My most recent new hobby and tinkering project all in one has been setting up as many ways as possible to emulate retro games. Over the past month or so, I’ve spent hours playing my Miyoo Mini +, setting up my Mac with an emulation frontend, finding a deal on an old CRT, getting a raspberry pi emulate games in 240p, modding my Wii, and collecting my old gaming hardware. It’s safe to say that I’m in the middle of an obsession.

Emulation scratches a couple of itches for me. First, I’m a tinkerer. I like to have something that I think about in the shower; a problem that I need to solve that I can’t do in one sitting. If you’re trying to play old games, you’re going to have to manage huge libraries of files (your dumped backups, of course), experiment with configurations and troubleshoot performance issues.

Tinkering—check!

The other itch is nostalgia, which feels cliche to say, but I’m not sure what else to call it. My first game console was a Nintendo GameCube, and I grew up right as the DS was coming out and when the Wii took the world by storm. I remember this as a golden age of video game advancement. Every new console was cutting edge, and it actually gave you a reason that you needed it. Every console was unique, and the games had so much personality and style. To contrast with today, the Switch 2 is the only current gen console that I own, and it’s internals are far behind the rest (even though I don’t think this is a disadvantage), and games feel like carbon copies of past successes. It feels like game companies are just trying to create the next money printer with no real thought to making a cool and fun experience.

Playing Mario Kart: Double Dash or Burnout 2 reminds me of the days when I was a kid and baseball practice got rained out, so I could run downstairs and turn on my GameCube without feeling like I ought to be outside doing something else.

Nostalgia—check!

This kind of leisure feels so different from finding the next YouTube video or scrolling on social media. These games already made their money on you when you paid the guy behind the counter at Game Stop. They’re not trying to sap every second of your attention, they’re trying to deliver an experience that’s worthy of you (or your parent) parting with hard-earned cash.

Call me an idealist, but isn’t what we should want out of the things we buy, the games we play, and the media we consume?