Retro Gaming

Mostly all retro gaming nowadays is done via emulation of consoles. You can go to any retro gaming story there's usually always one around that you can go to to pick up an old nes you can go online and find them on ebay and amazon but because emulation is a free method and is easiest to get it's taken over as a staple for retro gaming plus the fact that you don't have to blow on any cartridges to get it to work.

Arcade Emulation

There is, however, a physical console for retro gaming that actually uses emulation and can be hacked called the Hyperkin Retron 5 (Amazon Listing Here). That isnt the only model but that is the most common. It basically has a bunch of slots for cartridges and itll crack the rom and put it on the system and run it through the onboard emulator. It's pretty cool actually and it comes with its own controller that will work on all the consoles you can play on it and its wireless via bluetooth communication. It costs around $150 and can play NES, SNES, Super Famicom, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance Games all on one thing. The controller as i've seen is kind of shit but it also has ports for you to put in the original controllers and even cross compatible as in you can use an snes controller on an nes game etc. It also has filters to change the graphic appearance of any game which is a real plus like you can make old skool games look really high definition with it. The thing about it though is they kinda illegally stole peoples emulators to make profit off of it so idk how long this will be available if they get in trouble and have to take it down. Here are some images of what the thing looks like:

The black one with the controller

The white one with a Ogre Battle inserted

The GUI inside the Unit

Here is the hack for playing downloaded roms on the retron 5 without having a physical cartridge for it that I found on reddit:

Find an IPS ROM-patching program that can create patches. I used SamIPS2. Mac users can run this in Wine.
Click "Make IPS" tab
For current file, find the game ROM you would like to play on your Retron, like Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3.
For original file, put the ROM of a game you own. So basically, find the title of a game you have lying around, like Shaq-Fu. Find a ROM that matches that title, put it here.
Under "IPS file," you can name something whatever you want here, just use the .ips extension. For instance, Sonic-Knuckles-Sonic-3.ips.
Click "Create Patch."
You now have an IPS patch file. Load it onto your SD card, place the aforementioned game you had lying around into your cartridge slot and select that patch from your SD card.
Start the game. You'll be playing Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3, but Shaq-Fu will be in your cart slot. Not too shabby.
Note: You need "Patch expects header" selected for SNES; Sega, GBA, GB, GBC have all been tested and don't need Patch expects header selected. Downloading some NES ROMs now to check that part out, but I'm assuming NES/Fami/SMS will work the same as the other systems.

So that's how you can play it easily on your TV with specialized hardware for retro gaming. The next is going to be more ghetto and that's emulation on your computer. So this can actually be very handy for retro gaming because you can find roms available for free online you just have to google for "[console] roms" and find single file downloads or zips or even torrent the entire library for the console on bit torrent.

 Emulator Zone is probably the most popular for the subject and has a large list of both emulator software and roms indexed on the site but they don't have everything and don't always give the best advice. The Old Computer is a good source for your emulation needs as well. Emulators are like virtual machines for different operating systems but instead of sandboxing windows 95 your'e putting up an NES or an Atari what have you. It's not only good for those old systems there is also emulators for things like psp or xbox360 etc except those aren't the most viable emulators to run because they eat up alot of cpu and if you don't have a beefy computer you probably won't be able to run those games very well (the lag is real). One of the coolest ideas for this is to find an old tower computer and get a 32bit emulator and put it on the tower and just use the old computer as a gaming console like a ghetto retron 5. I've seen hak5 years ago make one with one of those joystick controllers for the computer and just made the emulator run straight away in full screen mode and bound the keys to it to make it like an arcade machine. They built a frame and everything for it and just used the old computer moniter as the screen. It was very cool. You can do the same kinda thing if you want but you'll have to buy USB controllers which you can find easily on amazon and you can hook it up to your tv via a coverter or if you have one even use your regular computer have the games on there and plug it into the tv with an hdmi cable most computers have that and bada bing bada boom you got your old skool gaming built in.



Another thing that you can do it put it all on your phone. Get an SD card with all your roms on it or just use the memory in the phone doesn't matter and get emulators on the play store or what have you. Most of them are free but there are a couple really good ones you can buy for like 5 bucks (you can always get a refund and keep the file but that's illegal) Why would you want to do this on your smart phone? Well I wouldn't really say put anything higher than n64 for 3d graphics on your phone because the more buttons it has the less actual control you have over the game. Old systems like nes had an a/b button select/start button and directionals, that's it. That can easily be played with the touch screen and now you have a mobile nes you can use anywhere you want. Another thing is those handheld consoles like gameboy and ds are meant for mobility and you can easily play those on your phone and it's kind of better than the original like the gba that didnt have an lcd screen so you had to be in the sun to see what you were doing but on the phone it's not like that and you won't hurt your fingers spamming the buttons. The only bad thing is about that is if your game needs a bumper you won't be able to easily play those games because the bumper is on the screen and not sideways like real bumpers are.

NES Emulator on Android

Search emulator zone and old school computer or the pirate bay for those emulators they are really easy to install and get going just need a repertoire of games to play pretty much every emulator will have it as file > load as how to open the game then you may want to check the key configuration to see which keys on the keyboard to press or to map your usb controller to the emulator. I don't think there is a real need to recommend any emulators right now because they all work pretty much just make sure to do a virus scan before you use anything. Maybe later ill make a top list of emulators later but putting this here would make this post too long. Bonne Chance!