Category Archives: OUYA

OUYA as a retro arcade emulator (MAME, etc.)

I sometimes get things from Amazon.com to write reviews about. I will be doing a review on the OUYA “game machine” soon, but wanted to start documenting some technical things here.

OUYA is a cheap ($99 list price) Android based game console:

It is about the shape and size of a Rubik’s Cube, and it comes with a wireless joypad that looks like a Playstation or Xbox style controller. It has a power supply and HDMI cable included, and batteries for the remote. What they include for “documentation” doesn’t even tell you where the batteries go.

Installing batteries requires popping off the joystick palm covers on the left and right side. Here is a site that explained how to do this:

https://support.ouya.tv/entries/24235612-Where-do-I-insert-the-batteries-

Once you hook the box up to a TV using the HDMI cable, you power it up (note: the power switch goes on top; I had mine upside down for the first day I had it), and then use the joypad to hook it up to your WiFi network. (Tip: Make an OUYA account, which you will need, on a computer beforehand. It will be much easier than using the joypad.)

The system will want to download software updates. Mine spent hours, appearing to just be stuck. I started it over and over, and eventually it worked, and the system restarted so I could use it.

The next steps will be installing emulators (MAME4droid, and various others), and a file manager utility (pwnfile). I also installed an FTP server (easier for me than copying files over from a USB stick) but if you plan to have your game ROMs on a USB stick, you won’t need anything else, really.

I will document some of the things I ran in to, and how I got all the files configured.

More to come…