gray, red, black screen on rom launch

meatheadz

Hello Everyone.
Ive searched this but only found limited similarities.

Im setting up my #first emulator/retropie. I cant get a single uploaded ROM to run. SNES, NES, Mastersystem, Atari...

Basically, when I initiate game I get a black screen (SNES), or a colored block, gray for nes, red for (Mastersystem).

If I change to another emulator, one that does not give me a red or gray screen, I just get bounced back out to the main retropie screen.

This occurs on both my 7" rpie screen, and if I run out of HDMI to my television.

Im using a Pi3
Cana powersupply
Just downloaded the newest retropie (reformated and reloaded x2).

I have a keyboard usb connected, and a bluetooth dongle for my bluetooth controller.

I dont get any error messages, other than the controler 1 detected message after the gray box... loading game xxxx. Then the color screen.

I followed the retropie install guide when installing, and have been uploading roms via usb.

Thanks!

stoney66

@meatheadz First you should probably start with 1 emulator and get it working and best to share which emulator you are using. e.g. for NES it's probably lr-fceumm and where the files are located (should be in nes rom folder). When you launch an NES game the screen that comes up you want to make sure it's showing the right emulator.

If it is the right emulator, then it's probably a rom issue. After the game fails to load, you can check this file via cli /dev/shm/runcommand.log and it sometimes can help debug the issue.

meatheadz

@stoney66

Hey Stoney,

I have tried using fbneo and fceumm emulators for the NES.

The files are unzipped in the NES rom folder.

I have tried about 20-25 different roms from at least 8 different sites. All are giving me the same issue. I finally got tetris to load up last night but with broken graphics and crashed 1 screen in. I have to use Start+Select to force exit the crash screens. Im at work right now so I have not had time to check cli.

Its weird that I cant get a single rom to run. Most videos make it look pretty plug and play.

stoney66

@meatheadz generally you can leave most roms zipped but if the unzipped file is .nes then it's ok for fceumm but fbneo I believe needs them zipped.

IanDaemon

If you're in the habit of unzipping ROMs then some files with common names (necessary for each game) may be stepping on each other. (just something to watch out for) You could be unintentionally "breaking" previous games in that directory. (Depending on the contents of the archive.)

dankcushions

please carefully read https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first and provide ALL the required info, including full filepaths, verbose log, etc.

meatheadz

Well... after 4 days of messing around with this thing, I went and bought a Pi4. Went through all the same steps. All the roms have been running great. Same emulators. No problems.

I will continue to mess with the 3 for another day or so... If I get nothing I plan on taking it into my back yard and shooting it...

meatheadz

Thanks for the help on this everyone