Need help running games on a pi

Question

Looking to get a raspberry pi to make a portable games console like the switch for my family. It needs to be portable which is why I am using a pi, but I want to run games that are downloaded onto the pi. I originally wanted to use retropie but it didn't allow me, from what i can see, to use modern, low intensity games, downloaded from the internet. How would I go about doing this? Also if possible I would want a custom GUI that would show when the pi loads to make the whole thing look nicer and would also need help in knowing how to do this. Just need someone to help tell me what the steps are to achieving this and if it is even possible

Here is an example of a game I would like to run on the pi https://unsungwarriors.itch.io/unsung-warriors-prologue

Answer 1

I had a look at the example game you linked, and it looks to be an issue of processor architecture.

Your Pi has an ARM processor, which requires programs to be compiled specifically for ARM, whereas most desktops/laptops use a different architecture known as x86. The game you linked only has builds for x86 and x86-64 (you can see that in the contents of the zip file in this case) — but the Pi cannot run programs unless they are built for ARM.

It's fairly uncommon for developers to provide binaries for ARM, as it is unusual to have a desktop or laptop with an ARM processor (ARM is, however, very commonly used in smartphones). The Pi is a bit of an exception here, so you will need to either:

• Find games with ARM binaries provided (there are many games in the repository, but probably not all well-known or particularly interesting; most well-known games won't bother with an ARM port)

• Find open-source games where you can compile them yourself for ARM. This is a lot more work and probably not for the inexperienced.