Easiest Method for Classic Console Gaming for the Family

Hey all, my wife wants to play some of her favorite classic NES and SNES games and I'd like to play some old school Genesis games though the latter isn't a priority while I was originally thinking of going with an emulator on my PC I was hoping there was an easier plug and play method that won't break the bank as things are a bit tight right now. I was looking at the classic edition consoles from Nintendo on Amazon but they are running $300+ each with only a small handful of games. In the process I saw a bunch of knockoff NES, SNES and Genesis consoles with significantly more games but the quality seems suspect.

I was wondering if anyone has some good recommendations. I need something that my wife and son can just turn on and select whatever game they feel like playing from an easy to navigate menu without me having to be there to help them with any computer based stuff as neither are all that computer literate.

Convenience is typically correlated with price.

Any specific games in mind? That might help narrow it down.

If you still have the cartridges, a retron 5.
If not, just search "Nintendo emulator" and a ton of knock off classic consoles pop up, starting as low as $50.

Easiest method is just a Nintendo switch and the Nintendo online subscription. It’s modern and their emulator setup works really good with the way you can browse through the games and how it saves state. You can also easily pair any controller of your choice, and they’ve got all the classic systems on there. It’s not the “cheapest” but it’s by far the easiest and foolproof way to do it, and you can get an OG switch for next to nothing now anyways.

get a 3in1 knock off console and some sd carts.
or use a frontend/launcher on your already owned pc....

grifter_66 said:

I was looking at the classic edition consoles from Nintendo on Amazon but they are running $300+ each with only a small handful of games.

Click to expand...

The nintendo classic consoles are nice, I've got them both (same hardware afaik), but not worth paying scalper prices for. The sega ones are ok, but less polished (no surprise). You can push more games on them, but not worth more than msrp.

Best experience is a real console with a real crt and real carts... Flash carts are probably indistinguishable from real carts except for a few games here and there (that you probably never would have played anyway!)

The switch retro games (with nintendo online subscription) is decent. Their classic controllers are nice... feel like they reused the old molds and everything.

You could probably put something together on a minipc with steam big picture mode? Grab some good controllers, 8bitdo look nice.

Just whatever you do, don't put all the roms on there. Make a collection of 30-60 games... Replace games they don't play with others, but try to keep the number of choices reasonable.

You can get any kind of Android-based TV streaming box and install whatever emulators and ROMs you like to it and pair any controllers to it as well. I've done it with my Shield TV and it works well for that.

You can also try to get a Wii or Wii-U for super cheap and they're trivial to mod and install any Wii-generation and older ROMs to and play natively on the console. The tutorial sites/videos will show you how to do it in 30 mins or so and once you get the modded eShop on it, you download whatever you want and the games install and play on the same UI as the stock console does. I'm pretty sure you can do Genesis or other platforms on there as well.. it's been a while since I've touched my modded Wii-U with virtually every Nintendo game ever loaded onto an external drive for it.

If you want to play them portably, then you should consider getting a 3DS variant because they're trivial to mod and install any ROMs to and play. Once you get the games installed through the modded eShop, they're right on the home screen to play the same as the legit games that were installed on it the same as the Wii/Wii-U works.

I forgot about my Switch, I dug it out and will try that first. If that doesn't give us the library we want I'll just go the emulator route and take the time to build it for ease of use.

Classic SNES is easily modded with a PC and USB drive. You'll want a passthrough adapter for the micro USB port on the console since it's used for power. It can play everything up through gen 4 without issues and some gen 5 games and consoles.

GameStop sells used ones for $150, and you can sometimes find them for less. It's still cheaper than a lot of the more popular bespoke consoles out there.