Welcome to the world of retro gaming. These are great devices and will provide you and the family with a lot of entertainment. Play the games you grew up with or show your kids how frustratingly hard some of the old games can be. I mean c'mon, just about every one of us here has chucked a controller across the room playing Battletoads or something else. Do you really want to deprive your kids of such punishment? I know I wouldn't.
These retro consoles run a Raspberry Pi3 mini computer. I've gushed about these for a few years now. They make great network appliances, VoIP servers, web servers, media playback devices, and retro gaming consoles. A more powerful desktop computer can be used no problem, and actually play more modern console games such as Wii, PS2, PS3, and Wii U, but they are large and will take up a lot of real estate. The Raspberry Pi is small, with a footprint about the size of a credit card. While the Pi3 is a very capable computer, it does have it's limitations. On the retro gaming end, many N64 ROMs play just fine, but others do not. This isn't a problem with the Pi3, but the code used in the emulator. It does get better over time, but incrementally so. That said, your Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega 32X, Genesis, Sega CD, Turbo Grafx 16, Neo Geo, PS1, Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance ROMs will run beautifully.
With a retro game console, the hardware options are rather slim, but outside of that, there are many controller options for you to use. My personal favorite are wireless Xbox 360 controllers since there is an assortment of buttons and analog sticks for games that may require them. You may already have one or more lying around, so this would be your best option assuming you do. If you choose to use Xbox 360 controllers, you will need a USB dongle. The dongle is simple and will allow you to connect up to four controllers. I also like some of the USB SNES controllers. While they aren't wireless, they function great and have great feedback on the buttons and will be perfect for any game requiring 6 buttons or less. You can also use USB adapters to work with OEM controllers for that authentic feel if you have those lying around.
Having said all of that, there are a couple of gotchas with a Pi3. While it isn't a huge deal, never just outright disconnect the power as this can corrupt the filesystem on the SD card. When you turn it off, make sure you do a proper shutdown from the main menu. While it's not 100% that you would corrupt the SD card from disconnecting the power, it does happen even though it's a rare occurrence most of the time. Worst case scenario, I would restore it from a backup, no biggie. Second, PS1 games take up a lot of space. The entire PS1 library itself is ~500GB, with each game taking up 500MB to 700MB each. If you wish to play PS1 titles, you will need a USB hard drive as the games are simply too large to put onto a SD card.
Now, on to pricing. At the very basic, with a NES-style chassis, 32GB of storage space, and a high quality power supply, I can offer this for $150. If you need controllers, I can get those as well and the price will go up accordingly. I only use high quality controllers. The guys you see selling these on Craigslist use the cheapest controllers out there. Do they work? Sure, but do they work good? Absolutely not. There's a reason they are less than $10, because you get what you pay for. Spend another $5, $10, or $20, and you get a far better product that will be as smooth and precise as an OEM unit. If you are interested, drop me a PM with your controller options and we can get the ball rolling
USER MANUAL (updated 1/7/2018): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing
1/7/2018: Manual update addresses issue with entering wifi information
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