Project 1: Build a Game Emulation System
We've spent the last few chapters getting acquainted with the Tinker Board, covering all the basics from the architecture of its system on a chip (SoC) to running a full OS and finally running code that interfaces with electrical circuits attached to its
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Project 1: Build a Game Emulation System We’ve spent the last few chapters getting acquainted with the Tinker Board, covering all the basics from the architecture of its system on a chip (SoC) to running a full OS and finally running code that interfaces with electrical circuits attached to its GPIO pins. That’s a lot to go over, and we’ve only scratched the surface. Now it’s time to take what we’ve learned and apply it to projects that will take the Tinker Board to the next level as a practical tool. The first project that we’re going to look at has become an increasingly popular project among single-board computer users: a game emulation system.
What Is Emulation? Game emulation is a software-based process that emulates the hardware characteristics of gaming systems or computer architectures. This allows your computer or other device to run games or other programs that would otherwise be incompatible. Single-board computers are great choices for emulator hardware because of their form factor, system specs, and ability to run Linux. This makes the Tinker Board and Tinker Board S especially appealing as emulation hardware with their higher-than-average SoC specs. © Liz Clark 2019 L. Clark, Practical Tinker Board, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3826-4_7
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Chapter 7
Project 1: Build a Game Emulation System
Even though game emulation is often targeted at hardware that is much older and underpowered compared to modern hardware, system specs do matter. You may think that if you’re trying to emulate a system that had utilized an 8-bit architecture you don’t have to worry about the speed of your CPU or amount of RAM, but because everything is software- based, system specs become a paramount concern and the higher the spec the better. An underpowered system can ruin an emulation experience and render the emulator and emulated program unusable. There are many ways to emulate games, and often your final choice will come down to preference. For this project we’re going to look at a specialized Linux distribution option for gaming emulation called Lakka. We’ll walk through how to set up and navigate Lakka for the Tinker Board.
ROMs Before we go any further, though, we need to address the elephant that always sneaks into the room during any discussion on game emulation: the legality of ROMs. ROM stands for read-only memory and is a reference to the chips found on old game cartridges that held the game data that would be read by the gaming system. Despite its hardware origin, the term ROM has come to be used for the digital files of these old games and programs. There is a lot of debate and discussion surrounding the use of ROMs for off-the-shelf games that would have been purchased in cartridge form back in the day. Is their very existence legal, let alone their active use inside emulation software? These legal considerations vary based on your location and the original game publisher’s specifications for each game, so be sure to do your research. There are games and other programs available that do not carry th
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