PSA: arm64 Retroarch cores

DevTerm
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For anyone interested in retro gaming: it’s easy to install Retroarch on DevTerm with sudo apt install retroarch, but then it’s a bummer the first time you navigate the UI to learn that there are no emulator cores. This is because the main core library in the Libretro repo doesn’t include arm64 (aarch64) builds.

I wanted to let folks know that this repo does provide arm64 core builds. I wasn’t able to just point Retroarch to the URL and install them through the UI though. Instead I had to manually download them, extract them, and copy the core files to the retroarch cores folder (which for me was at /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libretro/).

With that done it was straightforward to map the DevTerm d-pad and ABXY buttons in the Retroarch UI, and I was playing Playstation and Super Nintendo games in no time. I think I still have some fiddling to do with sound and video settings, but generally Retroarch is looking functional to me on the DevTerm.

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8 Likes
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great work digging this up. thanks for sharing it!

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Worked for me, but the game select overlay won’t go away?

I’ll try updating everything (it’s an arrived today uconsole a06). Maybe it’s a package thing?

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Ok, a workaround. Load the title. Then hit F1, and then resume. Menus gone.

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As an alternative, it’s also possible to pull a bunch of arm64 cores at one shot from the official Lakka (https://www.lakka.tv/) rpi4 aarch64 image.

The reddit thread at https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/pbzfwu/comment/hafgtqx/ runs through how to access the core and info files, and those will need to be moved to the retroarch core and info directories on the DevTerm – With the .so files all going into the core directory, and the .info files all going into the info directory.

(The core directory was also at /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libretro/ for me, but the info directory was set to /usr/share/libretro/info/ – These can be configured via the retroarch settings if necessary.)

If it helps, I also used the settings here (GitHub - knuxyl/libretro-64bit-rpi4: 64-bit libretro cores for rpi4) to compile retroarch 1.15.0, which seems to work well.