So, I've been getting back into gaming in a big way these last few months, after a low back injury left me sidelined from my other, more physically active hobbies.
The silver lining (or I suppose cat nip) for my ASD brain is modding. In the past 6 weeks, I've modded a ds, a dsi, a wii u, a wii (which underrated as a "turn it on and play the classics" machine), several Android TVs... yeah...
While I've loved all of them (the Wii especially brought me great joy), I wished there was a way to play everything in one spot. A curated console, as it were.
Of course, you know where this is going - emulation.
Through the wonders of Ebay, I was able go score a Lenovo M93p tiny for around $80USD (a SFF pc from around 2014, about same dimensions as wii).
Throw in a faster processor, lobotomise windows, throw on Playnite, Dolphin Emulator and a bunch of personal classic and... well...let me introduce you to my SuperPretendo 5 :)
PS: ChatGPT gen art (and typos aside), I kinda love what it came up with for this.
So! I have a pi4 acting as my Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr etc server. (I'm actually debating adding Immich and Synchthing, as well as home CCTV to it's list of duties).
IME, emulation on the pi is weirdly hit or miss. For example, Dreamcast (Redream) is pretty good! N64 tanks it. Zero chance for PS2 etc... but then it plays Half life and Doom 3 just fine.
I lucked out when I got it - for what you pay for a Pi now, you'd get a lot more out of a NUC or a thinclient. Case in point: a barebones pi5 costs around $150 AUD near me. Literally just the board - no case, no power supply.
For a $150, you could replicate the machine I got, which is orders of magnitude more powerful, with 120gb SSD, power supply etc. And only slightly more power hungry than the pi.
I love my Pi, but that thing is like a box full of angry cats. Something about the Argon 40 case messes with it. You breath too hard near it, it drops wifi. It spontaneously decided "no RealVNC access for you - come back one year".
I really need to strip it back to parts and start again, but that's a job I keep putting off, because it works well enough for what it does.
Wouldn't want to game on it tho; I actually think even the Google Chromecast outperforms for some stuff.