Manually Install RetroPie over Raspbian Stretch

If you are enjoying a full or lite install of Raspbian on your Raspberry Pi, you can also manually install RetroPie rather than work off of a RetroPie SD image.

It’s advisable to first tell your Pi to boot into console mode at boot. 

pi@raspberry:~$ sudo raspi-config
Choose (3) Boot Options
B1 Desktop/CLI
B2 Console Autologin (optionally, you could select B1 to log in)
<Finish>

Install RetroPie manually

Start by updating your system:

pi@raspberry:~$sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Verify your local settings for a smooth installation.

pi@raspberry:~$sudo update-locale LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

Now we install the packages needed by the installation script:

pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get install git lsb-release 

Download the RetroPie setup script using git. If you don’t have git installed:

pi@raspberry:~$sudo apt install git-all

then:

pi@raspberry:~$ cd
pi@raspberry:~$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git 

Now run the script:

pi@raspberry:~$ cd RetroPie-Setup
pi@raspberry:~$ chmod +x retropie_setup.sh
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

The installation dialog appears:

Choose the basic install and then optional packages, settings and drivers. Once you are done, reboot and launch with:

pi@raspberry:~$ emulationstation