I recently received an arcade controller and decided to give it a try with some games on my computer in which for some reason had problems mapping addresses "Left and right" so I thought it was pretty weird and I was about to return the product, but before that I decided to try it in Recalbox on my RPi but I had to download the system image and place it on my SD which I had with Chromium, since I was doing some tests.
And good when accessing the Recalbox website I realize that there is a new version of the distribution with which it was great for me to test my control and especially the new version of this great distribution oriented to challenge games, with it and with pleasure I share with you the news of this new version.
After almost 6 months development the new version of Recalbox 7.0 was released and in this new version there are a lot of changes, among which stand out a new search engine integrated into the system interface and in this a virtual keyboard is integrated, as well as a BIOS verification system, support for RPi 4 and more.
For those who are still unaware of Recalbox, you should know that this is a free, free and open source operating system, jointly developed by a team of enthusiasts.
This operating system dedicated to retro gaming offers a simple and free solution to play consoles and video games on any HDMI television.
What's new in Recalbox 7.0?
This new edition of RecalBox 7.0 presents many changes and among the most important that we can find one of them and one of the most anticipated is, full support for the Raspberry Pi 4.
On the part of the partition «Share» (where games, bios and backups are stored) now it can be read directly from Windows.
Another of the changes that stands out in this new version is the gsome work done by the developers to improve the firmware, since nowa is much faster and more robust than ever and is that one of the improvements that chey check this is the BIOS check before starting a game, besides that also 80% automatic detection and configuration of USB / Bluetooth controllers performed on the market, with which there is no longer need to have to be mapping the joysticks or connected controls.
On the other hand, it is highlighted that NetPlay service has been completely revised and improved, Ya que a spectator mode has been created, game password protection has been addedIn addition, a new automatic change of the guest kernel (J2, J3…) was integrated to correspond with the emulator selected by the host (J1).
As well New systems compatible with Netplay are highlighted: Atari2600, PCEngine CD, PC-FX, Family Disc System, TIC-80, Sega CD and Mr. Boom
In addition, another of the great features that make this new release special is that From the first start we will be able to notice that Recalbox comes with almost 150 games offered for free.
This is due to Recalbox has acquired the rights to almost 150 independent games to offer them exclusively from the first installation.
The games offered are from the Atari2600 to the Megadrive, through the NES, the Super Nintendo, the GameBoy, the TI-80, ScummVM, the Vectrex, the MSX / MSX2, the Amstrad or the Commodore64, Recalbox 7.0 offers natively discover a selection of excellent totally free indie games recently developed on older consoles.
Finally another of the novelties that stand out and that I personally liked a lot is the new function introduced «Pad-To-Keyboard»And well they will wonder what it is for. Well, this function makes it easier to use these "ordinosaurs" that generally require a keyboard to use it. Therefore, this feature will allow mapping the keyboard keys in a controller in a very simple way.
Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:
- Added ten new emulated systems, leading to over 100 systems now compatible with Recalbox 7.0
- Automatic recovery: restore factory settings after 3 unsuccessful starts
- New update system for future versions, easier and faster than ever
- Native support for the INTEL NUC mini PC range and compatibility for many other PC configurations
- Management of virtual systems, with creation of automatic categories, such as editor, Arcade, genre, etc.
- Adding 3 virtual systems: "all games", "last games played" and "multiplayer games"
- Completely rewritten audio part and native support for different audio formats (MP3, FLAC, OGG files, etc.)
- KODI Updated to Leia 18.7.1 with 4K at x265 on Pi4 and Netflix / Youtube Add-ons
- Buildroot updated to version 2020.02
- RetroArch updated to v1.9.0
- Update all emulators to their latest version
- The internal scraper is now fully customizable. Now it is possible to extract period manuals
- Better multi-disc game management
- Improved GPi case management + optimizations
- Improved N64 emulation on Raspberry Pi
- Netplay: the multi retro online
Download RecalBox 7.0
If you want to download this system for your Raspberry Pi or to use it on your computer You must go to the official website of the project where you can get the most current system image.
They can download it from this link.
At They must choose which device they will use for RecalBoxOS and download the version corresponding to it.
The most appreciated news, in my opinion, is that the Share partition comes in exfat and is accessible from any modern OS, and the management of the BIOS from the frontend itself. Very nice update.