I second the folks who recommended a Raspberry Pi and RetroPi variant. For no frills, just-start-playing, it can’t be beat.

Another option I haven’t seen mentioned yet, is Ubunutu with Steam. Thanks to the rising popularity of the SteamDeck, lots of great games run perfectly, with no fuss, under Steam on Ubuntu.

But again, with your target including a lot of retro games, a RetroPi is the smooth path. Most of your PS2 games will work fine with some fiddling. Your PS3 experience will be more bound by the current state of PS3 emulation, than by the power of the Raspberry Pi (though you should certainly plan to get the biggest supported model, and get a big cooling kit and overclock it.)

I’ve played various PS2 games with relatively little fuss on an overclocked Pi3 with a cooling kit.

For PS3 era games, I would just make the leap to Ubutnu and then just buy any that are Steam Deck Verified, through the Steam store. Some won’t be, but the ones that are should be a good time.

I, personally, don’t have the life spare cycles to mess with emulating unverified PS3 era games. PS2 era was still very hit and miss last time I bothered for an arcade machine build. I’m sure it’s doable, and might affect your hardware choice. Your best odds are probably Ubuntu, again - thanks to all the investment by Valve.

Pi has the power to do up through PS2 just fine, though last I checked the state of emulation for PS2 and PS3 wasn’t good yet, for the average hacker.

If this is your first time emulating, you’ll have a nicer time learning the ropes on RetroPi on an actual Raspberry Pi. Statistically, you’re not really giving anything up, because anything that doesn’t require insane levels of expertise and esoteric knowledge emulates perfectly on Pi.

Contrarily, is this isn’t your first emulation outing, or you’re down to go all-in down the rabbit hole; then build the whole PC around whatever you find emulates PS3 well, and the rest should be trivial to add.

It’s been awhile since I finished if, but if I recall correctly,Abzu was about 5 hours.

Awesome. Thanks!

It’s the year of the Linux desktop! /s

But seriously, I think I’m going to buy a SteamDeck.

Sounds fun! Here’s my favorite relatively chill multiplayer games:

• ToeJam and Earl - the ultimate chill vibes game, punctuated with moments of panic, of course.
• Gunstar Heroes - marvel at the peak of 16 bit graphics, blow up badguy robots, find cool gun combinations, repeat
• Cyborg Justice - incredibly steep learning curve, but a chill repetitive gameplay loop with lots of interesting mechanics to discover
• Battletoads vs Double Dragon - Probably the best brawler, with lots of interesting twists in gameplay mechanics. But starting with 3 lives is unfair - use the Konami code for a chance to see the whole game.

Would it be enough to be able to run .deb packages on fedora?

Unpacking a .deb on Fedora, or unpacking an .rpm on Ubuntu isn’t a big deal. The files inside are often actually identical.

But would not be useful because the files inside usually rely on shared libraries, which may or may not already be installed. Those shared libraries are installed in different places on each Linux distro. Figuring out which ones to ask for (and making sure the program can find them) is the real work that the .Deb or .RPM installers do.

A fun way to try this out is with Portable Apps. Anything called a “portable app” either doesn’t use additional libraries, or carries the libraries it needs with it.

If you find a portable app for Ubunutu, there’s a good chance the Fedora version is an identical file, and works fine on Ubuntu. There’s lots of reasons it might not work, but it can be fun to try.

For the most part, the only reason any Linux program is unavailable on a different version of Linux is that no one has bothered to build the necessary installer for that combination of program and OS.

.RPM was supposed to solve this by being universal, since any other OS can implement it to match .Deb was supposed to solve this by being universal, since any other OS can implement it to match (about 60% actually do). I think Flatpacks and Snaps might solve this by being universal, at some point…

Source: I’ve built installer packages for various operating systems.

Oh cool. I’ll do some research. Maybe I can pull mine out of storage and enjoy it, then. Thanks!

I’m looking into emulation for 360, myself, because I know that actually running my 360 is a timer counting down to the red ring of death.

Harsh.

But the Nomad was friggin cool, so it probably balances out.

That should be fun!

When then kids are ready (mine had some learning curve with the added flying) be sure to also eventually grab Sonic Racing All Stars: Transformed. It’s fantastic.

I’m gonna cheat on a technicality, and say “Evercade” which is still getting new cartridge releases. It’s retro, but not vintage.

If I had to go vintage…probably the SNES for multiplayer, but it would hurt a lot not to pick the Gameboy SP.

Cool build. Thanks for sharing it!

That’s the most evil thing I’ve heard in awhile, and I would absolutely make use of it anyway.

“Fun N Games” on Sega Genesis includes a really fun art program. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wdhHt4wo9NQ

I’m a fan of the MyArcade series, but would look for a Atari Flashback Classics with an SD card port rather than this new item.

Certain versions of the Flashback Classic will play additional games added via SD Card, if you happen to have them. Yo ho ho.

I love the old Atari games, but 200 Atari 2600 games isn’t a lot of games, in the context of how quick these games are to master and finish.

Many arcade games from the same era are worthy of hundreds or thousands of hours of play. But the Atari 2600 was working with an incredibly limited set of hardware, and even it’s arcade ports are usually very limited.

That said, $80 will also buy a Raspberry Pi, which will play everything from the Atari 2600 up through the PlayStation One. If you don’t already have a RetroPie, and aren’t afraid of doing some research, I would start there. Total cost is closer to $130 after buying some controllers and heatsinks and a CPU fan.

Also, for $50, the HyperMegaTech portable is coming out soon which plays Evercade cartridges (500 available games, on various $20 multi-gane carts). Or the Evercade VS for $150 if you’re looking for multiplayer.

Everything you can play on Evercade you can pirate onto a RetroPi, but paying for Evercade cartridges saves a lot of work setting up and configuring and tuning each game on the RetroPi.

All that said, this looks like a lot of fun for $80!

TL;DR: This thing looks really cool to add to an existing collection, but it’s not where I would start, or even likely to be my favorite way to play Atari games.

As a book and video game enthusiast, my unpopular opinion is that the average video game is a much better entertainment value than the average book.

I’ve played a lot of games and read a lot of books. When measuring dollars for hours, I think video games win.

On the one hand, I’ve put massive numbers of hours into titles like Zelda, Metroid, Harvest Moon, and Pokemon.

On the other hand, I’ve only gotten two or three read-throughs out of even some of my very favorite books.

And then the video game classics really put up some big numbers: after decades, I’m still enjoying PacMan, Frogger, and Galaga and their kin.

And then there’s the elephant in the room: Tetris.

If I had to pick - on a desert island - between an e-reader with every book ever printed, or one copy of Tetris on a Gameboy…it would be an agonizing choice.

Narrator: It was.

“Then you are truly lost.”

And a hearty handshake and a high five. Then start selling their assets and departments to competitors.