Hey rbaker, thanks for the response. I ended up reflashing the sd with a new image of retropie. Previously i had retropie installed manually on top of raspbian. This is fine because i really dont use the pi for anything but gaming. I'm sure one of the scenarios you mentioned was the problem. It seems like probably the folder structure was corrupted at some point and no longer being correctly picked up by retropie.. i guess =)
Reflashing with the newest version of retropie worked like a charm, all my original roms work. Now im on to trying to get metal slug 5 to work correctly! xD

@edmaul69 My guide was really just taking the steps from the Raphnet site. Raphnet's site tells you to go to the Raspberry Pi site for some of the steps, so I just put them all in one place.

If you want to load roms from a USB stick, make a folder called Retropie-mount and put into the raspberry pi. It will create folders for roms. Put the roms in the correct folders and restart emulation station. Note, this will not copy to the sd card.

@NastyButtler322 not quite. To the best of my recollection from reading through that code for quite a while a few months ago, what's implemented in ES is a setting that sets a threshold of memory.

When that threshold is crossed, it will explicitly unload textures from memory in order to load new ones. I'm not sure it's as much VRAM in the normal sense of the word as it is a ES texture memory manager, though I can't say for sure as I didn't implement it.

That's why I have a suspicion that keeping it to high is as bad as having it too low, though I haven't been able to get anyone to test that. Too low means it won't have enough memory reserved to render all it needs to. Too high (I believe) will result in white screens if your Pi runs out of memory before the threshold is hit, as it won't unload textures to load new ones.

Edit: see VRAM mention here:

https://github.com/pjft/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-core/src/resources/TextureDataManager.cpp

The method to unload VRAM just deletes the texture from the GL texture manager. The method to remove from RAM deletes the actual texture data from memory.

https://github.com/pjft/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-core/src/resources/TextureData.cpp

In the WiFi menu it did not show a network, I tried setting it up and no SSID's were appearing. I reset my router, rebooted the Pi, reconfigured WiFi and tried installing Kodi again. Many errors popped up and after 15 minutes said failed to install. All my other WiFi devices in the house are working fine. I'm not sure what to do.

@marie011101 I've tried that a million times, it's searches for the controller, and the controller searches for the pi, they just don't connect, on top of that being an old build..

@marie011101 3rd party images can't be supported here as we don't know how they've been configured. You'd be best either finding out who Dean is, where he can be contacts and how he has configured this image. Or, the better option, would be to download the official RetroPie image from here and starting with that.

The game work fine i just want to set the dpad of my controller as the analog stick in n64 game

are they the n64 ones? I have the same ones, and whenever I go into an emulator, the buttons are reversed. (B becomes A, etc)

If you have a Ps4 controller, you can use that one. If you need to buy one, I recommend a ps3 controller because they are way cheaper and you have the same functionality as the Ps4 controller.

@beamquaker No problem, just post any questions you have.

Okay, it looks like I have it running pretty clean now. Thank you all so much. Next I'll try to figure out how to add Famicom CDS, Super Famicom, Virtual Boy and maybe Game & Watch directories/roms to my build. Time to start hunting through the threads [slaps and rubs hands together in eager excitement] :)

@herb_fargus Hi there, thanks for your reply :)
should I try installing Kodi, or Retropie again? Or both?

EDIT: I managed to solve the problem by updating Kernel. I Hope this helps someone in the future!

@BuZz I'm having the same problem, could this be the reason I cannot add the Bluetooth sources and drivers because the files need to unpack?

I have sorted it, anyone else with the same problem needs to do the following:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt
And scroll down to the bottom. If you see a line that says: dtparam=audio=on

Disable it by putting a # in front.
Then add:
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus
on the next line. Save the file.

Next create /etc/asound.conf with the following content:

pcm.!default {
type hw card 0
}
ctl.!default {
type hw card 0
}

Then go to: /home/pi/.reicast/emulators.cfg and change it to this:

reicast-audio-alsa = "CON:/opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin/reicast.sh alsa %ROM%"
default = "reicast-audio-alsa"
reicast-audio-oss = "CON:/opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin/reicast.sh oss %ROM%"

Save and reboot and enjoy!

Also has anyone managed to get reicast to change to 16:9 aspect ratios? maybe i'll start a new topic for this.