Lakka FAQ: What You Need to Know about the Retro Gaming Platform

Visit the Lakka download page and download the package for your operating system. Mount the image to a USB drive and connect it to the PC on which you want to install Lakka.

Lakka can be configured to use a USB drive for Live Mode, booting when connected to any compatible machine. Games and progress will be stored on the thumb drive. Enable it when configuring the bootloader by checking Live Mode.

The Lakka installer is designed to work via USB and unfortunately isn't compatible with CDs.

ROMs must be placed in the roms folder but can be sorted into folders for individual consoles/emulators. For example:

../roms/NES/rom.zip

Lakka can be downloaded to an external hard drive. When setting up the boot loader, be sure to check the box for Live Mode.

GameCube ROMs can be emulated on Lakka by downloading the Dolphin core.

You can play video and audio files on Lakka using the libretro-ffmpeg core. You can read more about this core on the official libretro website.

When it comes to hardware support, Lakka wins hands down. But RetroPie had its own benefits that set it apart. Check out our guide breaking down these two retro gaming platforms to see which is best

You'll need to flash the Lakka image to an SD card for the Raspberry Pi. The process is very similar to configuring a RetroPie gaming rig.

You can get plenty of ROMs to play for free from both professional distributors and at-home developers. Check out our guide in where to find ROMs free and legally.

These are the default cores packaged by Lakka on Github. Some of these cores have been removed from certain hardware packages. These are the cores you can expect by default for most PC builds.