Play real arcade and console games on the PS4 with RetroArch – Full installation and setup

Sony’s PlayStation 4 is a fantastic console to own for two main reasons. Firstly it’s own games are still fantastic and highly playable in their own right. But secondly it’s incredibly easy to exploit the console and open it up to the whole world of homebrew applications.

If you’ve been watching my channel you’ll already know that we can play PS4 games from our disk backup files, play PS2, PS1 and PSP games and run a whole range of homebrew applications to get the full potential out of the hardware.

But in this video I’ll show you how to turn your PlayStation 4 into a retro gaming powerhouse where you can play games from around 50 consoles and home computers from the 80s, 90s and beyond.

So let’s boot up our PS4 and get started.

What You Need

For this project you’re going to need a modified PS4 console. If you haven’t modded your console yet then check out my exploit videos to see just how easy it is. My preferred method is the BluRay disk exploit where you just have to pop prepared BluRay disk into your console and it’s hacked in about 20 seconds. These disks can be picked up on eBay and other online shops for as little as £5 or you can make one yourself if you’ve got a BluRay writer.

Other than the console the only part you’ll need is an exFAT formatted USB drive to transfer some files from your computer to the console. So make sure you get one of those ready for the next stages.

Parts you’ll need :

USB drive : https://amzn.to/47KVMFN

PS4 : https://amzn.to/49niLrF

Now we need some software.

PS4 Applications

First we’ll get hold of some homebrew applications. So boot up your computer and make sure you’ve got your exFAT formatted USB drive connected.

The first is the Homebrew Store. If you’ve followed my exploit videos you’ll probably already have this on your PlayStation. If not head over to

https://pkg-zone.com/

On the top menu bar click the HB-Store menu and download the version for the PlayStation 4. Save this onto the root of your USB drive.

The Homebrew Store makes it really easy to install the rest of the applications directly onto your console, but it does need your console to be connected to the Internet. So if your console isn’t connected then you’ll need to download the package files for RetroArch, RetroArch Core Installer and PS4 Xplorer from the Package Zone site as well and save those to the root of your USB drive. I’ll be showing you how to install the apps directly from the Homebrew Store when we jump onto the console.

That’s all the homebrew apps we need. Next we need some games to play.

As usual I’m not able to give you links to places where you can get these files, but needless to say an online search will quickly help you out. Make sure you search for a roms megathread!

On my USB drive I’ve got hold of a number of games for a range of systems and I’ve saved them in a Games folder with sub folders for each system I want to use.

My advice is to unzip the console roms to get to the actual rom dump files. You can leave them as zip files but quite often you’ll find various hacked versions of games saved in the same archive. Extracting lets you select the ‘real’ game files.

For arcade emulation we’ll be using Mame. I’ve made a number of videos on how to work with Mame ROM sets so please do have a look at those for more information. For RetroArch I advise using a MAME 2003 Plus ROM set which is version 0.78 plus. This gives good quality emulation and pretty much every game you’d want to play.

It’s also a good idea to grab some BIOS files. Again search online for a RetroArch BIOS pack. Inside that you’ll find all the BIOS files that RetroArch uses for some of the emulation cores. If you’re not sure which ones you need check out the RetroArch documentation for the exact files for each system. You then need to copy these files onto the USB drive inside a System folder.

In my System folder I have these files. I’ll put a list of the ones I’m using on the main project page. With these you’ll be able to play all of the Atari, Nintendo, Sega and Sony classic consoles. Many of the others don’t need a separate BIOS file, but if you find you get a warning or the system doesn’t boot that’s a great indication that you might be missing one.

With our games and BIOS files on the USB drive we’re now ready to jump onto the console and get everything up and running.

Installing RetroArch

On the PS4 you need to plug in your USB drive and activate your mod.

If you now go into GoldHen, Debug Settings and Package Installer you should see your homebrew apps sitting ready for installation. Install the HomeBrew store and if you haven’t got Internet then both RetroArch packages and PS4 Xplorer.

If you’ve got Internet we can now open up the Homebrew Store app and install RetroArch and any other apps we want from here.

On the home page make sure the Store Apps menu option is selected with the blue bar and click X to select it. Then select the Search For option and type in RetroArch.

You’ll see a range of apps appear. Select RetroArch Unofficial and click the X botton to select it and then select the Install option. This will download and install the app for you. Now go back to the search results and install the RetroArch Core Installer. Finally we’ll install the PS4 Xplorer app and that’s all the homebrew ready to go.

Setting Up RetroArch

You should now have these three apps listed on your main XMB.

First we’ll run the actual RetroArch app. Just let it boot up and it will set up all the RetroArch folders and files for the rest of the installation process. Once you get to the main RetroArch screen just use the menu to go to the bottom of the list and select the Quit option with the circle button. By default RetroArch uses X to go back and Circle to select, but we’ll change that in a bit.

Next we need to run the RetroArch Core Installer. This simply copies a whole load of files called cores that are needed by RetroArch. If you’ve used RetroArch before you’ll probably be used to downloading core files directly into RetroArch. The RetroArch we’re using on the PS4 is not an official release as there isn’t one so it doesn’t work with the official core system. The cores that get installed now are the full set available for the PS4. The developer does sometimes update the system with new cores but again you’ll need to download and install these manually.

Once the core installer has finished we don’t need it any more so you can just delete it from your system.

Next we need to copy over our game files so that we can play them from our hard drive. This isn’t absolutely necessary as you can get RetroArch to play them from the USB drive, but I find it just makes things a bit easier and I don’t have to leave the USB drive attached.

Open up PS4 Xplorer and select Root Access. This gives us access to the whole filing system on our console. There are a lot of control buttons to use Xplorer so click the options button and select Help. This is a quick way to get a reminder of the shortcuts.

At the moment we’re looking at the root of the internal storage. Our USB drive is mounted as a folder in the mnt folder. We can either navigate down to it or use the left and right on the d pad to select the correct USB port. For me pressing the left button brings up my USB drive.

Select the Games folder we made earlier and select that. You should now see your rom folders. You can select them all using the R1 + R2 combination. Then press the triangle button for our file options and copy the folders.

Next press down on the right analogue stick to go back to the home screen, or just press circle a few times. We now need to paste our game folders into the downloads folder in Retroarch. Open the data folder and then the retroarch folder. Inside there you’ll see all the folders RetroArch has created. Open the downloads folder and then click the triangle button and paste in the games.

You should now have a number of game rom folders sitting in the RetroArch downloads folder.

Next we need to copy over the BIOS files. Again use the right and left d pad buttons to locate your USB drive and navigate to the System folder. Inside that again use the R1 + R2 combo to select everything, copy them and the navigate back to the main retroarch folder in the data area. Inside there open the system folder and paste everything in.

RetroArch Setup

We’re now ready to set up Retroarch.

First we can swap the X and circle buttons over to make them match the PS4. Go to the settings menu, Input and then scroll down to Menu Controls. In there you’ll see an option to swap over the buttons. Select it with the circle button. Now X is select and circle is back.

To set up our game playlists go back to the main menu and find the Import Content option. Select the Scan Directory option and then navigate to your games folder. Make sure you can see all the individual system folders and then select the Select This Folder option. RetroArch will now scan for games and create a series of playlists on the main home menu screen. Use the back button to get back to the home screen and you should see them at the bottom on the left.

Scroll down to any playlist and you should see a list of games appear on the right.

Next we need to set up a default core or emulator for each system.

On the Menu go to Settings and Playlists. Then find the Playlist Management option and select that. You should see your playlists.

Select any playlist and then select the Default Core option.

This will show you a list of cores that Retroarch has installed. Select the one that you want to use for this core. If you’re not sure which one to use you can get lots of recommendations online or use my list below for the main systems. If you select a core and find it’s not working very well you can always come back and choose another here.

If you now go back to the main menu and then find a playlist and game you should be able to play it.

In the video I go through a number of other setup tasks so please watch that for more information.

Have Fun!