Category: Releases

Happy Pi Day! After a long wait, we are pleased to announce the release of RetroPie 4.8.

The RetroPie 4.8 images are built on the latest version of the Raspberry Pi OS Lite Buster (which is now their legacy release). This image supports the latest Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and recent Raspberry Pi 4 boards that require a newer firmware than is available on the RetroPie 4.7.1 image.

Support for the current Bullseye version of Raspberry Pi OS is in progress.

There have been a lot of changes since the last image. RetroPie-Setup has had some visual and functionality improvements. Package management is now simpler and there have been improvements to joystick control in the dialog menus as well as the addition of an On Screen Keyboard for configuring your WiFi password. Versioning is now supported for source packages, so source packages will only update if there are new changes available. This makes updating quicker when you have many packages installed from source.

The front-end EmulationStation has had some useful changes including theming improvements, faster loading, and bug fixes. The new default theme is Carbon-2021 that uses a new theming feature to allow pixels for positioning/sizing. This should make it easier for people creating themes.

For the Raspberry Pi you can download a 4.8 image from https://retropie.org.uk/download/. For first installs please follow the Installation Instructions.

You can also install RetroPie on top of an existing Raspberry Pi OS (Buster) set up, or on top of Ubuntu on a PC/Odroid XU3/XU4. Links to the relevant instructions can be found on the download page.

If you want to support the project, donations are always appreciated and can be made on our Donation Page. The lead developer Jools Wills also has a Patreon page up at https://www.patreon.com/retropie.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this release.

Changes since 4.7.1

• On screen keyboard for entering WiFi password in RetroPie-Setup
• Improved joystick support in RetroPie-Setup dialogs.
• Improvement to RetroPie package management and updating.
• retroarch – updated to v1.10.0
• Updates to many libretro cores – in depth details about libretro changes can be found on their site – https://www.libretro.com
• EmulationStation updated to v2.10.2
  • Better Random: Perfect shuffle of systems, games and screensaver items
  • Fixes for event handling so startup events are cleared
  • Pixel positioning/sizing support for themes
  • Added a progress bar during loading + threaded loading for systems (threaded loading is disabled by default currently)
  • Added a cache for stat checks (performance)
  • Support for new scripting events – switching systems/selecting games/screensaver videos and image switching/etc.
  • Improvements to text wrapping for CJK glyphs
  • Updated Arcade resource lists (used to hide MAME devices/bioses and to provide friendly names for zip archives)
  • Ability to use full screen paging with LB/RB
• hatari – updated to v2.3.1
• xpadneo (Xbox One Bluetooth driver) – updated to v0.9
• zesarux – updated to v9.1
• lzdoom – updated to 3.87c
• xroar – updated to 1.0.9
• srb2 – updated to 2.2.9
• ags – switch to v3.5.1 release branch
• eduke32 – fix for gameplay bug in E1L4
• scummvm – updated to 2.5.1, first release since the ResidualVM merge includes bug-fixes and new games.
• cgenius – updated to the latest stable version (Added Cosmos engine, GUI, sound and controller improvements)
• tyrquake – updated to 0.69
• yquake2 – updated to v8.00 and added add-ons game source
• vice – switch to v3.5 branch
• advmame – fixes for building on GCC 10+
• audiosettings – add PulseAudio configuration support
• esthemes – support branches, to allow multiple themes on a single repo and many new EmulationStation themes added
• bluetooth – various fixes and improvements
• kodi – scriptmodule compatibility improvements on Ubuntu
• Improvements to handling of dkms drivers.
• New modules:
  • lr-stella – added upstream / current Stella libretro core (Atari 2600 emulator)
  • lr-tic80 – TIC-80 is a free and open source fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games (see https://tic80.com)
  • lr-retro8 – retro8 is an open source re-implementation of the PICO-8 fantasy console.
  • yabasanshiro – standalone Saturn emulator based on Yabause (RPi4 only)
  • hypseus – Hyseus Singe (Daphne) SDL2 Laserdisc emulator
  • ppsspp-1.5.4 – Added old ppsspp module (performs better for some users)
  • dosbox-staging – an enhanced and modernized DosBox fork
  • lr-uae4arm – libretro core of the uae4arm Amiga emulator.

RetroPie 4.7.1 images are now available from the Download Page.

Unfortunately a couple of bugs crept into the EmulationStation front-end for the 4.7 release. A performance issue causing EmulationStation to have a poor frame rate and a bug affecting its built in scrapers.

The performance issue affected Raspberry Pi 0/1/2/3 users and is related to a problem with the EmulationStation GLESv2 renderer on the legacy broadcom drivers (we have switched to the previous GLESv1 renderer for now).

The scraper issue affected all systems, and was a problem introduced recently in the development branch that we missed.

These issues are resolved in the 4.7.1 image. If you have already installed the 4.7 image you don’t need to re-download. Just choose the “update” option from the main menu in RetroPie-Setup.

RetroPie 4.7 images are now available, and include a variety of changes and improvements. We marked RetroPie 4.6 as having beta support for the Raspberry Pi 4. We now believe it to work well enough to remove the beta label.

RetroPie 4.7 supports the new Raspberry Pi 400.

Please see below for more information on what’s changed since RetroPie 4.6.

You can download a 4.7 image from https://retropie.org.uk/download/. For first installs please follow the Installation Instructions.

You can also install RetroPie on top of an existing Raspberry Pi OS (Formerly Raspbian) set up, or on top of Ubuntu on a PC/Odroid-C1/C2/XU3/XU4. Links to the relevant instructions can be found on the Download Page.

Please note that our pre-built binary packages for Raspbian Stretch are no longer updated, and support is being dropped for this version. If you are still running a Raspbian Stretch based image you will get a warning when launching RetroPie-Setup. We recommend people update to the latest image which is currently based on Raspberry Pi OS (Buster).

If you want to support the project, donations are always appreciated and can be made on our Donation Page. The lead developer Jools Wills also has a Patreon page up at https://www.patreon.com/retropie.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release.

Changes since 4.6

• Updated to the latest Raspberry Pi OS Buster image, with support for USB boot on the Pi4. The RetroPie 4.7 image can be flashed directly to an USB drive and booted directly, the Pi4 boot EEPROM should be updated first using Raspberry Pi Imager as detailed in https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/blob/master/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md.
• Added xpadneo – linux driver for xbox one wireless gamepad.
• retroArch – updated to v1.8.8.
• Added mame – standalone MAME emulator building from latest code.
• srb2 (Sonic Robo Blast 2) – updated to v2.2.2.
• cgenius – updated to 2.4.4.1.
• hatari (Atari ST emulator) – updated to v2.2.1.
• amiberry (Amiga emulator) – updated to v3.3.
• scummvm –  updated to 2.2.0
• xroar (Dragon 32 / CoCo emulator) – updated to v0.36
• ti99sim –  update to version 0.16.0 and switch to SDL2.
• Added ti99sim-sdl1 for older distros as new code requires GCC 8
• sdltrs –  switch to the SDL2 version, enable for KMS
• attractmode – now supports RPI4/KMS.
• lr-vecx – now includes GPU rendering support for smooth vector output.
• sdl1 / runcommand – fix aspect ratio using the dispmanx backend with sdl1 on fkms (this affects various sdl1 emulators such as dosbox, daphne, openbor and others).
• lr-gpsp – fixed crash on RaspberryPi OS Buster.
• opentyrian – updated to latest code which now uses SDL2 backend.
• darkplaces-quake – added optional gles version for RPI4 with better performance.
• gemrb – updated to v0.8.6 and switched to SDL2 backend.
• lr-bnses – updated to the current BSNES version of the libretro fork.
• vice – updated to latest version, and re-enable fastsid which got disabled by default upstream.
• Improved Aarch64 support (64bit Arm) – can be manually installed on the beta 64bit Raspberry Pi OS, but is not officially supported.
• lzdoom –  update to 3.86a (This was announced as the final lzdoom release to support GL2 rendering.)
• mupen64plus – reworking of module logic – now enabled on mali targets.
• Added recognition for Jetson Nano and Tegra X1
• Added gpg signing for pre-built binaries.
• Improvements to runcommand and RPI4 videomode detection.
• Updates to Skyscraper (Metadata scraper).
• usbromservice – fixed bug with mounting ext3/ext4 partitions.
• audiosettings –  updates for Pi4 and support for discrete internal ALSA devices.
• New esthemes added.
• Various other bug fixes and improvements.
• Added new experimental modules:
  • lr-mesen – Mesen NES/Famicom emulator.
  • lr-theodore – Thomson MO/TO system emulator.
  • lr-smsplus-gx –  Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator.
  • lr-gearsystem –  Sega Master System/Game Gear/SG-1000 emulator.

We are very pleased to announce RetroPie 4.6 with beta support for the Raspberry Pi 4.

It’s been some time since we last updated our pre-built images. However development has been ongoing in the background, and a lot of changes have been made since the last release. Note that we update RetroPie constantly, and you can update your system at any time. We wanted to wait until we were happy with the Raspberry Pi 4 support before putting out some new images though, but RetroPie has been working on the Raspberry Pi 4 for some time for those wanting to manually install or try a weekly development image.

You can see what emulators are available for our supported platforms thanks to a new stats module included in RetroPie – https://retropie.org.uk/stats/pkgflags/. 

For RetroPie 4.6 we have moved to Raspbian Buster as a base for our pre-built Raspberry Pi images. Raspbian Stretch is no longer supported by Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd. We will continue to support Stretch for a while longer, but will likely stop updating binaries for it later this year.

We are marking the Raspberry Pi 4 image as beta for now – primarily as there are still some things to improve on, but most packages run well. Please do try it, and report any issues to our forum https://retropie.org.uk/forum/. If you are running a weekly Buster development build from https://files.retropie.org.uk/images/weekly/ you can just update within RetroPie-Setup – no need to start from a new image.

Please see the changelog below for more information on the changes since RetroPie 4.5.

You can download a 4.6 image from https://retropie.org.uk/download/. For first installs please follow the Installation Instructions.

You can also install RetroPie on top of an existing Raspbian Buster set up, or on top of Ubuntu on a PC/Odroid-C1/C2/XU3/XU4. Links to the relevant instructions can be found on the Download area.

If you want to support the project, donations are always appreciated and can be made on our Donation Page. The main developer Jools Wills also has a Patreon page up at https://www.patreon.com/retropie.

We hope you enjoy this update, and wish everyone the best at these difficult times. Happy gaming x.

Changes since 4.5

• Raspberry Pi 4 support! Support is labelled as beta currently as there are still things to improve, but most emulators now run well.
• The RetroPie images are now based on Raspbian Buster – Stretch is no longer supported by Raspberry Pi (Trading) ltd. RetroPie will stop updating pre-built binaries for Stretch later in the year.
• Improvements to RetroPie packaging system and core RetroPie-Setup code so package state is remembered and binary updates will only be done if an updated binary is available. Source installs won’t be overwritten by a pre-built binary when updating also. We started providing pre-built binaries for the packages in the experimental section for the supported platforms.
• RetroArch updated to v1.8.5.
  • New notification system with cheevos badges support.
  • RGUI can be themed.
  • Support for real CD ROM, with the ability to dump the disc image.
  • Improved disk control system, with support for labeling disks in .m3u files.
  • RetroAchievements support for PS1/Sega CD/PCEngine CD.
• EmulationStation updated to v2.9.1.
  • Scraper fixes for the TheGameDBNet.
  • Grid view improvements and bugfixes.
  • Theming improvements.
  • New options for “disable system name on custom collections” and “save gamelist metadata after each modification”.
• Added videomode switching support to runcommand for KMS and X11 targets. SDL2 applications only.
• Added ioquake3 module for platforms other than Raspberry Pi 1-3.
• Replaced zdoom with lzdoom as zdoom is no longer maintained.
• amiberry – updated to 3.1.3 including ipf support.
• stella – updated to 6.0.1.
• SDL updated to 2.0.10 with rpi4/kms fixes.
• solarus – lots of updates to modernise the port.
• eduke32 – major overhaul including adding package for IonFury.
• zesarux – updated to v8.0.
• cgenius – updated to v2.3.6.
• drastic – update to 2.5.0.4 with RPI4 compatibility.
• scummvm – updated to v2.1.1.
• atari800 – updated to v4.2.0 (lr-atari800 config has been moved to lr-atari800.cfg to avoid conflicting)
• lr-mupen64plus / lr-mupen64plus-next – enable GLES3 support on rpi4.
• lr-opera – renamed from lr-4do.
• Sonic Robo Blast – updated to 2.2.
• Lots of other fixes and improvements.
  • Added new experimental modules.
  • vvvvvv – Port of the popular platform / puzzle game VVVVVV.
  • lr-neocd – Neo Geo CD emulator.
  • redream – Dreamcast emulator for the Raspberry Pi 4.

Raspberry Pi 4 image from – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#/media/File:Raspberry_Pi_4_Model_B_-_Side.jpg – released under CC BY-SA 4.0