Making the best "PlayStation Classic" console.

Hello and let's talk about PlayStation Classic today! Rather, my reaction to this. Because I'm seriously looking forward to this thing, but seeing the final result? I give it a hard pass. And I put together an LGRStation instead! It plays every PS1 game I want and costs less than a hundred bucks. And we'll make one today using Raspberry Pi and the help of several handy sites! Okay, let's dive into LGRStation Classic! Heh, or whatever you want to call it. I know this is not revolutionary or something and I certainly am not Ben Heck when it comes to building things, but I still think this thing is pretty damn useful. If you're only here for the build section, you can skip this point in the video, but otherwise: a little background first. Because man, the PS1 is easily one of my favorite systems of all time, so a miniature version mimicking twenty games caught my attention. But what Sony came up with in the PlayStation Classic confuses me. No Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider or even Gran Turismo, no analog game controller that support this, and a rather lackluster choice of emulator settings compared to the competition. Then I saw a warm preview of the PlayStation Classic in November 2018 and my disappointment was palpable. It's just that the more I hear about this thing the worse it looks. Moreover, I already had an alternative I would have collected the weekend in June 2017. So I posted this tweet to gauge interest in the video. And your reaction was clear enough, here with the LGRStation Classic! This is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B in 3D Printing The case works with the RetroPie interface. That's all, nothing fancy or exotic. And I well know that such a decision is not news to many of you. But for those of you who have never done this before or are just curious about which parts I chose, the rest of this video is for you. There are many Pi models out there and some new ones have come since I first put this together, but Model B 3 is more than capable of running PS1 games and only costs 35 bucks. However, it tends to have some heat dissipation issues, especially if you put it in a case So I added these two straight fins aluminum heatsinks from LoveRPi that sold as a set for $ 1.99 back when I bought them ... They come with good heat transfer glue and just stick there, dropping the temperature by a good 25% according to my own testing. Seriously, don't skip the heatsinks if you're planning on running PS1 games, as I ran into a ton of performance throttling without these installed. Another thing I added was the official 2.5 power amplifier, again due to performance throttling issues when emulating a PlayStation game. The Pi 3 is capable of using any micro USB power supply, but I continued to run into errors when using third-party power supplies, constantly getting Low Voltage Warnings from USB phone chargers and 2.5A universal USB power supplies. Next is the micro SD card that I had lying around from a previous project. But here is such a 64 gigabyte card to have about fifteen dollars. I've only ever used these Ultra Plus UHS-1 cards with my Pi 3, but it seems to be more than fast enough to efficiently load and run PS1 games.

And 64 gigabytes is enough space to hold anywhere from a hundred to one hundred and fifty games or so, depending on the games you choose, of course. Then there is a case that is noticeable go away in quality from the official Classic, I confess. This is a design by Filipe Campos that I had it printed and sent to me since I don't own a 3D printer, and in general that came up to about $ 20. And I liked the design more than most of the other 3D Printed PS1 Cases I've seen online. It has no moving parts, no LED lights, or anything really functional. It's just a shell, so Pi himself can cosplay like a tiny PlayStation. And it's really tiny: smaller than the official PS1 Classic and even smaller than the classic Nintendo systems. With this screwed on it is now ready to connect to the display, which is done using either composite or HDMI. For me, HDMI was a priority since I wanted to use it on a 4K TV, but it's not necessarily a nice cable to have as an option to easily plug it into a CRT for that warm and fuzzy composite video aesthetic. And while prices are bound to fluctuate, that's what it cost me in the end. And that assumes that you already have a controller to use, which is the topic we'll be addressing for the time being. There are links to all of these things in the video description for your convenience and to be clear that I am not affiliated with any of these sites or services, they are simply designed for me. Finally, there is the software side of things.Luckily, it's all free. Raspberry Pease doesn't come with its own OS, but getting it there is easy thanks to the excellent RetroPie project, which combines things like Raspbian, EmulationStation, and RetroArch in one pre-configured package. In fact, one of the PlayStation emulators comes with PCSX Rearmed, which just so happens to be the same emulator that Sony chose the official PlayStation Classic to launch! Either way, download the corresponding pre-made image to your computer of choice, plug in your micro SD card, and launch Win32DiskImager, Apple Pi Baker or Etcher depending on your OS. This will write the entire RetroPie setup onto a card pretty much ready to go. I went with the PS4 controller as it feels great for PS1 games and can be paired with Pi using Bluetooth no problem. You may need to connect your wired device first, as the Bluetooth pairing options are somewhat out of the way, but once you've paired it, it should stay that way, unless you decide to pair the controller with the PS4 again. After that, go to RetroPie's settings menu and turn on Wi-Fi. Well, unless you connect via Ethernet of course, but wifi is good and lazy and I approve. Once you're connected, it's a good idea to run a package updater to make sure you get the latest versions of everything, or perhaps add more emulators if you want something outside of the default configuration. But by default, PlayStation emulators are already installed. With that out of the way, it's time to play some games! You will need two things: a BIOS file and some disk images. The BIOS is PlayStation firmware, and while there is a PCSX version with its own emulated BIOS, the most compatible version requires the original. And if you don't do it yourself, you need to find one of the sites such as the Internet Archive. The same goes for disc images or ISOs as they are common knowledge, although PCSX can handle ten different extensions besides ISO files. Once you have some, it is very easy to get them on the system. You can copy them directly to the micro SD card, or you can use your home network to transfer them over Wi-Fi. I prefer the latter myself out of laziness and also because on Windows it's as easy as typing "\\ RETROPY" into the Windows Explorer bar. Bam, everything you need is available, there is no exchange of memory cards at all. Now it's time to enjoy your games! - "3 ...

2 ...

1 ... GO!" Ahh, that's what we were after all this. Isn't that cool? Well, cool if you're happy with the default emulation options. I usually try to keep things looking clean and as crisp as possible without changing the look of games too much. So that means keeping the original 4: 3 aspect ratio, scaling in integers to maintain the pixel shape, and turning off things like Scanline filters, bilinear anti-aliasing and doubling the resolution. Some may prefer this, but I do not! The only visual tweak I've applied is to remove dithering, and that's only for certain games where I prefer cleaner textures. But for the most part I'm just happy to have another way to get a PS1 game fix when I feel like this and the ability to swap My entire collection of games without leaving my couch is wonderful And I don't feel like I'm missing out on much compared to the official PlayStation Classic either, considering it uses the same basic emulation software at the bottom. I'm sure my 3D case is much scarier, that's for sure, and it's not as easy to use as the real thing. But I can play whatever I want from my collection and also use analog controllers with games that support this, or even those that don't, by enabling the setting in the options menu. And of course, because this RetroPie works, you can emulate dozens of systems in addition to the PlayStation and also customize it to fit your heart with things like UIs and graphics shaders to make it look just like you. like. So yeah, this is my LGRStation Classic build. Simple stuff, but very versatile, for the point where I kept it plugged into my TV for about a year and a half now, and I won't see this changing anytime soon. The hardware is more than up to the task, the software is only getting better, so I'm happy with it. And let me know in the comments if you build something like yourself using the Raspberry Pi already or if you are planning on after watching this video. And as always, thanks a lot for watching !.