What A Weird Name
Welcome to ‘Project Retrö Pi Örter.’ or ‘PRÖ,’ for short. I’ve been experimenting with saying it ‘ret-trough-peh-nor-tur,’ as the pi symbol looks like the letter ‘N’ in this font.
Using a ‘N’ in the domain name also makes it simpler than ‘pi.’
I’ve settled on this, and will register a domain accordingly, pronouncing it ‘ret-trough-nor-tur,’ though the real name is above.
Phonetically? Totally wrong… but when has that every mattered?
Genesis Of The Name
I was playing around with the reverse spelling of ‘retro,’ and came upon this Wiktionary page describing the word ‘örter’ as a plural of an Old German word ‘ört,’ meaning a ‘place, location, point, position,’ or, ‘the collective of inhabitants of such a settlement.’
There’s also the Old English ‘ort,’ which means, among other things, ‘a small coin.’ Here’s a Polish Wikipedia article about it, if you’re really that interested.
Apropos.
There’s also, tangentially, the Oort Cloud, which encapsulates everything within the Sun’s gravitational influence, aka ‘Everything under the Sun.’
I also thought the ‘o’ with the umlauts look a little like a joystick and buttons, with the pi symbol looking like the center screen of a GameGear, Switch, or SteamDeck, so it’s also a nod to that. If you look at the ‘R’s, I think they look a bit like grips.
YMMV.
The name is also unique, and a far easier domain to secure than common words already in heavy use.
Enjöy!
Mission Statement
This is the landing page for the documentation and download project I’m creating as of February ’25.
My intention is to document my process of building a fully-functional and feature-rich Retropie cabinet, with supporting Raspberry Pi hardware, cabinets, controllers, optional and experimental functionality, and rounding things out – scraped game descriptions, images, and video, as collected from the numerous amazing scraping resources available to us in 2025.
Along with building this, I will also provide thoughtful ratings of the quality and experience accordingly, to give insight into my approach to the many and varied aspects of this project, as to provide you with the resources to make choices on whatever you plan.
I will start with my first love in the micro-computer emulation world and inspiration for the name – RetroPie – but as I continue to explore and expand, I’ll include the various other Raspberry Pi-based emulation projects.
Why?
Simply because documentation on how to do some of the more advanced functionality is scattered about and buried in forum posts, blogs, or deep in the extensive documentation all across the greater Internet.
As I’ve been working on building my own table-top cabinet, I’ve found looking for the various functionality extensions difficult to find.
I’ve been collecting all the ROM, the various downloads, HOWTOs, and different guides, and wanted to collate all the various documents and how to use them into one centralized location so when someone new to the scene comes along, they can find a comprehensive and (hopefully) easy-to-use guide to build the most feature-rich gaming experience possible.
The other issue is, some of the roms, the extension packs, and for example, the HD texture packs are hosted in places where they may stagnate and get taken down, potentially losing these pieces to time. As a self-described ‘data hoarder,’ my intention is to provide a backup location, via either the website here, or in various Bittorrent downloads, a means to keep these jewels from disappearing.
Expectation
Summary: I will document and host a copy of everything I can. That said, I have a life. Just remember: this and other relevant pages hosted here will change a lot as I gather and create documentation accordingly.
Regarding software: Where possible, I will upload or fork everything I can into a centralized Github account, so everything I mention here is available as it was when I was configuring and documenting it, while always linking to and giving credit to the original creators when possible.
Realize that what I host here may be out-of-date compared to the newest updates to the hardware and software that makes this hobby so interesting. The documentation is only as good as the relationship to the latest software updates from the Retropie community and the last time I updated here. If those two components get too far askew, my documentation may only be good for historical context.
There are many facets of building a fully-functional gaming system, and there are several aspects of this that, honestly, I don’t fully understand. The world of emulators and their numerous and varied functionality across various host platforms makes for a lot of learning, experimentation, and trial-and-error.
I’ll be documenting my processes as I go.
Legality
TLDR: I will host copies of everything I possibly can legally. If I get a cease-and-desist request, or the owner of content I host asks, I will take down any software with links to the original.
The legal topics of ROMs is a tough one outside the scope of what I’d post here, but I’ll attempt to find sites and documentation that more fully here in this section at another time.
