For a while now I’ve wanted to pick up a hacked SNES or Raspberry Pi in a small SNES case to emulate my favorite games on my TV. It’s both for me, and for my daughter (5) who has successfully played games like Spyro Reignited with little help from me. I think SNES would be an incredible entry point for her. That said, after some digging it looks like a Gen2 Amazon Firestick may be the better option?
Just hoping to get some advice on the simplest, most straight-forward option for me to play SNES ROMs on my smart TV, with support for two controllers. I’m even open to buying a complete package with the work already done for me, so long as I can add ROMs of my choice to it. I just don’t know where to get something like that, and everything I’ve searched looks a little overwhelming to put together. I’m fairly tech-savvy, but I don’t know that I’m up to the task of physically assembling devices and circuit boards like some of these kits seem to require.
Your advice is greatly appreciated!
Fire stick works fine. Retropie is the simplest setup for a Raspberry Pi. You can also just buy one of those Anbernic handhelds with HDMI out. Most of them have bluetooth for additional controllers. I recommend replacing the OS with something like Knulli.
I’m hoping to find somewhere that sells them pre-built, even if I still have to add the OS and emulator(s) myself. If I can score an already assembled Raspberry Pi either in or easy to put into one of those mini SNES cases, I will be over the moon.
Raspberry Pis are not difficult to tinker with. Don’t let your intimidation stop you from trying to assembly one the way you want. Just don’t be walking around on a carpet before touching it and it’ll be okay. The circuit boards can slip out of your hand and land on the table and be just fine.
Get a RPi5 4gb, a case with a fan that connects with the standard fan pinout (for simplicity. No special scripts needed), and put Batocera on it. It’s a very easy to use retro gaming software.
The cool thing about a small SBC like a RPi is that you can try different operating systems out without loosing your old data by simply swapping the micro SD card with a different thing, then just go back and it’ll boot like nothing ever changed. You’ll learn a lot and not be intimidated anymore.
If you go this route you’re welcome to DM me for help setting it up.
Well if ur smart TV based on android just install retroarch and install emulator of SNES in there and then upload Roms that it.connect Bluetooth gamepad and here we go :) I am myself playing ps1 games on my smart TV box
I have a Hisense Google TV, so it may be on Android-based? I never considered looking for an emulator on the TV itself. Not sure how to add ROMs to my TV, but I can certainly store them on the flash drive I’ve been using for movies and shows.
Sounds like usual android tv go to play market install any file explorer which support ftp server then connect to it remotly upload apk file from website of retroarch and upload roms either in same way and then install apk retroarch from gui of file explorer and then it will appear on in ur apps list
Easiest? An SNES Classic if you can find one for sale. It is really just a trivially hackable linux pc that comes with SNES controllers and has a nice interface. For something you can definitely buy new and don’t want to have to hack anything, probably a steam deck with the dock and a controller because of how easy it is to set up. All of those options are much more expensive than something like a raspberry pi with retropie, but they are easier.
All of the SNES Classics I’ve found are either counterfeits, or listed on marketplace for $200, stating that they usually sell for $400, so I have to assume those are probably counterfeit as well. It sucks because I remember seeing one years back at a Bed Bath & Beyond of all places, but wasn’t financially stable enough at the time to sensibly buy one. Regretting that in 2025.
But an SNES Classic would be incredible, if only for the aesthetic and knowing it’s all going to work through HDMI.
I need to find a good guide for putting a Raspberry Pi together and setting it up for emulation.
It may not be entirely what you are looking for but there are a lot of portable emulators out there like RG35XXSP for example that can do video out and allow you to pair multiple controllers.
You can set a lot of them to boot directly into a game and some even have kid modes where they can’t alter the settings.
In case it’s still needed, I’d say the Pi5 with either of the two gaming systems from the Raspberry Pi’s Imager tool (the system flasher/installer) would be the most straight forward way. And at least for RetroPie, one of the systems included, if you need help further than what people here could provide, their own forum seems to be sufficiently active, given being for a more focused niche.
