WSAL15154 – Game HAT/en

Documentation notice: This technical documentation was independently rewritten from an archived supplier source. Check technical details and commands against the product version and manufacturer documentation before use.

Summary

The Game HAT is a Raspberry Pi expansion board integrating a 3.5-inch IPS display (480×320), a joystick with A/B/X/Y buttons and a battery connection. It enables portable game console operation via RetroPie or Recalbox.

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WSAL15154 – Game HAT for Raspberry Pi

Technical overview

Compatible with Raspberry Pi A+, B+, 2B, 3B, 3B+ and 4B; an additional HDMI cable is required for Pi Zero/Zero W.
Integrated charging circuitry for an 18650 lithium battery (not included) with a charge indicator.
Onboard speaker and headphone jack for emulation audio output.
Direct HDMI connection on the board to link with the integrated display.
Joystick buttons are wired through GPIO pins: UP(BCM5), DOWN(BCM6), LEFT(BCM13), RIGHT(BCM19), A(BCM26), B(BCM12), X(BCM16), Y(BCM20), START(BCM21), SELECT(BCM4).
Under RetroPie the driver can be installed manually; steps differ depending on image version (v4.7 or older).
Under Recalbox, set controllers.gpio.enabled=1 in /recalbox/share/system/recalbox.conf and adjust the GPIO arguments.

Commands and examples – verify before use:

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt=640 480 60 1 0 0 0
cd RetroPie-Setup/
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/mk_arcade_joystick_rpi.conf
options mk_arcade_joystick_rpi map=5 gpio=5,6,13,19,21,4,26,12,23,20,16,18
sudo tar xzvf /boot/Game-HAT-*.tar.gz
cd Game-HAT/
sudo ./Game-HAT
mount -o remount,rw /
mount -o remount,rw /boot
nano /recalbox/share/system/recalbox.conf

Notes and version constraints

The battery must be mounted with correct polarity; reverse connection will damage the charging circuit.
If the battery is low, the Raspberry Pi cannot start; connect a 5V/2A power supply to the Power interface for charging.
You can play while charging, but disconnecting the power supply causes the Raspberry Pi to reboot automatically.
Voltages above 7V may damage the charging circuit; recommended adapter: 5V/2A.
For manual driver installation under RetroPie, the board must be connected to the network, otherwise installation fails.
Exact configuration depends heavily on the specific OS image version used; human confirmation is required before execution.

Source and revision record

Game HAT - Waveshare Wiki
Source revision: 72156
Captured: 2026-08-31T02:41:30+00:00
SHA-256: dee0c910e89845da6315413820b5ab385473f893387542f0b9826dd9facee83d