Many retrogamers discover Recalbox at a friend’s place, with family members, or even through posts on social media. This is where an adventure begins—one that is not always straightforward and can feel intimidating for newcomers who want to get started: what hardware should you buy? Where should you buy it? What is compatible? How do you install it?

While accessibility and simplicity have always been at the core of Recalbox, it now seems obvious—given the hardware we offer—to provide turnkey, preinstalled kits.

We are therefore delighted to introduce the Customizable Recalbox Kits!

No more endless web searches or fear of making a mistake: you receive your kit fully assembled, with Recalbox Lite* installed and ready to use, including around one hundred preinstalled games (Raspberry Pi 5 kit option). We designed the different kits based on the equipment and accessories you may already own. Here’s how it all works:

First of all, you can choose between a kit without a Raspberry Pi 5 (if you already own one) or with a Raspberry Pi 5. In the latter case, the kit includes everything you need to get started with Recalbox:

• official power supply
• official fan
• 128 GB microSD card with Recalbox Lite* preinstalled
• mini HDMI to HDMI cable
• the RecalTower

Options to customize your kit

You can then add to your kit:

• The Card Reader and 10 blank RecalCards, to program and automatically launch your favorite games by inserting your RecalCards into your RecalTower (RecalCards presentation link)
• The RGB Dual 2, for use on a CRT TV or monitor (SCART, VGA, or RCA cable) or via HDMI

And of course, you can absolutely combine the Card Reader and the RGB Dual 2!

A scalable and modular RecalTower

The RecalTower is scalable and modular. In addition to turnkey kits, we also offer individual components as add-ons. An add-on corresponds to a level that you can add to your RecalTower:

• You have an HDMI-only kit and want to play on a CRT? Get the RGB Dual 2 add-on.

• You were given a kit without a Card Reader and would like to add one? Get the Card Reader and 10 RecalCards.

Accessories to go further

And if you are considering equipping yourself with one or two wireless controllers, the 8BitDo Pro 3 controller is available in the Recalbox store. Plug and play, customizable, and offering outstanding comfort and build quality, it will faithfully accompany you during your long gaming sessions.

Please note that if you support Recalbox via Patreon, you benefit from 10% off all these kits and add-ons, as well as the entire Recalbox store.

A solution for everyone

We hope these kits will delight newcomers to the Recalbox universe, or make things easier if you want to gift Recalbox to a loved one and share your passion. Of course, we would like to remind you that the Recalbox solution remains free and open source, and that you can download it depending on the hardware you already own.

A whole community and our support team are available on Discord or on the Facebook help page. Share your setups and photos of your sessions with us, whether as photos or stories—we’ll be delighted to see and relay your retrogaming setups and sessions on our networks.

Recalbox Lite is a version compatible with a commercial distribution. To benefit from the full version, nothing could be simpler: update your Recalbox by connecting it to your network.

Regardless of the version of Recalbox, we do not provide any BIOS files or copyrighted games.