YOU’LL NEED THIS

RASPBERRY PI 4/400

Plus a microSD card or other compatible storage, a game controller, and some games you already own.

THOSE OLD DOS GAMES gathering dust in a cupboard can be given a new lease of life through an emulator, but why stop there? Why not build a retrogaming box that’s got wireless controller support, connects to your TV through HDMI, and leaves your PC free to do other things?

You can do just this with a Raspberry Pi. There’s a whole operating system, RetroPie, dedicated to the playing of retro games, and while emulating consoles means skirting around the edge of the law, playing the DOS games you already own is much more legally pleasing, and there’s the bonus of several very good games being made available as freeware, too.

Installing RetroPie is the same as any other Raspberry Pi operating system—you can let the Raspberry Pi Imager app take the strain. All you’ll need is a blank microSD card, or a USB SSD if you’ve updated your Pi’s bootloader to boot from USB. Doing this can decrease loading times and make your Pi more responsive, but it’s not really necessary for this project because the Pi’s loading times from microSD are already far ahead of the machines that DOS games originally ran on.