you to either choose to scrape for the missing images (meaning the rom
files which dont already have images and information to show) or to scrape for all games.
The Systems option give you the option of choosing which systems/emulators you want to scrape
for. Selecting this gives you a list of all the installed emulators, the box on the right indicates whether
the system is selected (having a cross in the box means the system is selected while the absence of
the cross means it isnt)
Every installed system is automatically selected in the beginning, so if you only want to scrape for a
certain system, make sure to change the selected systems.
The User Decides on Conflicts option is a very important setting. Leaving this setting enabled
means that you have to approve every scrape that is done, which can take a long time to do when
youre scraping for a large number of roms. Disabling this enables the Pi to automatically pick the
first set on the list (which will be the highest rated set if you leave the Scrape Ratings setting
enabled)

 To start scraping, select the Scrape Now option and change the settings to suit how you would like
to scrape the site. Once you have set the options to suit how youd like to scrape, select the Start
option at the bottom of the mini menu.
Depending on your choice for the last setting, you can either walk away, to do whatever activity you
prefer over watching a screen do things, or you will have to stay and approve the scrapes for the
roms.
To stop the scraping, simply select the Stop option at the bottom of the screen as the scraping is
occurring which will cancel the scraping.
Once the scraping has been completed, restart the Pi.
NOTE: If you dont know how to reboot the Pi safely, read the Restarting and Shutting Down the
Pi section of the manual.

Difficult Way for the More Experienced

NOTE: This method requires a keyboard
Press the F4 key on the keyboard, this will quit EmulationStation and bring up the command line.
When this is done, type the following code and press enter:
sudo /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
NOTE: The spaces and capital letters are very important, make sure not to miss any of these.
Once the code has been typed in, select the Setup and Configuration option, using the enter key,
which will be option number 3 on the list.
Then select the Scraper for EmulationStation by Stephen Selph option which will be option number
21 on the list.
After the initial installation of the scraper, the scraper mini menu will open which contains 8 options.
Selecting the Scrape All Systems option scrapes for all of the systems on your pi.
Selecting the Scrape Chosen Systems option allows you to select the systems that you want to
scrape for. To select the systems in this option, press the space bar. An asterisk will show in the box
on the left next to the listed emulator to indicate that this system has been selected for scraping.
Once the systems have been selected, press the enter key and the scraping process will start.

 The Thumbnails Only setting will either allow the pi to download thumbnail images to show or
larger files. Having this enabled makes the pi install smaller files, leaving more space on the Pi for
your games.

The Max Image Width option is set automatically to fit the size ratio of everything in the emulator
screen. You can change this is you would like a smaller or larger image to be shown when a rom is
highlighted.
The Scraper option allows you to change the scraper website. This is initially set to the default
website which is thegamesdb.net.
The Rom Names option will either scrape for the names of the roms on the Pi (the No-Intro
option) or scrape for the rom names on the selected scraper website.
The Gamelist option either lets you replace the rom files with the scraped files (the Overwrite
option) or add the scraped rom files to the roms previously copied onto the pie (the Append
option).
The last option gives you the option to update the scraper to the latest version, this can be done
whenever you deem appropriate.
Once the selected systems have finished scraping, select the OK button and then exit out of the
Scraper and Setup/Configuration menus to return to the first menu but using your right arrow key
(or whichever key is configured with the right dpad function) to highlight the Cancel option,
select this option using the enter key.
Once you have returned to the first menu, select the Perform Reboot option (the last option on
the list) to reboot the Pi.
After the reboot, go into the previously scraped emulator screens and the roms list will have moved
to the right allowing room for the descriptions and images on the right.