new distro batocera

[George Law]

Hey all,

Just wanted to share a new distro I've been having fun with.

https://batocera.org/

and a video trailer from a previous release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pi1wLjShkQ

I'm not much of a gamer but I've been feeling nostalgic for some of the arcade games and things I played as a kid after playing some games on an arcade console a friend of mine has.   

Her's is in a fairly large cabinet - similar to this one https://a.co/d/9SoOVvw - she bought it for an airbnb she rents out .. but anyway, I told her its probably powered internally  by a raspberry pi and showed her the approximate size of the pi ...

After playing her console it got me thinking - I've got 3 gen 1 HP Chromebox small form factor pcs I bought for a work home lab project that didn't work out ... I had to remove a screw internally to be able to flash the bios to something I could install linux on, then i upgraded the RAM and internal drive. 

Batocera comes with several "free" public domain games, but the wayback machine has been useful with obtaining some other roms from NES, SNES, Gameboy, Turbo Grafix, etc ... 

I'm using a cheap Logitech gamepad - F310 I bought off amazon - it works with everything out of the box.  So really zero setup other than adding new game roms and then re-scanning

I also installed it on an ASUS flipbook low end laptop - I had played around with several distos on this laptop - its only  got 2GB of ram soldered on the motherboard so no upgrade option...  hardly enough to run 2 tabs in chrome/firefox ... but it handles batocera fine. 

I stayed up way too late last night playing Galaga, Legend of Zelda and Super Mario bros ... lol

not something that could easily be demo'd during a meeting - but just wanted to share :)

~George