Is it worth the cost for real over emulation?

[Forlorn Drifter]

Honestly, I love that I can go completely legit, but so much of my library has been put together from 26 years of collecting that I'm pretty sure I'd never be able to amass what I have now if I had to start over today. Personally, if I were to get into retro collecting, I'd keep my eye open in pawn shops, flea markets, and the occasional retro gaming store that might not stay up to date on the latest prices. To fill the gaps, I'd emulate or go flash cart. It's just too darn expensive otherwise.

Well, and there's nothing wrong with the Virtual Console route, as it's more legit than a flash cart, too.

Most pawn shops here don't even take retro games. The people who sell them or pawn them want more than the shops are willing to give, so they never get them and quit even discussing it. Flea markets are a maybe, but its going to take some serious hunting to find some of the stuff I want, and fakes abound where I live. And all the retro stores are ebay prices....

I do have an old 360 sitting around, but with the effort it would take to get it up and going, I think I'd be better off grabbing a $10 Wii or a Raspberry Pi.

[Sarge]

Yeah, the Wii is quite easy to mod, and has excellent emulators on there.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I started collecting nearly 20 years ago, however, and I would not take up the hobby now.

I started in 2011 and in this short time span things have gotten significantly harder. If I started today I'd get a Retron 5, gaming PC, and maybe a handheld or two. That's it.

[Xeogred]

Yeah, no denying from what you guys have said over the years it seems like a warzone out there thesedays. I'm glad I bought all my favorite SNES games over the years quite awhile back... scooped up MMX3, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, FF2-3, etc all for around $50 each at that point. Some of those have exploded, MMX3 goes for $250 on amazon haha.

Luckily seems like I can still get most PSX/PS2 games I'm really interested in for cheap still.

And as always the Genesis doesn't seem terribly hard to collect for.

The NES and N64 will probably be the tougher ones that still might interest me someday. I haven't even had a working NES in years, two died on me. But I still have some good games for it. I regret passing up some purchases I saw in shops though, like the Mega Man games... but at the same time, a lot of the things I love on the NES have been ported over via digital stores or collections like the Capcom stuff. The N64 is still the biggest regret I have to this day, I sold like 30 games for Armored Core 2 when the PS2 first came out haha... I pretty much stopped selling games after that since I regretted it so hard (and I LOVE Armored Core 2, but damn 30 some games for Gamestop pennies). I haven't even looked into it but I'm assuming the N64 is probably pricey to collect for. It seems like N64 games have NEVER been cheap.

[Jrecee]

I started collecting around 2004. Like... Buying astal and panzer dragoon games for $12.

Today? I'm pretty much at the point where I'm going to buy sd2snes and N8 and be done with it.

It's still on the original hardware. Still on a CRT. I'm good.

I've got most of what I need. I've never been a completionist (dozens of sports games I'll never play? Pass). Now seems like a good time to reassess priorities. Like systems that I can't play on flash carts (CD based)

[Jagosaurus]

@OP,

We've discussed flashcarts and the Retron5 among other things. To be clear the flash carts won't work on the R5. So buying the R5 still has you buying & accumulating carts.

I can confirm, all 3 of these work on the Retro Trio. My lazy setup:

[Sano]

I have a RetroDuo and an SNES EverDrive cartridge and love it! I also have an R4 card for my DS and love that as well. Though there is some nostalgia factor in playing on original hardware I must say.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Looks like you can just leave all that shit inserted, huh? Retron 5 won't boot with multiple carts in its slots.

[Sarge]

Probably because there's a selector switch in there to change systems, I'd guess. As opposed to the Retron 5, which is using software to detect which system is going, and probably would get confused if it saw multiple carts out there.

I was digging around on PriceCharting, and good grief, the retro market continues to get insane. I'm just glad I have what I have now. I'll probably never own any of my remaining Holy Grails unless I become fabulously wealthy.

[Jrecee]

The clincher for me was guardian heroes. I Finally dropped a hundred something on it, played it once, went "meh" and put it on my shelf.