Help and FAQ's
Need some help?
This Help and FAQ's page is not the start nor the end.
We hope this hub and the Retro Racing Lunatics Facebook page will help you on your journey.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Not sure where to start or have unanswered questions? We hope you find the information below helpful.
Remember, there is no such thing as a silly question. 🤡
1. Games
Firstly, we do not host any ROMs. Google should be able to answer that question, however a good starting point is archive.org.
For some of the software, go to our Front Ends and Emulators page where you can quickly source links to many options.
2. Emulators
It will vary depending on what type of game you are playing. Many older games use Retroarch (which is compatible with a few platforms) but the later and most recent games require advanced emulation. We suggest you Google the game title or ask on our Facebook page if you can't find an answer.
This is a very subjective question! All emulators are all good as their development teams maintain the best ones. We only list the ones community members suggest that work best for any hardware/game combination.
3. Front Ends
The answer to this is found on the Front Ends and Emulators page.
Great question! It's best to research each one e.g. LaunchBox or BigBox, RetroFE, Retrobat, etc. as they all have their own pros and cons. But which one is best boils down to your time, patience and technical ability.
We highly recommend you pick one - say LaunchBox - and build your own library so you can learn the in's and outs over a ready made build. In saying this, ready made builds are also great, but they also have learning curves.
We highly recommend you pick one - say LaunchBox - and build your own library so you can learn the in's and outs over a ready made build. In saying this, ready made builds are also great, but they also have learning curves.
Links to some popular Front Ends can be found here.
If you want to jump straight in, why not take a look at our pre-made Builds page where you will find a good selection to wet your appetite!
Importantly, you should always keep an eye on the Retro Racing Lunatics Facebook page as more are being made (and shared) all the time!
If you want to jump straight in, why not take a look at our pre-made Builds page where you will find a good selection to wet your appetite!
Importantly, you should always keep an eye on the Retro Racing Lunatics Facebook page as more are being made (and shared) all the time!
4. PC Hardware
The question here is really about the emulators and games you want to run. Some emulators don't require a lot of horsepower per say (eg. MAME) but in general here are some tips for the recommended spec for emulators requiring more power:
MAME - Most console emulators are OK with lower specs.
Teknoparrot - This is very subjective as it's more about the arcade you want to run.
At a minimum, we recommend.
Note:
For Raspberry Pi, the best place to go is RetroPie
MAME - Most console emulators are OK with lower specs.
Teknoparrot - This is very subjective as it's more about the arcade you want to run.
At a minimum, we recommend.
- Intel Core i5-9400F, 2.90GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 (at least 6 Cores Processor)
- SSD Storage 256GB
- Memory: 8GB RAM
- *GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Dedicated Graphics Card
* Having an independent NVIDIA graphics card is recommended
RPC3 (PlayStation 3)Note:
For Raspberry Pi, the best place to go is RetroPie
Once again, this is very subjective as there are pros and cons for each. To make it harder, new developments are occurring all the time so it's important to keep up to date.
We suggest you research our Wheels, Controllers and Equipment page for links to the types of wheels currently on offer. Once you've done that, ask lots of questions within the Retro Racing Lunatics pages on Facebook. There you will find many subject matter experts along with community members who have used multiple vendors.
We suggest you research our Wheels, Controllers and Equipment page for links to the types of wheels currently on offer. Once you've done that, ask lots of questions within the Retro Racing Lunatics pages on Facebook. There you will find many subject matter experts along with community members who have used multiple vendors.
6. Tips And Tricks
1. Research and ask loads of questions in our Retro Racing Lunatics Facebook group! There are no silly questions as we've all started from scratch at some point in time.
2. When asking for help, we encourage you to be clear with your question! eg. Something like 'why won't my wheel work', doesn't usually get you a good result. If you explain the problem and tell everyone what you've attempted, our community should be willing to give you advice.
3. Build your own game library from scratch. This is a great way to learn the ropes, understand how your hardware, front end and emulators work. The easiest/first emulator we recommend is MAME and build up from there.
2. When asking for help, we encourage you to be clear with your question! eg. Something like 'why won't my wheel work', doesn't usually get you a good result. If you explain the problem and tell everyone what you've attempted, our community should be willing to give you advice.
3. Build your own game library from scratch. This is a great way to learn the ropes, understand how your hardware, front end and emulators work. The easiest/first emulator we recommend is MAME and build up from there.
7. Third Party Apps
These types of applications help your hardware and the emulators work in a more optimised fashion.
Please refer to our How-to-guides page for videos/intel on these applications. Also, below are some FAQ's to point you to some of the commonly used third-party applications.
Please refer to our How-to-guides page for videos/intel on these applications. Also, below are some FAQ's to point you to some of the commonly used third-party applications.
Autohotkey is used to help run scripts by remapping wheel and/or controller buttons which hook into other applications. We recommend you view this Youtube Video that unveils many benefits of AHK.
The link provided above (credit to Just4fun) provides an excellent explanation.
The link provided above (credit to Just4fun) provides an excellent explanation.
Some emulators or games are not built specifically for wheels so they have visible mouse cursors on-screen.
Nomousey is a small app that can hide these annoyances and is run from either a batch or AHK file. For more information, you can visit the Sinden wiki where
Nomousey is a small app that can hide these annoyances and is run from either a batch or AHK file. For more information, you can visit the Sinden wiki where
Some GPUs (like AMD) won't allow certain games to run in full screen. This application helps overcome that so you can play your favourite games in a borderless window ... no more time consuming alt-tabs.
Visit their Github page where you can download the software.
Visit their Github page where you can download the software.