Retroarch: Setup for Retroarch in Steam for Windows/PC 2024

okay so in today's setup gu I'm going to be showing you how to set up retro Arch through Steam so for steam users out there yes there's actually a retro watch app you can get and in this setup guide I'm going to be showing you how to install it and how to actually use retro watch your so I'm going to be showing you many different video settings how to save in load States how to add games how to access your direct in order to put bioses into place so there's a lot of information in this one as I most must more but this one is for absolute beginners so check this one [Music] out okay now before I start today's steamer retro watch setup guide for Windows PC if you like what you see today hit notifications subscribe and like so you don't miss upcoming retro emulation content so every time I release a guide like this one you're watching today you'll get notified and that also helps my channel out a great deal too so the last time I covered installing retro watch through Steam was going back in May 2023 and of course A lot's happened since with retroarch and with steam itself so this is going to be a setup for complete beginners and what we're going to do first is actually download Steam so over on the steam website and I'll leave the links in my description we're simply just going to go to install Steam if you've already got steam installed then obviously make sure you're logged in and you can just skip this bit but I'm going to install Steam and once you've downloaded steam we're going to get a XE which is your main setup okay so we're just going to go for the process now of installing steam onto Windows PC and then obviously just select your language just here so English in my case the next part of this is kind of important it's going to be asking you where you want to install Steam so we can actually change the destination folder very easily just by going to browse just here and you can actually choose where you want steam to install on your computer for me I'm going to just leave this to the default C drive program files folder and it's going to create a new folder called steam so if I go to install this Okie do so we've now just installed Steam and if I go into my C drive and if I then just go down to my program f folder we should have a Steam folder now and here it is cool so what I need to do then is run Steam and this bit might take you a little lengthy time it's just updated steam to make sure we got the latest version of it okay so next part you're going to need to do is either sign in with your QR code or just manually type in your account name and password Okay so so once you signed in you'll likely get a code sent to your email address so I'm just going to do that now and once You' ventage your code in we're then log in into steam okay so we're now inside of steam and what we need to do is actually search for retro Arch so I need to look for retro Arch now now if you stay on the store tab you're going to find search just here if I just type into search retroarch here it is now once you've located retrat as it says for me it's already in my steam library for you watching this if you've never done this before it will say install now so if I go to play now so when it comes to installing this we can actually set it to where install default it's going to go into my C drive if we go up to the manage here we can then select where we want it to install so say you want it to go into your Steam folder in that program file folder that you just install Steam to you can set it to do that what I'm going to do is just set it to install to default so just C drive and install and I'm also going to make sure that create desktop shortcut is and if you want to create start menu or shortcut keep this checked I'm going to just uncheck this one and go to and right at the bottom we'll see that it's now downloading and then it will go into installing and here we go retro AR is now in the win using steam okay so it's now ready okay so let's now just close down steam just minimize that and you're going to find on your desktop you've now got a retro watch shortcut which we installed and asked it to do just a minute ago so first of all let's just open up retro watch and see if this is going to work and here we go so it's now going into Retro watch using steam and this is retro watch now now before I go any further if you don't like the way retroarch looks as it is we can actually change this to make it look a lot nicer if we go over the settings and I'm using my d-pad on my Google studio controller and let me just remind you there that retro watch is very good with automatically configuring your controllers I've used Xbox controllers PlayStation controllers and I'm currently using a Google stadio controller for this setup guide so we're going to go to user interace and if I go to menu I'm going to select xmb which is quite a popular menu system for ret if I come out I'm then going to go to main menu and if I use my d-pad to go across and go to configuration file I'm going to just make sure I save this current configuration because I now change to xmb theme so I'm going to press a on this and if I come out by pressing B and go to restart there we go we now got the xmb menu which to some looks a lot nicer so how do you add games into retroarch using steam well first of all you're going to need some games so what I'm going to be using for this setup guide is a couple of Nintendo NES games as well as a PlayStation game PlayStation games are going to need bios and that's what I'm chos to show you how to set up PlayStation so you know where bios WS are going to be located and how to set them up so let's just close out of retro Arch if I go down to quick so on my desktop now I've got two Nintendo NZ games I got Robocop and one of my personal favorites from the child of days is water games what I'm going to do is just put these two Nintendo NES games into a folder so right click on your desktop shortcut folder and I'm going to name this folder NES if I put both of my NES games into this folder what I'm going to do is also extract both of these because when when we go back to retroarch and we download what's known as chorus pretty much miniature emulators exclusively running through retro Arch some cores might require your games to be unzipped so just in case I'm going to exract both of these by right clicking on them and it strats in here cool so we now got a copy of Robocop net as well as RoboCop do zip and same for water games so to import these into retro watch using steam we're just going to launch retro watch again and here we go so we need to import these now into Retro watch so they're easier to access so I'm going to just scroll over to manual scan and content directory and C drive because that's where my games are and from C drive I'm going to just scroll down until I get get to users now if you want to put your NZ games for example your NES games into a folder elsewhere rather than your desktop put them anywhere else but just for this guide and simplicity I'm going to look for them on my desktop so I'm going to go down to JY desktop and here is my Nest border which I've just created scan this directory then press into a to enter these options and if I Dess up on my d-pad that's going to bring us straight to the bottom start scan if I press a on this scan complete so if I now press B to come out and once we're out if I go right to the end we're going to now find the Nintendo NES games here so obviously if you want to use do zit files with particular course which require them it's up to you if you want a copy of each game one for NES for example and one do zip so next thing we need to do inside a retro watch is download a core like I was just saying a core is just think that is a miniature emulator so to run these games if I just go to run them it's not going to work so we need to download a core so what I'm going to do at this point is actually go into how retro watch looked by default because most of you out there new to Retro watch might get a little bit confused so to do this I'm going to just go over to my settings icon drivers menu and I'm going to set it back to Ozone and again just be sure everything you do on retro watch you save everything because it's got this thing about forgetting what you do so save current configuration restart and here we go we're now back into ozone the default retro beam okay so to download and install a core is very different from the general version of retro watch when we're downloading retro watch and using it through Steam we're going to go down to manage course and just here everything with the hashtags next to it tells us that these cores or emulators have been installed when we installed this using steam so you're going to find many of these cores don't have hashtags and this is where we can actually download them so for example if I want to download flycast install core installing core flycast and if I come out I can then check up if I've got a PlayStation core installed so for PlayStation I've got pcsx rearmed so I'm going to install that one install core and again just remember to go to configuration file and save everything you're doing and to run my net games I'm going to just press a and here's my games just here now I'm going to play RoboCop if I press a on this I got a selection of options to use just just here such as adding it to my favorites so if I press a add it to favorites press B to come out and if I go to favorites we can now see Robocop and back down to NZ now because retro watch through Steam downloads its own cores if I go to set core Association which means that every time we open up and run a game through retroarch we don't have to keep selecting which core or emulator to use so suggested cores I'm going to use fcm core set so every time I launch my Robocop game from now on it's not going to ask me which core I want to use it's going to automatically use [Music] it okay so whilst we're in gameplay using retro if I press the F1 key on my keyboard we can access the main menu the Retro quick menu that is and from here we can go down to save states and select state slot and for this particular game I have 1,000 different slots to save games into if I just leave this to Auto for now go to se state [Music] and f1's go back into quick menu and if I go down to load [Music] State and if I press F1 again and press B on my controller to come out we can even go down to core options for n and you'll find that different cores in retro watch but have different options uh for video for example but for this if we just go down to say video we can change the aspect ratio from here to say 4x3 or even Pixel Perfect and if we come back into the game and I'm pressing B quick menu a and a [Music] again and if you're a big fan of Robocop like I am this first level of Robocop LZ nothing to do with a film but that's another story we can also go to controls whil we're in quick menu and we can go down the port One controls and you can actually remap your controller to your preferences and whilst we're in quick menu I'm going to talk to about overlays let me show you how this is done if we go to settings user interface on screen display and if I just go down to on screen overlay and press a to go into this press a again to turn this on and if I go to Overlay preset I can then change the Bor and black sides of the screen and put some a bit more nice looking so if I go into borders and I select NZ admin border nees border. CFG and remember I'm pressing a in order to select these and then press bleed to come out main menu quick menu [Music] resume [Music] and F1 to enter the quick menu again and if we go to settings user interface onscreen display onscreen overlay if I go back to Overlay preset Parent Directory which takes us out I can then mess around with different overlays so you're not just limited to the nest admin border for example if I want to use TV integer if I come back out and go back into the game [Music] resume now you'll see that's very transparent you can see bits of the game through the overlay we can actually change What's called the opacity of this so again go to settings user interface on screen display on screen overlay and we got overlay opacity why crack this up to 1. and let's go back into the [Music] game and that's it and that will apply for every overlay so by adjusting the opacity you'll either strengthen the overlays by making it look more vibrant or if you go downwards on that scale it will become more transparent other things we can do in quick menu is under core options video we can go to a color palette and we can change how the color looks using these presets for example if I go down to fbxs Magnum and it's come out quick menu [Music] resume and by doing this I can then make my Nez games look as nice or as bad as I want now once you've established how you like your NES games or any game to look if we go to quick menu again core options manage core options we can actually then save these video settings so if I go to save game options it will apply these video settings to this particular game only using that retro watch cord that I'm using here which is FC euu M if I want to save these video settings to every game that I'm going to be using using this core then I'll go to save content directory options core options file created successfully now if I come out to exit my Robocop game so restart now this time if I load up my other game which is the very awesome and highly recommended ruler games because I've just applied those videos second to save them to run for every NZ game I run through that core I'm going to find my TV overlay is still going to be applied now personally for such a great game I don't like this overlay I don't think it's going to do it much justice so again settings user interface onc screen display onscreen overlay and I'm going to just get rid of TV Ino I'm not a big fan of this one so Nez Anam in Border and select and I want overlay opacity to display that overlay as strong as possible so 1.0 and if you notice as I'm pressing my buttons on my controller they actually responding to the overlay on screen if you don't like that then go back into quick menu quick menu on screen overlay and if I go down to show inputs on overlay it's currently set the physical controller if I turn this off and then come back out into my game I'm now pressing my action buttons my A and B button and it's not responding at all and I also changed the aspect ratio earlier on and I've still got those black sides so I can match this up to make use of my over relase so core options video aspect ratio I'm going to put this to 4x3 which is the original aspect ratio for Nintendo NES [Music] games [Music] what [Music] and yes I spent many hours playing ruler games as a kid I was totally hooked to this game but I never did finish it think I got near the end of this game if you played rer games comment below and let me know how you got with it back in the day so what we're going to do next then is actually take a look at setting up something a bit more advanced such as PlayStation and remember I've also downloaded the core for this which was pcsx rearmed so I'm going to just end off with the NES go the configuration file and save current configuration and then quit Okay so we're looking at adding some a bit more advanced now like I say so this is going to be Sony Playstation 1 now for those of you who aren't familiar with bios files and which bios files do to use inside of retro watch I would recommend using theet.com like I'm using right now and this is going to tell me exactly which bios spils I need for Playstation One games inside a retro watch so here's the BIOS spes that I need and what I'm going to do is actually put these into a directory where retroarch can actually read from so to do this we're going to need to look for where retro watch has been installed so we're going to go to C drive program files which is where steam installed to and here is steam we're going to go to steam apps common retro watch and inside this retro watch folder you're going to find another folder inal system and this is where your bios files need to be copied so I've got my BIOS files ready to use and I'm going to just drag and drop those into that retroarch system folder now the next thing we need to do is take a look at games for PS1 so if I go into my games just here I've got raen project these are in bin andq file extension and the same for Rayman awesome so just like Nintendo NES I'm going to pop these into a folder so right click new folder and call this folder PS1 so after I've created that PS1 folder I'm going to just drag and drop my two games in s there and then we need to import them into Retro Arch so I'm going to go for the import and process again so we're going to go down to import content manual scan content directory C drive and if I press up on my d-pad I'm going to go to users my jam folder desktop and I'm going to find my PS1 folder just here and this is where I just put my games as you can see see I'm going to scan this directory press up on my d-pad start scan and now I've got PS1 appear just here now to open up these games it's normally just a case of go over the do Q file now personally I suggest checking out my video on converting these into CHD and they work just fine CHD format would take away all of these files that just looks really messy and it will leave you with literally one file and it also saves you space but you can look for that setup guide in my videos so if I open up my game Rayman I'm going to go down to set core Association and earlier on I downloaded and installed a PlayStation core pcsx3 ORS if I select and I'm also going to add this one to my favorites and if I [Music] go [Music] and for video settings like like I said during the next part of the video you'll find that different cores have different options video options for example so access menu main menu by pressing F1 if I go to quick menu core options video as you'll see just here for PlayStation I have different settings so I'm going to change the video settings on my Rayman PS1 game by going to settings video scaling I'm going to turn integr scale on to begin with this is going to blur the pixelation away a tad and if I go to aspect ratio I'm going to put this one on to four I'm going to put my linear filter in on now because I'm using the overlay still and I've set aspect ratio to four if I go back into the [Music] game you'll notice that by putting this into full screen modes the overlay is covering or hiding some of the video footages we can see so obviously to get rid of the overlay if you want to use full screen is just going down to onscreen overlay and I'm going to disable overlay turn it off quick menu resume [Music] yeah and if we come back out and go back down to settings video scaling if I turn integr scale off we'll get more of a full screen image if I turn integr scale over scale on so full screen image now and there's a slight blur but we can actually make PS1 games look a lot nicer in this and if I go down to core options GPU plugin I will have lots of enhancement settings just Ser such as enhance resolution if I turn this one on and enhance resolution texture adjustment turn this one [Music] on and you'll see that by putting those enhancements on the game play the textures in everything else looks much more vibrant and again we still got the same save states in load States so if I go to change State slot to say number one Save State and lo State and more video setting we could do with PlayStation one is go back to settings video and if I press up on my d-pad it's going to take us to video filter and we can apply video filters including scan lines or even dot matrix effects to our games I just look for a scan line scan line two times and go back into the [Music] game there's an added scan line feature to that though it's pretty hard to work out where it is because I've just applied bilar filtering so other filters we can use is by going to video video filter and let's try super eagle and slight Improvement there too we can also use something called shaders again quick menu and shaders and if I make sure this is on I can then go to Lun preset and use shaders in say slang folder and I've got lots of shaders here to use such as uh CRT effects if I put the top one on for example and I wouldn't want to play that game whil I was drunk that's pretty head trippy and if I go back toter Shader slang film Technic color slang is pretty cool almost givs it a cuphead look yeah now I'm finally going to end this video with something called retro achievements if we go to settings achievements if you make sure this is turned on you can sign up with retro achievements for free and what this means is that whenever you're playing these retro games you'll get little Rewards or little Windows pop up saying that you've reached a certain achievement I'll leave the link in my description for that but it's definitely worth checking out and it's to also add into your Retro Gaming experience and within the achievement settings we can unlock sound so every time you get an achievement you'll get a little ping and that's it for today's Steam and setting up retroarch guide so hopefully I've covered most things that a lot of you out there might be wondering I've even gone as far showing you how to apply shaders and overlays to make your games look that much better so anyways if you like today's video Hit notification subscribe and like so you don't miss upcoming retro emulation content and also if you're a Commodore 64 fan I've just launched a new channel which is known as Commodore rediscovered so check that out I'm releasing content for that very soon but for now I've actually got a trailer on there anyways join me on social media I'm on Facebook Instagram Twitter and Tik Tok but until next time stay [Music] retro [Music]

Channel: Just Jamie

Views: 804

Keywords: How to download cores in retroarch, Justjamie1983, Libretro retroarch, Libretro retroarch steam, Retroarch for steam, Retroarch in steam, Retroarch on steam beginners, Retroarch pc, Retroarch steam tutorial, Steam retroarch, retroarch, retroarch cores, retroarch cores steam, retroarch emulator, retroarch guide, retroarch setup, retroarch setup guide, retroarch setup steam, retroarch steam, retroarch steam cores, retroarch steam pcsx2, retroarch steam setup, retroarch tutorial

Id: 7ZXrp1FhZGI

Length: 31min 41sec (1901 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024