When you get a new computer, you may be left wondering what to do with your old machine now that you don't actively need it anymore. Thankfully, there's quite a lot of options, such as turning it into a photo 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 a variety of solutions, but we're going to focus on EmulationStation, a dedicated frontend that's available for a variety of different systems that allows you to play all your games easily with a controller and using a beautiful UI. EmulationStation actually helps power other popular experiences like this, such as RetroBat or EmuDeck, but I went straight to the source on this one. You can always try those other solutions if you want to do things differently.

Setting up EmulationStation

There are a few steps

Getting started with EmulationStation isn't terribly difficult, but it can take some time if you're not used to this kind of thing. First, you have to download the latest version of ES-DE (EmulationStation - Desktop Edition). This is the current iteration of the project, since the original version was abandoned back in 2015. That original website still ranks fairly high on Google search results, so be sure you're going for the right version.

Once you've installed ES-DE, you can simply launch it and it will go straight into a very clean full-screen UI, but you'll notice that it says no ROMs detected. By default, the program will look for ROMs in the C:\Users\%username%\ROMS folder, but you need to first create the directories inside of it. Simply choose the Create Directories option to create all the directories for just about every console ever. Now, when you navigate to the ROMS folder, you'll see folders for each console, and it's your job to move your game files into the folder for each respective console. There are a lot of folders here that you won't need, so delete the folders for any console you're not planning to use. You can also change the ROM directory, but you'll always have to create the sub-directories inside it and organize them properly.

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

Once all the cores are installed, you're mostly ready to play your games. But we're trying to make this a console, so you also have to pair a controller. For now, stay on the Windows desktop.

Connecting a controller

It should be relatively easy... but it isn't always

Both ES-DE and RetroArch are pretty widely compatible with all kinds of controllers, so in theory, if you have a controller lying around that works with your PC, you should be good to go. If it's a USB controller, you just need to plug it in and you're good to go. For wireless controllers, you need to add them using Bluetooth settings. Click the quick actions panel in the bottom of your taskbar (marked by the internet/battery/sound icons) and turn on Bluetooth, the click the little arrow to see a list of available devices. At the same time, ensure your controller is in pairing mode. Then, simply select the controller and it should connect automatically.

Now, you might think this is 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 totally fine, RetroArch refused to recognize it. Out of the box, RetroArch is set up to use xinput controllers, which is what's used by Xbox controllers. If you don't have an Xbox controller, you might have to go into the RetroArch settings and look for the driver options, then change both the input and controller drivers to dinput. For me, even that didn't work, though, and I had to set the controller driver to sdl2, so it was a bit frustrating.

Even then, while RetroArch, you may find that RetroArch works fine with this controller, but emulators themselves will recognize input as if it was a PlayStation/Xbox controller, where the confirmation button is at the bottom, rather than on the right. So I also had to manually remap those buttons so they matched the Nintendo layout.

You're (almost) ready to play your games!

Get started with your titles

With this setup process out of the way, youre basically ready to play your games. You can launch ES-DE and you'll see your consoles listed, with the available games inside each one. While you can get started right away, I do recommend opening the menu here and going to the scraper settings, then scraping all your games. This will go online to find things like boxart, screenshots, and even demo videos that are all visible in the UI for the games you have installed, which makes the interface much more fun and lively. It really makes this whole experience feel that much better.

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

The UI in EmulationStation is beautiful and clean, and it's super easy to navigate. You can download themes to customize the look, but that's totally optional. Simply choose a console, choose a game, and you're good to go.

You may still run into some issues

Emulators aren't perfect

If you're new or inexperienced with emulation (as I am), you might still run into some problems with all of this, which was definitely the case for me. The biggest issue I had was the NES, which I simply couldn't get to work properly. For one thing, PAL games ran way too quickly, so I recommend finding NTSC ROMs if you can. But even then, I kept having this issue in Super Mario Bros that would release the run button (B) whenever I jumped, so I would constantly lose speed when jumping and lost a few times as a result. I couldn't figure out what was causing it, but both Mesen and Nestopia UE had the same problem.

Over on the Nintendo 64, I also had huge graphical glitches when using the Mupen64Plus-Next core, but most of those were thankfully fixed by installing ParaLLEl instead. That's all in addition to the controller issues I also mentioned above. Basically, expect to spend some time figuring out all the settings if you're new to this whole ordeal.

EmulationStation is a great piece of software

Despite all the issues I had, though, EmulationStation is a very cool piece of software that feels like it was crafted out of love for the games you're playing. The sleek UI feels like something you might see at an official demo kiosk of some kind, and the ability to display artwork and trailers for each game makes everything feel that much nicer.

If you want, you can even add ES-DE to the startup folder in Windows so it launches immediately and you don't even have to open the app yourself each time you turn on the computer. I'm not much of an emulation guy, but I might use this in the future when I want to play some older games with friends.