RetroPie SNES Setup Guide

Wondering how to setup RetroPie SNES for the ultimate retro gaming experience? You’ve found the right article because we’re going to show you just how quickly and easily you can get your Raspberry Pi equipped and ready to launch RetroPie and SNES9x for some solid couch Super Nintendo Entertainment System classics on your modern tv screen.

How To Setup RetroPie for SNES?

What You’ll Need

• If you don’t already have one, pick yourself up a Raspberry Pi device, they’re awesome and they’re necessary to complete this tutorial – we recommend you get the Raspberry Pi 4
• You’ll also need to download RetroPie from the official website here
• If you’ll be using your Raspberry Pi to download necessary files and ROMs, you’ll need to make sure that you have an external keyboard and mouse available
• Make sure that you have the SNES game ROMs available that you will be playing (the following file extensions types are allowed: .7z, .zip, .bin, .fig, .mgd, .sfc, .smc, .swc)
• Don’t forget about the controller – we recommend either the 8Bitdo SN30 Pro (you can use any other controller you prefer, if you have an Xbox One controller around, be sure to check out our guide on how to use Xbox One controller on Snes9x)

8Bitdo Sn30 Pro Bluetooth Controller

$44.97

• If at any time you’d like to consult the official RetroPie docs, you can do so on their website here.

1. Setup Your Raspberry Pi

Luckily, the best SNES emulator, SNES9x comes with RetroPie by default so as long as you download and install RetroPie, you should be good to go.

If you’re using an older version of RetroPie that didn’t come with SNES9x preinstalled, you can easily get it by doing the following:

• In RetroPie settings, head to RetroPie Setup
• Next, go to Manage packages > Manage main packages
• Go down and then choose lr-snes9x2010
• After that, choose Install from pre-compiled binary
• Let RetroPie download the SNES9x emulator and once it finishes, you can go back through the menu and choose Exit

2. Put Your SNES Roms Onto Your RetroPie

We’ll now be moving our SNES ROMs onto our RetroPie.

Move ROM Files Using Your Raspberry Pi

You’ll need to have the Pixel desktop environment tool installed on your Raspberry Pi to be able to access desktop mode on it. We’ll now be covering how to get this setup.

Head to the RetroPie options menu and then go ahead and go to RetroPie Setup > Configuration / Tools > Raspbian Tools > Install Pixel desktop environment.

After you have successfully installed the Pixel desktop environment on your Raspberry Pi, go ahead and restart the device. After restarting, you should now be able to access desktop mode by going to Ports > Desktop.

The desktop environment allows you to navigate the files on your Raspberry Pi similarly to how you would on a Windows computer.

Now that we’ve installed the desktop environment, we’ll need to move our SNES ROM(s) to the proper folder on our Raspberry Pi:

• /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes/

Remote Access Your Raspberry Pi From Your PC

The easiest way to get files from your PC computer to your Raspberry Pi is by remotely accessing the Pi from your PC. To do this, you’ll first want to make sure that your Raspberry Pi is connected to the same network as your PC.

First make sure your Pi is connected to your WiFi or to your network router directly using an ethernet cable.

Open up the Windows file explorer on your PC and type \\retropie into the address bar at the top. After waiting for a few minutes, your Raspberry Pi should appear. If it doesn’t appear, there are a few additional steps we’ll need to take. If yours does appear, you can go ahead and skip to directly below the Remote Access screenshot shown down below.

On your Raspberry Pi, open the terminal window and type in:

• sudo apt-get install xrdp

This command will now begin to install the remote desktop server.

Now you’ll need to figure out the IP address of your Raspberry Pi. To do this type, you’ll want to use the following command:

• hostname -I

Make a note of your Raspberry Pi’s IP address because we will need to use this soon in order to connect to it remotely. You’ll also need your Pi’s username and password.

Now on your PC, go ahead and open the remote desktop app by typing remote desktop into the Windows search bar in the bottom left. Click remote desktop connection to use the remote desktop app.

Search for and select Remote Desktop Connection on your PC

In the Remote Desktop Connection window that pops up, you’ll now want to enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi that you got earlier. After clicking connect, then login using your Raspberry Pi’s username and password.

If everything went correctly, you should now be able to remotely access your Raspberry Pi from your PC. To double check that you are able to access your Raspberry Pi remotely, open up Windows File Explorer and type \\retropie into the address bar. You should see your Retropie files appear.

Whether your Raspberry Pi appeared automatically or you needed to do the additional steps, now we’re moving on to the final parts.

Remember earlier, we mentioned that we would need to copy our SNES ROMs from our PC to this directory on our Raspberry Pi:

• RetroPie/roms/snes/

Navigate to roms > snes and copy your SNES ROMs files from your PC to this folder in your Raspberry Pi. After you’ve copied your ROMs over, restart your Raspberry Pi and the games should now appear as expected.

3. Play Your SNES Games

Now that your Raspberry Pi has been restarted and is all setup and ready to go, you can boot up EmulationStation and once you highlight Super Nintendo, it should show you at the bottom how many games are available to be played for that console. You’re ready to play!

If you’re an Android user, be sure to check out our list of the best SNES emulator Android apps.

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