Hello!
My project is complete, and I thought I’d leave a report as reference for new users, sort of a “This was my experience”. I’ll try to be brief yet informative.
Machine: HP2000-2b19WM, found at back of son’s closet
Purpose: An “arcade focused” system. This will be installed in our garage, which is mostly used for skateboarding and other activities, so games will be “quick experiences”, nothing with save cards or long story lines. This will fit well with the location, and allow good usage of a lower-powered pc.
Additional items/Budget:
(1) 4gb RAM stick, bringing pc up to 8gb - $16
(1) TP-Link UB8400 bluetooth dongle - $10
(1) 32-inch Sharp Aquos TV, bought on craigslist - $15
(1) Binbok “switch pro controller”, surplus from my switch - $0
(1) Gamesir T4 pro controller, surplus from my gaming rig - $0
(2) generic USB snes-style controllers, bought long ago and sitting in a drawer - $0
Process: After upgrading RAM and testing my USB stick, installed Batocera to disk following the wiki. Uneventful, it just worked. There was configuration of the controllers necessary, but that was all personal preference stuff, and went very smoothly.
I have an extensive collection of handhelds, and thus an extensive collection of roms, so I began by just dumping my RG351’s sd card onto Batocera, but the results weren’t great. Specifically, it became apparent that anything beyond a select group of PS1 and Dreamcast titles was out of the question. I decided to focus on what could be played well than trying to push the unit; I can play high-level titles elsewhere, and most of those titles don’t lend themselves to “bite size plays”. Additionally, I wanted an experience that “normal people” could appreciate, so every title had to work, and the interface needed to be clean and inviting.
I began by collecting roms specifically for this machine. I read the wiki and found the best supported romsets would be “current MAME”, MAME2003, and FBNeo 1.0.0.2. For “current”, I went with a “.228 merged” set, despite recommendations. The other two were non-merged reference sets. All packages were sourced on [REDACTED] via links found on [REDACTED]. I’ll provide links if requested. All sets were downloaded to my daily-driver, a thinkpad running garuda-gnome.
This resulted in about 15k games. I didn’t want a historical collection, so I began searching for ways to filter. After a little research, I pulled a set of “all killer, no filler” .bat files off a retro-pi forum. I verified the lists for my faves and added as necessary, edited the commands and converted them to .sh files. The script was then run against each set, resulting in a little more than 2k games that were put in Batocera. Note: I am aware that this may cause issues with any merged roms, but I decided I was willing to take that chance.
Additionally, I pulled sets for snes, snes-msu, nes, genesis, neo-geo and PC Engine. As a challenge for the machine, I threw Atomiswave, Naomi, and a large handful of Dreamcast and PS1 in. Lastly, Atari 2600, Atari 800, Intellivision and Gameboy Advance, just for nostalgia. Most had similar AKNF scripts run against them. A800 was hand curated, as was dc and ps. All scripts can be provided on request.
Now, with roms in place, I added The Bezel Project for all systems and did a full scrape. With everything in place, I selected a “Arcade” game collection and began the laborious task of hand-removing duplicate games. I gave preference to FBN, as they have the fancy bezels. If FBN would not launch, I would try the “current” version, adjusting the emulator used if I had issues. If THAT would not launch, I would repeat the process with the 2003 version. If you do this, I highly advise ssh-ing from your daily driver so you can send sigquits if the pc freezes.
Any versions that would not launch, or not play at full speed, were removed. Roms from non-merged sets were deleted, “merged” duplicates were hidden. This took about two days, but I know that any arcade game a user chooses is going to launch and look fantastic. I should note I have gotten great performance from a bunch of a-wave games (“Rumble Fish” is fantastic!), though I have given up hope of ever playing “Dolphin Blue” at full speed, lol. Once done, I have 913 fantastic arcade games. All told, I have just a little more than 4700 games, every one of which is a fantastic experience.
It’s not all sunshine and roses. Steam was such a hassle that I ended up deleting everything (it just took too long to load games. This is undoubtedly more about the capabilities of this pc and the nature of Steam than Batocera). I am also having a few controller issues; some cores refuse to see the analog stick, no matter what I do. This maybe down to the controllers, and since I intend to add arcade sticks soon, it’s not a big deal.
So, that’s my story, feel free to ask questions or comment. I’m sure I did lots of things “wrong”, but I really like the outcome, so much so that I am looking to buy a more powerful surplus pc and actually build a cabinet.
Much love and thanks to the Batocera team, thank you for such an easy, functional and fun tool. Back to gaming!
