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Its been a couple of years since I was inspired by my disappointment of the SNES mini to build myself a Retropie console. Its not important for everyone but for me looks were very important!
Unfortunately, at the time, there were no cases capturing the look of the SNES, certainly not the Euro / Jap SNES. I started off with stickers for the official Pi case which gave it a SNES look but really wasn't cutting it:
Addyb's raspberry pi retro game machine build
Sometime later I 'upgraded' to a 3d printed case from Etsy that had the look but didn't quite colour match and had a rough 3d printed finish... and was also bonkers expensive for what it was:
Addyb's raspberry pi retro game machine build
So recently I found my SD card had become effectively read only. I suspect it was corrupted by me being extremely lazy about properly shutting down my Pi. I'd just leave it on when not using it and when I wanted to move it I would yank the power lead  .
While looking around for an inline switch for the power supply I came across the Retroflag SuperPi SNES case, SUPERPI CASE J - Retroflag released September last year I think. Its available with or without wired controllers (that are apparently very good) from approx 20 quid if you shop around. I bought a pack that included a fan and some heatsinks but without controllers for £24.99 from Amazon.
It looks stunning and is an extremely close colour match to my 8bitdo controllers. Build quality is great. It accepts the Pi securely and re-routing a couple of the USBs to the front is a nice touch. The fan simply clips in securely and there is room for the heat sinks and routing of what cable there is. There's a warning about removing the SD card before inserting the Pi, which I followed, though didn't see what bad could come of you not removing it (though I didn't experiment).
The killer feature for me was the safe shutdown and reset switches. From the Retropie terminal a single command line sends the Pi off to install the necessary scripts from Github. A reset later and it simply works! Hitting reset does as expected. Switching off the power causes the LED on the additional board to blink while the screen fills with all the acknowledgements of a safe shut down and, after a few moments, it powers itself off.
The eject button also opens a small compartment for storing additional SD cards. Its neat that the eject button does something but I will never use this compartment.
Minor gripes, the included grippy feet cover two of the screws that hold the thing together. You'd need to unstick these if you have the thing apart. It is a hobbyist kit not a consumer product and I think it should have been made to be more easily disassembled / reassembled. The cover for the side USBs and ethernet is tidy but unfortunately blocks access to the release latch of an ethernet cable.
I've owned my Retropie for 2 years now. When I originally built it I did wonder if the honeymoon period would wear off and it would see no use. Fortunately that's not been the case and it still sees regular action, increased lately as my five year old son takes an interest. It regularly travels with me thanks to its compact size and I've bought an extra pair of 8bitdo bluetooth gamepads for some four player fun. I also now have a couple of 8bitdo NES30 arcade sticks on the way  . With the Retroflag SuperPi case its now better than ever. This is the case I dreamed of when I first built my Retropie and awkwardly stuck stickers to the Pi case.
Thoroughly recommended! |
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26-11-2019 22:31:03
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