Making a Retro Arcade Light Gun Game Using a Raspberry Pi

For our school project we were tasked with making a retro arcade game. We had to use a Raspberry Pi, laser cut a chassis out of wood and keep it within 45x45x45cm.

We decided to make a light gun game because it looked fun and we wanted to challenge ourselves, for this we used a Wii remote. Using a Wii remote meant we had to buy a separate device to provide the Infra Red (IR) light for the remote to work. We fitted the Raspberry Pi with RetroPie to download and play the game. We chose RetroPie because it is a very simple platform.

For this project you need:

Raspberry Pi 4.0:

https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-4

Computer screen:

Any screen that can connect to mini-HDMI will work

(you can also buy a mini-HDMI converter)

Wii remote (a used one will work as well):

https://www.amazon.com/Wii-Remote-Controller-Nintendo

Dolphin bar (or equivalent):

Thin wooden planks: You can buy it from any large hardware store

The tools:

A laser cutter

3d printer (optional)

Excluding the costs of the tools the price should be around 120-130 euro.

First we will download RetroPie. You go to the RetroPie website (~~> cc) and download RetroPie. If you encounter any problems, you can follow an in depth guide for installing Retro Pie and the corresponding games here.

The sensor connects to the raspberry pi using a USB cable. After connecting it to the raspberry pi you will have to configure the controller that you can connect to the sensor. The Raspberry pi recognizes the sensor as a keyboard. Do not worry, this is normal. You can then configure the buttons, download a game and play it.

As you can see in the picture, we have disassembled the screen because we want to install it in an arcade game chassis.

If you just wanted to play light gun games on the raspberry pi, you don't have to disassemble the monitor and can stop here.

To be more immersive we made a chassis for the arcade. We made the chassis out of 2.5mm wood that we had cut and used nails to fix the chassis together. A wood cover is glued to the screen so we can attach it to the rest of the chassis.

Finally, we fixed all the electronics to the chassis.

Then you're finished