Retropie is software available for the Raspberry Pi that is meant to emulate games on various consoles including Neo Geo arcades, PSX, Game Boy Advance, etc. It would seem, however, that my specific Retropie distribution has one purpose. To make me unhappy…

I want to play old school games; switching between them seamlessly and using a wireless controller so I can play games untethered. Sadly, Retropie doesn’t care about this. You see? Retropie doesn’t want me to be happy!

So far I’ve managed to pair my PS3 controller. I configured it to be Player 1 in each game by default, making it the main controller. However, it is only functional when traversing the Retropie menus and NOT during in-game emulation.

There is no response when I push buttons on the controller. It’s frustrating! But there is hope on the horizon.

I see consistent responses from keys on my USB keyboard. I tested it on an SNES game to be sure. The problem is, I can’t end emulation and return to the main menu.

The shortcut for ending emulation is Start + Select. As many times as I push the corresponding keys, nothing happens. This means I have to perform a hard reboot every time I want to end emulation
and return to the menu.

This impairs the experience by adding 2 minutes of time between closing a game and restarting the system. (Not to mention I have to get up and unplug the Raspberry Pi every single time.)

I’m not sure what is causing this bug to occur. Last time I had issues with a controller, Retropie failed to save my configurations because of a directory created in a system folder. Perhaps this bug is related to the issue preventing the Retropie from loading controller configurations. Only time and research will tell.