Picade Review: A DIY Mini Arcade Cabinet

playing games Your childhood can be a lot of fun. Muscle memory often kicks in on old classics that you’ve spent days listening to, even if it’s been decades. Slipping back into that groove can almost feel like coming home. No wonder retro gaming has never been so popular. You can buy a selection of great retro gaming consoles, each with their own temptations and drawbacks, or you can build your own.

The Picade is a mini arcade cabinet kit. It includes all the hardware you need packed in organized boxes with clear assembly instructions. Add a Raspberry Pi, a USB-C power adapter, and a microSD card running the RetroPie operating system and you’re good to go. Set everything up correctly and you can play games on emulators for just about any retro system you can think of (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, NeoGeo, Amiga, Amstrad, ZX Spectrum – the list goes on), although you can Game must supply ROMs themselves for legal reasons.

Picade assembly

The Picade comes in two sizes with an 8″ or 10″ screen (I built the 10″ version). You could probably assemble the Picade in under two hours if you follow the instructions carefully and work with confidence. It’s suitable for beginners who fancy building their own computers, and if you’ve ever upgraded RAM or installed a new hard drive, there’s nothing here that will faze you. But it’s fiddly, and you need a nice, clean work surface with plenty of room.

As an impatient idiot it took me over three hours but that’s because I didn’t read the instructions properly and forgot to remove part of the protective film on the acrylic for the screen which meant I had to disassemble it. I then had to disassemble it again because a hair was caught between the acrylic and the screen and was driving me crazy; The screen assembly is the biggest challenge. Connecting is fiddly and requires a steady hand. There are a few steps where the video guide will come in handy.

Your reward is a sturdy little desktop arcade cabinet that looks great. You get artwork and stickers in the box, but you can always design and add your own (it’s easy to swap out the cardboard cutouts to fit under the acrylic panels). The 10-inch IPS display has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, the loudspeaker is impressively loud and you get a real arcade-style joystick with six buttons.

A keyboard is mandatory for the initial setup. I connected the Picade to my Wi-Fi network and used the web interface to drag and drop ROMs from my PC, but you could load them onto the microSD card or use a USB flash drive. There are several ways to find ROMs for RetroPie, but be careful as playing licensed games you didn’t purchase is illegal.

Continue to play

The Picade is a great way to play arcade games and titles from older consoles. The full-size joystick and buttons feel responsive and durable. Classic arcade controls put a lot less strain on your fingers and hands than controllers, especially the cheap controllers that come with many retro consoles. All that’s missing is a volume control (I found it annoying having to delve into the menu to change the volume).

I had a great time with Galaga And Ikarugaplayed something shadow run And Super Bombermanand lit ghouls and ghosts (an old favorite of mine). It wasn’t long before the beeps and bloops lured my kids away from the Xbox and they were trying out a few classic games. Mrs. Pac-Man turned out to be the most popular. It’s easy to configure the controls in RetroPie, but they don’t work with every emulator, so be prepared to dive into the settings occasionally and figure out how to map them.

Because the Picade includes a Raspberry Pi, you can tinker with the software as much as you like. The recommended RetroPie OS is sort of an amalgamation of projects like Emulation Station and RetroArch. There is a vibrant community of retro gamers, and you can find tons of themes and scripts put together by people. There’s a learning curve, so expect to spend some time tweaking, but you can usually find answers on the forum.