When you first fire up an arcade game in RetroPie, it will launch in an aspect ratio more suiting a cell phone. The solution is counterintuitive; among other things, we have to set the “Start in Fullscreen” parameter to false (even though we very much want our games to start in fullscreen). Because of the hierarchy of configuration files, multiple modes of access, and obtuse, overriding runtime processes, doing so is easier said than done. Fixing Fullscreen in RetroPie was once again a multi-day affair of tortuous , time-consuming trouble-shooting.
RetroArch
RetroPie is an ecosystem comprised, in large part as the name would suggest, of RetroArch. RetroArch is an open-source framework for running multiple emulators, game engines, and media players from a single interface. It acts as a unified platform where users can launch and manage games across different systems.
RetroArch allows for custom configurations on an emulator-wide basis while also allowing you to customize how individual games look and play. This can be accomplished by editing config files or by selecting the same parameters in RetroArch’s GUI. We’re going to do both.
After loading an arcade game, hold down the hotkey (select) and press X. You have just warped to world 1-2 of RetroArch! RetroArch can be quite confusing. For one, when we first access RetroArch from the GUI, we land in the middle of a menu instead of at the beginning. To get to the beginning (world 1-1), we must go back by pressing B. You will now see a “Settings” option.
- Select Settings > Video > Scaling > Aspect Ratio and set it to 4:3.
- Back out and select “Fullscreen Mode.”
- Set “Start in Fullscreen Mode” to “false.”
- Back out through the menu until you see “Configuration File.”
- Select it and “Save Current Configuration.”
Around step 3 the game will reboot and even though the setting is false, the game will now start in fullscreen. But, if you exit the game and jump back in, “Start in Fullscreen” will reset as “true” and as a result, the game will NOT start in fullscreen. This, despite the fact that we saved the configuration.
You might think, as I did, and as is reasonable, that you could fix the issue by opening up /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and setting video_fullscreen = "false." You would be wrong. The config file will be vetoed. You might think that changing the file’s permissions with the command sudo chattr +i /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg would prohibit even system processes from altering the video_fullscreen parameter. This time you would be right; unfortunately however, it means this isn’t the video_fullscreen setting that we’re looking for.
Eagle-eyed observers will have noticed that when we specified the 4:3 aspect ratio RetroArch informed us that is was saving to /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config/fbneo_libretro.cfg. Where is this config file in the heirarchy? And more importantly, will it override the perennial video_fullscreen = "true" parameter? No, it won’t. I tried.
How about /opt/retropie/configs/fba/retroarch.cfg? No that won’t work either. As it turns out, all of the config files, including the overriding config files, are themselves being overridden by a Runcommand script in real time. We’ll have to edit it.
TL:DR
sudo nano /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh
Where it says:
"video_fullscreen" "true"
make it say:
"video_fullscreen" "false"
Save and exit. Finally, on an unrelated note:
sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt
Check to make sure the following is present and/or set to the correct value and/or is uncommented and/or add it:
disable_overscan=1
And that should be it! This has been Fixing Fullscreen in RetroPie!