So a buddy of mine had a raspberry pi that had lost its HDMI functionality so he got a new one.  He knew I liked toying with electronics and such so he gave me his old one.  I had never played with a raspberry pi before but knew that it is basically a little linux computer with GPIO outputs for electronics…so of course I was eager to toy with it.

Having 3 young kids, I don’t have much free time on my hands so I wanted a project that would be quick but cool at the same time.  Did some online searches and decided to make a little retro gaming station with it….and the results couldn’t be more gratifying!

I had an old playstation 1 that the kids broke (took the spindle off the cd rom) so I had controllers.  I ordered one of these puppies to be able to hook it to the pi.  Download the image for the pi from here…boot it up all hooked up and voila!  If you’ve got the controller hooked up, you don’t need to do any setup…it just walks you through and sees the controller right off!  You can use a keyboard if you want but it’s not needed.  The project even had a tutorial on how to wire in a controller if you like.

Nice to break my kids into gaming old school.  =) Yes, that is them playing Ninja Turtles Arcade for NES.