Building the Ultimate Retro Gaming Console | FULL STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL 

Congratulations to the winner of the Banjo Kazooie giveaway VideoGame Polak! Please message or email me so I have have your information and get it shipped out to you!

Overall this is an excellent video. I built this gaming machine exactly as you described, using all the exact same components. I bought the PC from eBay and everything else from Amazon. The process was very smooth and nearly exactly as you described it. Downloading the img file and getting it flashed to the new 1TB SSD took longer than you mentioned, but those could be due to environmental differences on my setup. There was one step that you didn't include in your video at all, which is that when you open the PC, there is a separate component covering the SDD on the board that must be removed. In your video you had already removed it and didn't mentioned it but it wasn't a big deal to see that it needed to be removed and do it. The result: My family loves it. I have a 6 year old daughter who had never played the original Donkey Kong (my favorite game growing up) and now she can't get enough of it. I am grateful that you made this video and grateful the YT algorithm surfaced it to me. Great work on this and thank you.

I've been telling everyone for 3 decades to give me their PC scrap BATOCERA systems are what I have been trying to accomplish since '97 lol Good Job! New Sub!

Rareware games are always beloved N64 titles. I like Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, I truly never thought the price on that one would get to what it is, but it makes sense, it's a fun game that has held up pretty well, people still want to play it, the soundtrack brings a lot of charm. Despite selling very well, the price has gotten on up there.

Yeah, these used PCs are the way to go for emulation. I am really into building arcade machines and the mini PCs offer so much more flexibility. You are right, they are way more powerful than many of the single board computers. Also once you start adding large SD cards to the single board computers, the price really shoots up. You can really save a lot of stuff from going into land fills by using old PC monitors and used speakers for your bartop arcade builds, and even if you just give them away, you are providing hours and hours of fun for someone.

I'm a PC builder with 30 years of experience. Thermal paste is always a debated topic, so I'm just sharing my opinion based on my experience. I think that you used a bit too much paste, and in an inefficient manner. Will is matter on this machine? Perhaps not. However, the top two methods for applying thermal paste are the pea-sized drop in the center of the CPU, or my current favorite, an X-shape with about the same amount of paste as the pea-sized drop. The X provides very good coverage. It nicely fills in the gaps when you press the heatsink down.

Congratulations to the winner 👏 Banjo Kazooie is awesome

These mini pcs are excellent for batocera emulation. I've got a i7-6700t that I recently purchased for emulation. Works a treat and is portable.

Please for the love of god the poor little cpu is just looked like it got a bukakku of thermal paste

this was incredibly perfect, thank you very much. I followed your exact steps and it worked first time.

I run CRT shaders on my emulation machine to give it more of a old school look

My favorite part of the whole video is the autographed Veil of Maya tour poster!! Super sick

Sorry if I’m missing something obvious but why is the thermal paste being cleaned and replaced?

Nice video but that thermal paste was way to much lol

That's sick, that NVME speed is going to be really special. I bet this is nice, but I have decided to make emu machines out of my wii us. Those have hdmi, and they are pretty powerful, playing every game up through the wii u library is pretty sick if you want to do it on real hardware. I can see doing this though bc it probably takes like 1/10th the time to set up your emus and games and get everything working well on this machine compared to a jailbroken Nintendo one. Really cool video, as retro gaming rises more and more in popularity, I expect to see machines like this become common even among people who aren't mod it yourself kind of people.

Dude, this vid is exactly what I didnt know I needed 😂

Kreesky: Why not just get yourself a very powerful laptop and put the Lakka operating system on it and build it that way?

I'm always excited for your uploads!

Dude awesome tutorial. Very clear didn't skip steps just awesome.

I realize this is from a year ago but you do not require the M.2 to USB adapter. Etch your image on a usb key. Once you have booted up your image file (batocera) you can then install it to a new disk in the user settings. Save a few bucks. You're welcome.

Love the creativity of this channel!

😭 I nooooo i what it that for my collection!!! Congratulations man!!! Thats an amazing precedent take care of it 🤘

I am a new subscriber and I’m so glad I made the decision to describe to your channel. You rocket bro keep up the good work.🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻 Little T

I keep getting a black screen when I try to boot it. Out of the 20 times I tried to boot it only worked 3 times. Black screen after it shows the logo but before it plays the animation

I know this guide is "old" but maybe you will answer me anyways. Can i extract the file of batocera to the same drive where i want to flash it to? i only have a 2tb external hdd which i want to use for batocera, my ssd in the pc only has 1tb so i dont have enough space on my pc to extract it on there. can i extract it to my 2tb external hdd and then flash it to this same hdd? and if the answer is yes, can i delete all the extractet files when i finished flashing? im kinda lost

Congratulations to the winner 🎉

That was a lot of thermal paste. phew had a heart attack.

i've got a raspberry pi 4 that can play up to ps1, n64, and dreamcast games. even most psp games work pretty well

Do you recommend any Bluetooth controller that works with this set up?

glad i got my pi4 before the chip shortage

Thanks for this great tutorial Kreesky, I have built 3 of these for family and friends and its a great tutorial. I do have a question that I cannot seem to figure out and would like to know if any of the other viewers have had this problem and if so if anyone was able to fix it? All 3 of the builds I did with the same setup as you will randomly turn on in the middle of the night after a complete shutdown is done and I cannot seem to figure out why its doing this so has anyone else had this problem?

Do you know where I can buy a system made custom with the games I want?I know someone has to do it like jailbroken firesticks.any help would be greatly appreciated

great video - i just wish you would have shown some menus and gameplay from the same living room angle that you had set up

Can you just extract any one of the 725 files in the torrented file? All of them read the same size.

For us tech dummies (or uncomfortable with it), you should have a service where you build these. I'd be willing to pay a premium to have someone do all this for me.

Don't change thermal paste. It's perfectly fine. It's a waste of time and money, plus it's very likely you'll screw up. There's no benefit at all. You will lower temp for max 1-2 degrees C° or, most likely, get a worse result. Blowing up dust from fan and heatsink will do the job.

Sweet! Love it ;) I'm more of an #Atari centric guy on my own channel, but love yours as well. I love all gaming eras, really. Keep up the great work. Love Rare & N64 as well. Banjo Kazooie changed my life in college ;) And Diddy Kong Racing! -BB *New sub!

Out of curiosity and ignorance, why choose external hard drive to store files

Super cool. Gonna put one of these together thx

Never played Banjo Kazooie and wish I grew with the n64 but never did ( I was a 2000s kid) but I did grow up with the later nes and snes

great video, spent hte last couple days setting this up and works great. He was missing a few roms to really make it what i needed and they were a snap to add in. Any idea how easy it is to add more roms and things t oa second hard drive and get batocera to recognize them?

I have the same model, but mine also came with a SSD caddy and in top of the caddy there is a fan, I was wondering if the fan can be removed and install a SSD in there for extra space? any idea? thanks

ok, I have the Prodesk which is basically the same coputer but I only have an SSD about 256 HB. how do I dunk the batocera on the drive from an USB?

I want to try and make one to make a game console to play Nintendo 64 original Xbox play station 1 and maybe one off game like Chicken run game on Dreamcast

Congrats to polak what a lucky guy. Looking forward for the next giveaway.

Is there any way to add games to this setup?

Great video, why did you redo the thermal paste? Just to be safe?

One question about that other torrent file on BGD page, the one that says fix. Is that the Gamecube/Naomi patch mentioned on the page? Do new downloads of the Batocera image have that included or do I have to install it, also if so how do I do that?

Hi Kreesky thanks for the video it helped me set up my hp mini pc 2tb image! Unfortunately I'm not able to get the sound to my TV it only comes out the internal pc speaker and there isn't any option to change it in the batocera sound settings, did you have any problems like this? Many thanks. 😎

I've made a idea for similar thing but just GBA games with memory for saving and making GBA and GBC games

This video is great thank you so much, what would you recommend if I wanted to go up to switch emulation?

Why did you have to replace the thermal paste?

Great video easy to follow and as easy to subscribe too 😊.

I found a similar hp mini computer for 50usd in my area. Only problem would be downloading this image since I have a tb limit on downloads thru my isp

Question: why did the heat sink have to be removed and then reinstalled?

This is a great step by step video. but is anyone running into at problem with the torrent not being able to download due to one of the pieces being over 64 MB?

Running into an issue where the loading screen shows along with music and then a black screen occurs. Anybody have solutions for this?

I did it the hard way I already had the roms after many years of getting them. Then I got batocera 34 or 35 the latest. Put the roms then bios. Scrape the files got most of the themes that were downloadable. Over 1 TB. More to do though. Also got retrobat.

"that should be plenty of thermal paste" uhhhhh ya, it definitely was.

Damn I am so out of the loop, RBP is minimum 80$ directly?! I can buy some second hand cheap systems and make far more with that instead ... Thanks for sharing this with us, it's a great project.

So, seriously. Why remove the heat sink and replace the paste? Did we miss a step?

Easier: A cheap 10 year old working laptop with a big hard drive. Install all the emulators and roms you want. Use any controller via adapters, replicas, or wireless. Optional HDMI out to a big TV in your room.

What's the upper limit for ssd size? I'm trying to plan out my first emulation console and want room to grow haha.

what do I do when it says .the selected boot image did not authenticate?

Hi Kreesky, I downloaded the 1tb file and it just had 27 “rar” files that only had a could resident evil games. I’m not sure what happened

If you’re buying a micro pc. I’ve seen some without Bluetooth or Wi-Fi so just make sure whatever build you buy has it.

will a 2tb work in it

Followed the guide exactly but ran into one issue. The model of pc you suggested has onboard sound and all audio plays from its tiny little speaker. Any idea how to switch it to hdmi out?

So do the games just come with it or do u have to download what games u want?

if i download a terabyte of download my internet bill will be triple the price haha

would an optiplex i3 or i5 system work for this?

Awesome video! Can you add games to it? Like adding Rom Hacks?

Yeah, this process takes WAAAAAAAAAY longer than this dude says. Download 2 days, unzipping was like 10 hours, flashing drive 600 minutes so 10 hours. On top of that I messed it up because his instructions are pretty garbo on the actual process. Thanks for the vid and info but instructions seem like you didnt even really do it.

I was able to complete this build using another mini pc I had on hand. Works like a charm!!! But...how do I exit the game and return back to the main menu? I can't seem to figure this out without connecting a keyboard and hitting "esc".

i want that background musik please

So, are you able to pick and choose which games you put on the device? Or is it just a program that has tons of games? Im more specifically looking to build one with PS2 games.

Installed batocera downloaded from the website, but there aren't many bios or games on it. Where did get those bios or roms?

THREE DAYS for that torrent to download?! lol It's a bit more involved, but realistically, you're not gonna play 1,000+ games. You can probably think of and find about 50 to 200 of your favorite games/ROMs and they should all fit on a 128 to 256 GB USB drive. Batocera can boot from there, too. You just have to change the boot order in your PC's BIOS setup to boot from the USB. It's a bit more work, but a lot less money.

I did this exactly and it will not detect as bootable at all. I’ve tried turning off safe boot and turning on legacy. Nothing helps. Any ideas?

Who is the Winner? I don’t Know But congrats!

Can i use an old laptop for this? It works?

Loved the video but don't know how to do computer stuff I am all old school 😅 hope to win good luck everyone

Are you gonna sell it?

You can do it

tried to download the image but im getting "unsupported piece size (64mb)" anyway around this?

Is a 500gb of true games the rest is imges and video

Over kill on the thermal paste dude one nice size dot of paste in the center of the chip is suffice

can i just add this to my pc and open it when i want and still run windows

I did this with a wii lol cost 40 bucks max 100 if you have to buy a wii

te pasastes con la pasta termica

Nintendo 64 is difficult to emulate correctly, Dolphin hasn't accomplished full 100% compatibility yet, I think that we are still far from the Ultimate Retro Gaming Console.....

When doing these... For N64 and up... STICK TO COMPATIBILITY LISTS! So many people just dump every rom they can on these "ultimate" builds. In my opinion, it's only ULTIMATE if it works. 100% compatibility or bust. 😎👌

"If Your Not First Your Last!!!"

There is no reason to buy a pi anymore. There are so many other options now and with them running windows out of the box you will run into zero issues. I have a pi and it wasn't until I bought it (before the price hikes) that I found out it is very very limited and very weak compared to a windows PC. Hell is you cant do without linux wee cheap PCs will run Linux way better than a pi. Pi's are for eduction. They were always for eduction and they are great for learning. They were never built to replace your everyday PC.

What is the input lag like?

I just get a 25€ MacMini 2009 with OpenEmu. 10 min setup. 90% as good. Agree that Pi's are totally obsolete in 2023.

DO NOT ORDER a Game Box Hero, it is a FRAUD. I ordered a system and it does not work at ALL. No contact from the company except a email apologizing for the error and stating they will send another one and that was almost 2 weeks ago. I've called numerous times with no call back. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY.

Nintendo is watching

me

Unless it is 3ghz it will never ever run every emulator upto ps3 and Xbox 1