Unofficial RPi5 RetroPie image.

sugarfree

These are unofficial RetroPie RPi5 Beta images without ROMs or BIOS files.

I uploaded them to help users who aren't familiar with the manual installation process that is recommended and for people
who are testing things and often messing with their systems.

As these are unofficial images, no official support can be provided by the developers or forum.

To flash the images, use Pi Imager Tool and a 16Gb SD card or larger. Unzipping is not required.

Basic Image (RetroPie v 4.8.9 - commit: 69cd744 / Feb 20, 2025) . It has only the core, main, usbromservice, and xpad driver packages installed,
similar to an official RetroPie image. The size of the zipped image is 1.1Gb and 16Gb unzipped.

Basic image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--uu7HDoclXBL7w3fkOwPD8m4QiUEPKc/view?usp=sharing
Plus image (RetroPie v 4.8.9 - commit: 69cd744 / Feb 20, 2025) . it includes the packages from Basic, plus: Vulkan enabled (experimental), retropie-extra repo, PPSSPP - Vulkan shortcut in the runcommand menu, Dolphin with Gui shortcuts for GameCube and Wii in the runcommand menu (dolphin-editor), lr-beetle-saturn, lr-flycast-dev, Kodi, AetherSX2. The size of the zipped is 2.1 Gb and 16Gb unzipped.

Plus image:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fplo8J7UmZm9GdCrg3TfzMDS3_lBuCNr/view?usp=sharing

username: pi
password: raspberry

All credits goes to our developers and the people who contribute code.

ExarKunIv

@sugarfree thanks for doing this. It will help out a lot of people.

ExarKunIv

@sugarfree even better. Nicely done adding your plus version

Ristul

Cool, I did the manual installation but if I ever need to do a clean install I might try this. Cheers!

craigtest

I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I tried using your image and doing everything on my own, either way I end up with a screen full of horizontal blue lines bouncing up and down my screen.

sugarfree

@craigtest
1.Which image did you use for the test?
2.What model of Pi 5 did you use, 2GB or 4/8GB?
3.Are you trying to use RetroPie from VNC?.
4. Did you have this issue with a specific emulator?

Make sure that you are using the HDMI port closest to the PSU port.
If you have a second HDMI cable, try using that.
I don't know if this is related to the firmware version. I have the latest stable version installed on my system.

I download both images and test them and i can't reproduce this issue, everything is working ok from my side.

ExarKunIv

im not sure whats going on. other then the display setting in the config.txt not playing nice with @craigtest display. thats all i can think of

i installed both images on different card and they both work on my display on the first boot

sugarfree

Thanks for the confirmation! It looks from this post on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/1g49b7t/screen_resolution_help/) that it has issues and with the Desktop OS, so it is unrelated to RetroPie.

ExarKunIv

@sugarfree that would make more sense. hope he gets is figured out

craigtest

@sugarfree yeah thats my reddit post. I had a similar issue with the desktop os, but I fixed it by connecting with vnc and changing the resolution.

craigtest

@sugarfree

Full image
2.pi5 8gb
I was attempting to use vnc to see if I could get a clearer image (something I had to do with the desktop os).
The issue started immediately after boot up, I never made it to an emulator.

Thanks for your help!

sugarfree

@craigtest
To change the resolution add to the end of cmdline.txt file the following:

video=HDMI-A-1:"add_your_width"x"add_your_height"M@"add_your_refresh_rate"

Example for 1080p 60HZ resolution:

video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080M@60

To open the file from a terminal window just type:

sudo nano /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt

To save the change press ctrl+o and ctrl+x and restart the system.

Retrodade

I just grabbed this, and burned added my splashscreen...now it crashes while playing splash then says to increase memory split
i went to rasp-config to where it was on pi4 but it's not there on the pi 5 how can i increase the GPU memory split to 256?

sugarfree

@Retrodade
I know that the RPi5 doesn't have GPU memory, so the old options like gpu_mem aren't available.
RetroPie support fir RPi5 is in beta, so we have to wait until Dev's fix issues like this.

Retrodade

@sugarfree
thanks 4 that info
I disabled my splash till then

danie

@sugarfree hi. Im completely new to raspberrypi. And im a steelworker...so know absolutely nothing about computers. Thank u so much for this info and that u made it possible to download. I saved and bought a pi5. And to my horror i saw that a person must load it manually. I hope i get it right 😅

khoff1982

Thank you so much for this image. One issue I had was after scraping, data is not saving for some systems, specifically NES and N64 but is saving for SNES and Genesis. I can't find the gamelist.xml file or even the emulationstation folder when I SSH into the raspberry pi. Do you have any suggestions?

sugarfree

@khoff1982 Which scraper are you having this issue with? I am using Skyscraper, and so far, I haven't encountered a similar issue.

Take a look at the RetroPie Docs about the scrapers, maybe you'll find some useful information: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Scraper/

witodegreef

Anyone having issues with games playing super fast? Basically being unplayable? I've tried many things like manual install, config changes, different controller mappings and now the pre-built image here but nothing helps. Every rom type is affected.

Any suggestions?

sugarfree

@witodegreef

So far, I have tested games from the following systems: SNES, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, PSX, Saturn, N64, GBA, GameCube, Neo Geo, and PC Engine, and I haven't faced this issue. I am using the image from the above link.

Because the offered image is not official, I suggest using your manually installed setup and opening a new topic with the requested information, as suggested here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

As a suggestion, you might try using a different controller or gamepad, just in case the fast forward function is stuck

First, reset the previous mapping: You can do this from the RetroPie Setup by choosing Configuration Tools > EmulationStation and selecting the Clear/Reset option.
Then, configure the new controller or keyboard and test again.