I turned my old Windows PC into a retro games console – here's how you can too

When you get a new computer, you might be wondering what to do with your old machine since you don't really need it anymore. Luckily, there are plenty of options, like turning it into a picture frame or even a smart home hub (something I've personally done). But if you're a fan of gaming, especially retro gaming, another great option is turning your PC into a dedicated console.

You can turn any PC into a retro gaming station using several solutions, but we'll focus on EmulationStation, a dedicated frontend available for a variety of different systems that lets you easily play all your games with a controller and a beautiful interface. EmulationStation actually supports other popular experiences of this kind as well, like RetroBat or EmuDeck, but here I went straight to the source. You can always try these other solutions if you want to do things differently.

Setting up EmulationStation

There are a few steps

Getting started with EmulationStation isn't particularly difficult, but it might take some time if you're not used to this sort of thing. First, you'll need to download the latest version of ES-DE (EmulationStation – Desktop Edition). This is the current iteration of the project, as the original version was abandoned back in 2015. That original site still shows up quite high in Google search results, so make sure you go for the right version.

Once you have installed ES-DE, you can just start it and it will open a very clean full screen interface, but you will notice that it says that no ROMs were detected. By default, the program looks for ROMs in the C:\Users\%username%\ROMS folder, but you must first create the directories in it. Just select the Create directories Option to create all the directories for virtually every console. Now if you navigate to the ROMS folder, you will see folders for each console. Your job is to move your game files to the folder for the specific console. There are many folders here that you don't need, so delete the folders for any consoles you don't want to use. You can also change the ROM directory, but always make sure to create the subdirectories in it and organize them properly.

Now you can start ES-DE again and all your games will appear, perfectly labeled under the correct system. But you still won't be able to play them because you need the emulator itself. Your best option is to download RetroArch because it lets you install cores for different emulators and they all work under the same unified interface which, importantly, also works well with controllers. After you start RetroArch, you can install all the cores for the emulators you need. As a Nintendo fan, I went for the classics: NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance (since it can also play original Game Boy games), Nintendo 64 and even Nintendo DS. You might say that the Nintendo DS isn't retro, but keep in mind that this system is now 20 years old.

Once all the cores are installed, you'll be able to play your games for the most part, but since we're looking to build a console, you'll also need to pair a controller, so stick with the Windows desktop for now.

Connecting a controller

It should be relatively easy… but it is not always

Both ES-DE and RetroArch are widely compatible with all kinds of controllers, so if you have a controller lying around that works with your PC, you should theoretically be good to go. If it's a USB controller, all you need to do is plug it in and you're good to go. For wireless controllers, you'll need to add them via Bluetooth settings. Click the quick action box at the bottom of your taskbar (marked by the Internet/Battery/Sound icons) and turn Bluetooth on. Then click the little arrow to see a list of available devices. At the same time, make sure your controller is in pairing mode. Then just select the controller and it should connect automatically.

Now you might be thinking that's it, and in some cases it might be all you need, but my experience was a bit frustrating. I was using a third-party Nintendo Switch controller, and while ES-DE worked perfectly fine, RetroArch refused to recognize it. RetroArch is set up by default to use xinput controllers, which are used by Xbox controllers. If you don't have an Xbox controller, you might need to go into the RetroArch settings and look for the driver options, then change both the input and controller drivers to dinput. For me, however, that didn't work either, and I had to set the controller driver to sdl2, which was a bit frustrating.

Even then, if you're using RetroArch, you might find that RetroArch works fine with that controller, but the emulators themselves recognize the input as if it were a PlayStation/Xbox controller, where the confirm button is on the bottom rather than the right. So I had to manually remap those buttons as well to match the Nintendo layout.

You are (almost) ready to play your games!

Start with your titles

Once this setup process is complete, you're basically ready to play your games. You can boot up ES-DE and see a list of your consoles with the games available on each. While you can get started right away, I recommend opening the menu here, going to the scraper settings, and then scraping all of your games. This will find things like boxart, screenshots, and even demo videos online, all of which will be visible in the UI of the games you have installed, making the UI much more fun and lively. It really does make the whole experience feel much better.

One final step is to go into the advanced settings in ES-DE and check the alternative emulator options to make sure all the preset emulators are set to use the cores you have installed in RetroArch. Once everything is tuned, you're good to go.

EmulationStation's interface is nice and clean and navigation is super easy. You can download themes to customize the look, but that's completely optional. Just pick a console, choose a game and you're good to go.

You may still experience problems

Emulators are not perfect

If you are new or inexperienced with emulation (like me), you might still run into some issues, which was definitely the case for me. The biggest issue was the NES, which I just couldn't get to work properly. For one thing, PAL games ran way too fast, so I recommend getting NTSC ROMs if possible. But even then, I kept having this problem in Super Mario Bros This releases the Run button (B). every time I jumped, so I kept losing speed while jumping and lost a few times as a result. I couldn't figure out what was wrong but both Mesen and Nestopia UE had the same problem.

On the Nintendo 64 I also had major graphics issues when using the Mupen64Plus Next core, but luckily most of these were resolved by installing ParaLLEl instead. This is all on top of the controller issues I also mentioned above. If you're new to this whole thing, expect to spend some time figuring out all the settings.

EmulationStation is a great software

Despite all the issues I had, EmulationStation is a very cool piece of software that feels like it was developed out of love for the games you play. The sleek interface is reminiscent of something you might see at an official demo kiosk, and the ability to view graphics and trailers for each game makes everything that much nicer.

If you want, you can even add ES-DE to the startup folder in Windows so that it starts immediately and you don't have to open the app yourself every time you turn on the computer. I'm not a huge emulator fan, but maybe I'll use this in the future when I want to play some older games with friends.