VideoGame_Discussion

MrBean wrote:

Most of the third party ones are unlicensed, if software piracy matters to you.

And if you don't care about copyright, why pay a third party when you can just run an emulator on your pc?

Unfortunately, the Nintendo ones are the worst of the official ones. Both the TG16 and Geneses are more representative and have M2's porting prowess behind them. I'm with @benstylus though. I wouldn't even consider a bootleg one, which is really what the others are. "Third-party" isn't an accurate description.

edit: If you have a Swicth with NSO, you pretty much already have the NES and SNES Classic lineups available.

Yoshi wrote:

There are a few legit 3rd party options out there from companies like AtGames. But if you are seeing something advertising thousands of games for $30 or $50 or whatever, they are just slapping roms on the cheapest computer-on-a-chip and crapty controllers they can get from China.

Oh, totally get their roms. Odd they can sell on Amazon. I own many of the games physical, and have repurchased many many times over elsewhere throughout the years. While I don't actively use or play roms anymore, for this use case, I'm ok with it.

Ultimately trying to figure out what's the best, most cost efficient, and fun way for my kid to play retro games. Switch is definitely a great platform, we even have the various retro controllers.

Yet, there's a value in having a consolidated as well as specific/targeted platform for him to play. There's an appeal in a handheld platform, but... Also on TV.

I dunno, need to do homework, just want to find a good path forward that's not gonna kill me financially. Mini NES, SNES, Genesis all seem like the best option but that requires me to either buy another, or open mine. Stupid collector mentality holding me up, haha.

MrBean wrote:

Because every time one gets shut down they just register under a different name.

Amazon doesn't care unless the publishers do, but even then it's an endless game of whack a Mole.

Amazon is so flooded with cheap and/or bootleg crap (and unrelated sponsored listings) it's hard to find what you actually want anymore.

They're... usable. Keep in mind that these bootleg systems are usually running some variant of a hacked Retroarch or similar software. And in many cases, you can't configure the display, so you might end up with a forced screen filter, or messed up aspect ratio (4:3 games running at 16:9 so everything is extra wide.) Performance can also be very bad depending on the system.

AtGames is still garbage. They're the same crap as these bootleged systems, but "fancy."

There's also another thing to consider: These systems will throw in random rom sets in the drive without any sort of curation, and back in the day, these packs included hacks with very crude, "adult" hacks done by edgy idiots who thought hacking a game so sprites would look nude was funny.

If you want to get one of these, you're better off just making your own, tbh. But that's piracy and I understand it if people feel iffy about it.

(Edit: I was going to make a topic asking for help with one of these, I picked one up but can't get any of my pads to work with it, figured it might be an issue with them needing a specific kind of crappy pad...)

If you don't care about emulation and want something easy enough your kids to use without tying up the family PC, is a RetroPi an option? You can buy controllers that resemble the originals, or adapters that let you use the OEM versions.

If you have the PS1 classic, just mod it to do the emulation you're comfy with. It was easy to mod, the console is the least price and collectable worthy and while the packed in original Sony controllers are decent, it does support the 8bitDo Bluetooth dongle so you can use an Xbox controller or others. It's basically a cheaper, easier and more readymade way vs. going RetroPi unless you're already into the Pi space and can deal with Linux. Nice thing too is that the PS1 mod is soft and can be reversed if you decided to revert down the road - don't need to crack open the device either.

If you wanted a slightly more above board option you could seek out a Legends Arcade unit as they officially support adding games and the joystick of the mini that I have is pretty cool to play with, albeit a pretty different feel and format to old NES/SNES/Genesis controllers. And technically they support adding MAME style games vs. other consoles.

As others have said, those Amazon options are technically 'illegal' as they include ROMs and in some case a TON of them. I've seen some YT reviews of different ones from some channels and they bemoan how you end up with like 10+ copies of the same game from different regions or with different names/tweaks. I've got all of the mainstream mini consoles and opened them all to play on. The only one I considered moding was the Sony b/c I got it cheap, they really phoned-in the game offerings and not having to make permanent changes was nice.