For fans of retro game consoles and home computer systems, it’s been a long time coming: RetroPie 4.6 has launched, with the star feature being official support for the Raspberry Pi 4. The RetroPie team took its time on purpose with this one and is still calling the support for the Pi 4 “beta,” although it’s now available for everyone and included within the 4.6 install. RetroPie says that “there are still things to improve, but most emulators now run well.”
RetroPie 4.6 also includes a move to Raspbian Buster as a base for the images, now that Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd. no longer supports Raspbian Stretch. RetroPie said it would continue to support Stretch for “a while longer,” but it will likely stop updating binaries for Stretch before the year is out.
Credit: Michael Henzler/CC BY-SA 4.0
Other changes include improvements to the RetroPie packaging system and core RetroPie-Setup code so that it remembers the package stage. RetroPie 4.6 will also only update those binaries where an actual new one is available, and it will no longer overwrite source installs during updates. RetroArch gets an update to 1.8.5 with a new notification system, support for “real CD-ROM” games with the ability to dump a disc image, an improved disk control system with the ability to label disks in .m3u files, and RetroAchievements support for the original PlayStation, Sega CD, and PCEngine CD.
Next up are changes for EmulationStation, which gets a bump here to version 2.9.1. It includes always-welcome Scraper fixes for TheGameDBNet, grid view and theme improvements, and new options to disable the system name on custom collections and to save gamelist metadata after each modification. RetroPie 4.6 also updates a slew of emulators to the latest versions, including those for the Commodore Amiga, Atari 2600, Atari 800 and 5200, and ScummVM, the awesome engine emulator for running old-school graphic adventure games from LucasArts and some other 1980s and 1990s studios.
The Raspberry Pi 4 promised to bring plenty of additional firepower to RetroPie, so it’s great to have an official build for the first time. The latest version of the popular $35 computer is capable of running not just the usual classic consoles and game systems, but even late 1990s and early 2000s powerhouses like the Sega Dreamcast (and redream is now bundled with RetroPie 4.6), as well as the PSP, Saturn, and to some extent even the PlayStation 2. The last few aren’t by any means perfect in emulation yet, but Dreamcast games have been running at around 60fps at 720p resolution for several months now, and enthusiasts are working on getting Dolphin up and running for GameCube and Wii titles.
Head over to RetroPie to download the latest 4.6 build.
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