How To Turn Your Old PC Into An Emulation Powerhouse Using Batocera

In this video, I show you how to turn an old computer into an awesome Emulation PC using Batocera Linux. basically RetroPie/Recalbox for PC.
All of this will be running from a USB Stick and if the PC you are using is powerful enough it can even play 3DS PS2 GameCube Dreamcast and many many more!

THIS VIDEO IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!

💙Equipment I Use:

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DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you!

THIS VIDEO IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! DISCLAIMER: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. No Games Or Applications Are Included Or Added On Or To Any Device In This Video

[thesuperzfamilyvlog]

Perfect. Been telling my buddy he needed to do this, and had a series of doubts. Appreciate this very much.

[GamerPlaypen]

Its official, I'm addicted to your channel....Batocera was an option I didn't even know about. I just found out about launch box but wanted an interface just like this. Can't thank you enough

[noface]

This is pretty sweet! I have an old laptop laying around, I might install this on it.
Thanks for sharing!

[Cyclops]

Thank you so much ETA! it pains me to see that 17 minutes is considered a long video nowdays. You are doing a STELAR job!

[lobizonxp]

I've been using Lakka from the very beginning, now that you showed Batocera, I've installed it on a spare drive, and it's really great. I'll try to make a custom playlist later.

[MarkBurchJr]

Love this! Thanks ETA Prime! I’m setting it up on an old extra laptop now. I can’t believe how the PS3 remote automatically worked through Bluetooth already. Amazing.
Now to find the source to DL the games at.

I appreciate your effort making and sharing this video. 👍

[Angultra]

Amazing how well the Core 2 Duo holds up today, I’ve had many over the years. Laptops can be had for cheap too.

[Bustermachine]

I just want to say first that I found this tutorial to be absolutely fantastic. It really got me excited and reignited my interest in retrogaming. It gave me the confidence to put down some money and spend a week tinkering getting my own machine to work and I would never have had the confidence without this video. You're doing great work for the retro community man.

That said, my own experience with building a retro machine on a budget left me a little bit out in the cold. Entirely my fault. I tend to get excited and leap before I look. And that definitely happened here.

Again, not knocking ETA Prime, the dudes only one man and only has so much time to discuss all the possible hardware permutations that can come up when building a rig out of old parts. On top of that, emulation is a not fixed quantity like playing the games on old consoles would. So there's two sets of variables at play.

Personally, I can attest that machines like this will do a great job emulating plenty of fantastic Gamecube and Dreamcast titles. Probably around 90% will run perfectly fine, as well as almost anything from previous generations. And for most people that will be more than good enough.

For instance. For me, a similar setup ran Pikmin, Mario Sunshine, Beyond Good and Evil, Chibi Robo, and Prince of Persia almost perfectly. Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast was also fully playable.

Unfortunately, I had my heart really set on a few titles that dolphin still needs a lot of processing power to render playable. In particular Rogue Squadron II and MGS Twin Snakes. Virtually unplayable even at standard definition on the GT 1030. I'm sure there are other games as well that fit on that list. You might have your heart set on some of these tougher titles. So plan accordingly. A machine that can handle those games might not be quite as cheap but it will save you grief in the long run to invest wisely.

[ungratefulmango]

My bios looked really different, because my PC is newer, but with a little bit of looking around and a few guesses, I managed to get it to boot from the USB. I then ran through your follow-up tutorial to run from internal SSD. So now I have a small PC I can take to my friend's house for some plug-and-play Goldeneye action

[TechDave]

using a combination of your amazing Batocera videos i have managed to turn an HP T610-PLUS thin Client(1.86ghz dualcore amd cpu with 1gb integrated gpu) with 8gb ddr3/ nvidia quaddro 1gb ddr3/16gb ssd for batocera and 320gb hdd for storage (and windows 7 install) and 2x ps3 controllers connected via internal bluetooth adaptor...


its awesome for older retro games and was a fun build i couldnt have begun to compete without your videos!


i have also got tons of movies and mp3s on it too, so it doubles as a home media device connected to my projector!


so much fun!



thanks for the inspiration and your channel in general, subbed a long while ago on my music channel and recently on my techdave channel too,


your projects are priceless for inspiration as i am a recluse (due to disability), and they always give me ideas for keeping life interesting lol


cheers!


xxx

[accessfm]

Lovely to see a use for the old dell pcs, great too that they can run from usb key. The old pcs are a lot hungrier powerwise than the Raspberry Pis, but like you say can run the more processor hungry game systems. Great use for these, and looking forward to more videos on Batocera! Cheers!

[jtb]

Bought an old Dell Optiplex 790 SFF (i7 2600, 8gb RAM, and an AMD Radeon R5 240 aftermarket video card) from eBay and did the Batocera trick that you showed on here. Works great with even PS2 and GameCube! Loving playing the retro games again! Thank you so much for this tutorial, ETA!

[xslimx]

My favorite channel by far.... appreciate you sir! Keep up the great work!

[TheMormonMissionary]

thank you for this tutorial! I thought it would be alot harder to install on a PC vs a raspberry Pi but you made easy! I like this option alot!

[AeroRaiser]

Thank you for this! Ive been looking for an alternative to Lakka and Recalbox on my PC! I didn't even know Batocera existed. I will be wanting to install to internal hard drive, so looking forward to that video!

[dabutler]

Give the poor guy a break with some of the questions you can easily Google. Nice video ETA 👍

[oewn]

Thank you! Ive been planning to turn an old optiplex 760 into some sorta arcade cabinet thing.

[billyhatcher]

that menu interface looks so much nicer than the retropi and the fact that i can add pics for the game too is even better

[Mr.MSTER]

Your tutorials are always fantastically easy to follow and no nonsense.

[iGRHD]

Once again so glad I found this channel.