I really intend to backlog everything I've done, gaming wise, since I last posted (September, ouch...). But one acquisition stands above all else in that time...my Raspberry Pi 3. If you'd asked me a year ago what a Raspberry Pi was a year ago, I'd have told you that it's a tiny, cheap Linux computer that can be easily programmed and is used in a wide variety of DIY computing projects. While this is accurate, I didn't really understand how great this little box is, particularly for emulation.
I discovered the Pi after the Mini NES Classic edition was announced. I was SO excited! My NES doesn't always work great (I suspect the pins are bent, and they aren't getting any better). It's a pain to lug a CRT into my living room to play it on, but this one natively outputs to HDMI. The controller wires are super short (although the classic doesn't fix this at all). And the classic edition came with 30 really great games, about 25 of which aren't in my collection (my NES collection isn't great). Many of these games are actually 3rd party games too, showing the length to which Nintendo went to develop this thing. It looks like a tiny NES, which is adorable. So I was pumped, until I couldn't find one. Anywhere.
Aww!
So I started following it obsessively, until I came upon this article, which explains in detail how to make your own emulation station using a Raspberry Pi. It was the perfect solution to my problems. It cost about the same, and was really an improvement in just about every way.
- The library is theoretically unlimited, compared to the NES classic edition, which only had the 30 games from the NES, with no possibility of expanding. I have NES, SNES, arcade, Genesis, 32x, and PC Engine games on mine, and could get any that I wanted, at least up to PS1. I will still buy most of the games on my Pi at the moment, unless they're just prohibitively expensive (Flinstones Dinosaur Peak, Mr. Gimmick, Little Samson etc.) or I'm unable to get them in English (Bahamut Lagoon, the original Fire Emblem Games, etc.)
- It supports my favorite wireless PS3 controllers, so I can play from my couch. The PS3 controller feels very natural with NES and especially SNES games, and feels passable with Genesis games.
- It adds some nice emulation frills, such as customizeable controls, using any controllers you'd like, and save states. This makes playing games like Mega Man 1, Castlevania, and Sonic 1+2 where you can't save tolerable for people like me who only have sometimes a half hour or hour in a day to play.
- It cost about the same, for a greatly improved library and identical presentation.
- The one BIG downside to all of this is that it takes a decent amount of technical skill at computing to do all of this. There are forums to help, but my first attempt probably took me a total of about 3 hours to get it all set up and figured out.
You're good, Little Samson. But not $1000 good.
-TROP.s. I still want to pick up a NES Classic Edition for a collector's item, but my Pi will definitely get a lot more use. And I'm not going to pay more than 100 bucks for it.
