I can’t even tell you how many times in the last twenty years I have found myself dabbling in retro game consoles.

I have multiple computers with emulator software.

I have a small stack of those mini consoles they sold there for a while, the ones that looked like shrunken versions of the originals.

I have multiple raspberry pi computers notoriously great at running retro game emulators.

I even have a generic usb controller purchased almost one hundred percent for the reason that I wanted to play old games on my computer.

And I have a couple of mostly-legally obtained software “roms” of some of of my childhood favourites.

Now, I broke down, and bought one of those little stupidly-powerful little handheld consoles that have proliferated the internet in the last couple years.

If you haven’t heard of those yet, basically–well, since computer processors are so cheap and fast, and high quality little screens are so bright and inexpensive, and the software that runs it all is essentially a lite version of some linux distro, wrapped into a neat little package one can essentially buy a handheld computer that plays retro games (all the way up to the PS2 console generation-ish) for about fifty bucks.

Fifty bucks!

Like. I can’t even buy a new PS5 game for that price. And here I’ve got myself a cheap little new toy that I can toss a couple of those aforementioned roms onto and then sit and play great looking games on my couch… for fifty bucks.

They are not, of course, for the feint of heart. The little system arrived in a cheap little box, with a budget-value memory card, and an instruction booklet that was about one tenth the length of this blog post.

I have some experience with both linux and emulators, so I was able to poke around and get the system working mostly how I like it. But I can see how someone less techie could struggle and–um–ONE STAR! But I like gadgets, so this is just another one of those things that I can dig into, figure out, and make it work.

And of course, play some retro games.