8 Controllers - Bluetooth or Wired?

babychaos

In a few months time I have a stag do where a bunch of us are heading for a long weekend in a cottage in the Lake District. I'd really like to put together an emulation box and have a (probably slightly drunk) session of 8-player bomberman (using lr-mrboom), though I'll also look at MicroMachines V3 (which I vaguely remember as manic chaos from my uni days, and that was just 2-player).

I already have a Pi4B 4Gb, the cost in this project will be controllers! Ideally I'm thinking 8 BT controllers (probably 8BitDo Zero 2's). Is this realistic? I've not found much in the way of multiple controller documentation, and less so 8 of them. The alternate route would be USB Hubs and wired controllers...which would be cheaper (not a primary concern), but I'm thinking that 8 slightly inebriated men wired to a small box is a recipe for disaster! I've seen somewhere that RetroPie supports upto 16 controllers, but couldn't find anything about connection types.

So, my question is;
Is 8 Bluetooth controllers workable with a RetroPie?
Failing that, is 8 wired controllers (via 2 x USB Hubs I guess) workable?

As a bonus...

Can anyone suggest any other good couch multiplayer games, the more players the better, and (given the target audience) somewhat less cerebral titles preferred!

retropieuser555

I've managed to plug 5 controllers via Bluetooth but never gone beyond that. Honestly donno if we noticed any lag or whatever, but this was on an older pi3b, which I think has weaker Bluetooth.

Depends how fussy people are, if they just want to play bomberman and have a laugh, I doubt they'd notice the lag. If they're hardcore online gamer types, maybe go for usb controllers and a hub.

In terms of games, the pc engine has capability for 5 player, but it's just bomberman which you've already got covered.

Look for a micro machines j-cart ROM on megadrive, that's 4 player I think. Also arcade beat em ups are fantastic 4 player, Simpsons, turtles, X men (6 player!), There's tons of them but I can't remember them all.

Edit:- just use this list for games btw, it's pretty exhaustive:- https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4336/list-of-retro-games-for-4-players