Newbie Question about Retro Pi with Unicorn Hat

Hi, I am a total beginner with interfacing with the Raspberry Pi! I understand that Retro Pi is the best way to go to when creating a retro games console. I would also like to use the Unicorn Hat(Pimoroni) whilst this is running. What would be the best way to go around this? All I can find is commands you use at a terminal whilst you have raspbian OS installed to interface with the Unicorn Hat.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks! Mark

What is the relationship between RetroPie (Retro Games) and Unicorn Hat? What do you want to do (display) with the Unicorn Hat?

i had a support ticket from a guy using Retro Pie with the Unicorn HAT a while ago- it turns out that the two most definitely don’t play well together. The Retro Pie initialises some sound drivers which completely garble the Unicorn HAT output and make it basically impossible to use once you log in.

It’s possible to fix, but the fix is to prevent Retro Pie launching on login- which is kind of counter-productive when your goal is retro gaming.

I don’t know if our new Unicorn HAT library fixes it- but if anyone has both Retro Pie, a Unicorn HAT and a moment to test then maybe they’ll chime in? :D

If you use an Arduino or something else in the middle to drive the LEDs then it gets a lot more complex, but you gain back compatibility with Retro Pie and you could, potentially, do some really cool stuff.