The CRT-focused RGB-Pi might be the ultimate retro solution – so why isn’t everyone talking about it?

With English as a second language, Spanish electronics engineer aTg – he prefers we use the handle by which the community knows him – spends a lot of time apologising for things that get lost in translation. The irony of this is that if his product RGB-Pi does one thing almost flawlessly, it’s solve the decadeslong problem of how to bring the joy of retro gaming intact into modern homes, all via emulation, with almost zero faff.

One of few Pi distros geared for CRT displays, its hardware comes in three flavours: a GPIO-SCART cable for TVs; a JAMMA adapter for arcade cabs; and a DIY board for arcade-stick housings, bartop machines, or whatever else you might solder it into. But it’s the OS, built over “several thousands of hours” by aTg’s colleague Ruben Tomás, where the magic happens.

Animated sprites, colour-key transparencies, bitmap fonts and a host of other classic techniques mean that RGB-Pi’s UI isn’t some weird old-on-new pastiche but a piece of 240p software as seamless in its loading and unloading as any console dashboard. With unified controller configuration, accurate monitor timings across the board, and new dynamic resolution support, it makes nearinvisible use of Retroarch and its various cores to run the ROMs and disc images.