@JLaury See this post on how to rotate EmulationStation and the console boot screen. Note that the RetroArch's menu doesn't obey the video_rotation parameter.

@iandaemon The Pi4 does let you rotate in 90 degree increments, though it is nowhere near as simple to do so as on previous generations of Pi. After a couple of days of fiddling, I have Emulation station and Retroarch rotated 90 degrees and (finally) filling the screen. I don’t have the setup menus rotated yet, though. At least on the MAME games I have checked so far, there are no obvious performance issues in doing it.

I found that I have to press 'Tab' to enter the the settings on the arace board itself which has a 'rotate' option! Great!
Now I just need to know how to do a 'Tab' with my Playstation DS4 controller!

https://retropie.github.io/RetroPie-Docs/lr-mame2003/#tate-mode may be of use

Most of the themes are not designed for a portrait mode - but you can try some of the 4:3 and CRT designed themes. I remember one them ( crt-centered ) had a simpler layout, with video on top of the gamelist, which would maybe fit the bill.

link text

EDIT: you can run the theme-gallery from the Configuration/Tools->Emulationstation to get previews for different themes, just to see how they fit on your screen.

@JRX88 @mitu Thank you both! Been looking this for a while.

Thanks very much, I wasn't aware that ES could be rotated so that should solve all my issues.

I would like to know how to create this. I'm pretty savy but just got interested in overlays because I thought it would be too much trouble for my rotated cocktail arcade.

@mktaia You should probably take this to their forum - http://orangepi.club/index.php
I have both a raspberry pi and an orange pi, myself. Orange Pi is still on Jessie, whereas Raspi is now on Stretch. There are going to be differences.

@andrewh - That is quite acceptable, as I'm always using a wireless keyboard when dropping to command shell.

@andrewh I know it is not what you asked for, but I saw a thread some time ago where someone used Attract Mode, as there is apparently a decent vertical theme.

@morpie For what it's worth, I have a cocktail style cabinet and play most vertical games rotated by Retroarch (my setup has a three-sided control panel) and performance is great on those games. Actually, vertical orientation works great in other emulators as well. For example, Tempest in AdvanceMAME runs fine rotated to fill a vertical.

I still use Emulation Station as a front-end since this can be managed from the horizontal position on my system. However, I am using an LCD display upside-down (this is typically the best viewing angle for a table top cocktail design) and I need to rotate everything 180 degrees using config.txt. I don't believe my system pays much of a penalty for that, if any. But I did try running with 90 degree rotation at the system level and I can confirm that games definitely slow down.

So, from personal experience, if you can keep the operating system horizontal and let the emulators do the rotation for vertical games, you get the best performance. And if Attract Mode has the ability to rotate itself, well, that's the best vertical solution I have heard of on the Pi so far.

@UDb23 said in 16:9 Vertical Monitor - Marquee and Bezel Overlay?:

Repo for custom overlays

Many thanks for the suggested link. I will comb over it today as it just started to pour rain and need something to keep busy. Much appreciated.

@jakob I think not.

@caver01 I'm dying of awe right now … what a great idea and execution. 😄