Raspberry pi

[Androidpk]

Any of you have one of these? I've been wondering what to do with my unused Sega Dreamcast and I think I want to put its guts out and put in a pi, make it an arcade/console emulator.

[BigWorm]

That is one of the most accessible Raspberry Pi starter projects. This site (http://blog.petrockblock.com/category/retropie-project/) has done most of the hard work so all you need to do is flash the provided image, add some ROMs, and plug in a controller or two.

The latest release detects most controllers automatically and allows you to config other controllers on the first boot. Many people use PS2 and Xbox 360 controllers which are supported out of the box, but you can also get some SNES or Genesis-style USB controllers if you really want that retro feel.

The original Raspberry Pi and the A/B+ can easily handle all the 8bit/16bit systems (NES, SNES, Genesis, Neo-Geo, Turbografx 16, etc) but you will need a Pi 2 to play 32bit games like PlayStation. The Pi 2 can also handle many N64 games but support is more spotty and requires some tweaking. For example, Mario Kart 64 works great and Smash Bros is playable with some cosmetic issues (lol no eyes), but Goldeneye is too slow to really be playable. Unfortunately there is no Dreamcast emulator available AFAIK so if you really love Shenmue you probably shouldn't tear apart your Dreamcast. There are a few different options for arcade game emulation, but it can be a bit of a pain in the ass to find ROMs that work correctly with the emulators on the Pi (mainly MAME, MANE, and Final Burn Alpha).

[Androidpk]

Are you sure about dreamcast? I was just reading about how some chick put Pi inside a original gameboy and she was playing Shenmue on it. Another reason I want one is I heard they're good for learning ruby on. I'm okay with hardware but I'm embarrassingly ignorant about software development/program :(

[BigWorm]

Actually looks like experimental support for Dreamcast (https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Dreamcast) was added recently but sounds like very few games are playable.