As someone who grew up with Nintendo’s classic consoles in a time when Sega was still competing with them directly, I was among the many who were giddy with excitement when Nintendo announced the NES Classic Edition last year.
Fast forward to 2017 and to this day I've yet to find the NES Classic in stock at any of my local stores. Is it demand? Has Nintendo been limiting the amount it ships to each retailer? Regardless of the reason, I refused to give into temptation and pay the ridiculous prices resellers were asking for it. I was not about to spend hundreds of dollars for a retro console with a limited amount of games, no matter how much the nostalgia was tempting me to whip out my debit card.
After my frustration with trying to hunt down the NES Classic, I decided to to indulge my inner retro Mario fan by exploring what other options were available, and that's when I discovered something a family member had once mentioned to me years ago called the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is a tiny credit card sized computer typically used to teach students programming skills. After doing some research I discovered that it's also incredibly versatile. In fact, an article I came across discussed how users have turned it into a classic gaming console. Intrigued, I dug deeper into the subject.
Sure enough, the Raspberry Pi was more than capable of not only running NES games with a piece of freely available software called Retropie, it could run a number of classic gaming consoles like the Sega Genesis, Turbografx 16, and plenty more obscure video games consoles most millennials have probably never heard of.
The Raspberry Pi can be purchased by itself for about $40 or as a kit that includes all of the essentials to run it as a tiny portable PC. These kits and the accessories to turn it into a gaming device cost more than the NES but I decided to shell out a little more and take the plunge.
Setting up the Raspberry Pi for use as a gaming machine isn't exactly as simple as buying the NES Classic, plugging it in and firing it up, but as I quickly discovered, it can do a lot more for the money. Aside from the collection of classic games and being able to save your progress, the NES Classic has no additional features in terms of expansion nor does it even have Wi-Fi. In fact, I'm much happier with this device even if it doesn't have the retro styling of the NES. Because it's so versatile and customizable however, there are cases for it to make it at least appear like a tiny NES.
If you're willing to take the time to learn it and don't mind tinkering a bit, the Raspberry Pi is worth considering. Use it to play your [legally purchased and owned] games, use it as an ultra portable PC, and don't allow Nintendo’s seemingly poor efforts to keep the NES Classic Edition in stock deter you from reliving the glory days of 8-bit and 16-bit gaming.
