Unsure if this is the place to ask or not but figured it was closest to it.
Basically I am looking to make an AIO retro gaming PC. Main goal is to have one simple box hooked up to the TV so my friends and I can game without having to swap discs and consoles all the time. Would probably use mostly DS3 (or 4?) controllers hooked up with USB or via BT.
I know lemmy doesn’t much care about piracy but this is all just to play games/consoles we legally own. Would include PS1-3, Nintendo, SNES, N64, Gamecube (think that is all we have).
I think https://batocera.org/ has been mentioned, Lakka (maybe this is more for pis?), and EmuDeck has been mentioned. Basically looking for the easiest distro to throw on a PC with a nice UI (can be launched via kb/mouse, all the same to me) that has the emulators built in and just needs the ROMs.
I’d love for that to be the case but I doubt a raspberry pi is going to push enough to run PS3 games.
Pi has the power to do up through PS2 just fine, though last I checked the state of emulation for PS2 and PS3 wasn’t good yet, for the average hacker.
If this is your first time emulating, you’ll have a nicer time learning the ropes on RetroPi on an actual Raspberry Pi. Statistically, you’re not really giving anything up, because anything that doesn’t require insane levels of expertise and esoteric knowledge emulates perfectly on Pi.
Contrarily, is this isn’t your first emulation outing, or you’re down to go all-in down the rabbit hole; then build the whole PC around whatever you find emulates PS3 well, and the rest should be trivial to add.
I’m not sure why people are suggesting that RetroPie is tied to Raspberry Pi. RetroPie is a setup script that’ll run on Debian-based distros, even on x86-64 PC. It’ll do the install of EmulationStation, along with any selected consoles of your choice.
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/
Of their officially supported emulators, it doesn’t look like PS3 is in the list though.
I was just suggesting if you were without hardware. I have the Pi 3 and it did well for most of those.
Though, the steam deck would be a good option too since you could dock it and it supports everything you want and more.