Yeah those can be a LOT of fun! They're usually a rebranded Chromebox, Intel NUC, or equivalent hardware running a variant of Linux and game emulators. You can actually build a nice one yourself with a Raspberry Pi (the new 4th and 5th generation are quite powerful) and there's a huge community behind them. For the R-Pi version, they're called RetroPi and you can not only load arcade game ROMs but also legacy PS, NES/SNES/N64, and much more! Plus you can buy a real retro-style stand-up arcade console with either a built-in screen or mount your own screen/monitor and hook up any type of USB/Bluetooth game controllers! I'm a computer/software engineer by day and certified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I know quite a bit about them if you ever need any help with it or want to venture further and build your own! Great video and thanks for sharing and good luck with it! FYI - Because every game is being run using an emulator, it does take AWHILE for each game to load from the SD card inside the system so you have to be patient with it. If you look up the upper left corner of the screen (while it appeared to be blank), there was a small picture of a controller in the top left corner, which indicates that the game is loading. Also because they typically don't have a lot of memory by today's standards. However there's where building your own really is a lot better - you can make it as powerful and fast as you want based off the hardware you select. Those pre-fabbed and pre-made solutions are all about functionality, not about speed. Also if you go into the system menu (depending on how it's programmed), you might be able to load background music to play automatically on the main selection screen while you're deciding which game to play.
@@mcycleshawn Yeah, if you've never played with them before then it could be a little intimidating but like anything else, once you understand the underlying components then they're not too bad. Basically all hardware that make up those small embedded PCs - everything from the O/S to all the game ROMs live on the SD card (which is why there's sealed tape covering it). Like I mentioned before though, there are so many resources online about them. Even for your system, just look up "EmuELEC" - that's the name of the actual O/S image that's running everything (which is why you see that on the boot screen). There's several different variants but the most popular is called "OpenELEC / LibreELEC" or also known as "KODI". Those are the basic Operating Systems that are designed to be used for the sole purpose of building a Media Center PC from streaming your entire movie collection, TV series, music, etc and all the way to arcade gaming consoles on the other end of the spectrum.
Yeah those can be a LOT of fun! They're usually a rebranded Chromebox, Intel NUC, or equivalent hardware running a variant of Linux and game emulators. You can actually build a nice one yourself with a Raspberry Pi (the new 4th and 5th generation are quite powerful) and there's a huge community behind them. For the R-Pi version, they're called RetroPi and you can not only load arcade game ROMs but also legacy PS, NES/SNES/N64, and much more! Plus you can buy a real retro-style stand-up arcade console with either a built-in screen or mount your own screen/monitor and hook up any type of USB/Bluetooth game controllers! I'm a computer/software engineer by day and certified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I know quite a bit about them if you ever need any help with it or want to venture further and build your own! Great video and thanks for sharing and good luck with it!
FYI - Because every game is being run using an emulator, it does take AWHILE for each game to load from the SD card inside the system so you have to be patient with it. If you look up the upper left corner of the screen (while it appeared to be blank), there was a small picture of a controller in the top left corner, which indicates that the game is loading. Also because they typically don't have a lot of memory by today's standards. However there's where building your own really is a lot better - you can make it as powerful and fast as you want based off the hardware you select. Those pre-fabbed and pre-made solutions are all about functionality, not about speed. Also if you go into the system menu (depending on how it's programmed), you might be able to load background music to play automatically on the main selection screen while you're deciding which game to play.
I kinda got the idea of it but may need a lot of help lol. Just setting up the controller for different systems has been tricky for me.
@@mcycleshawn Yeah, if you've never played with them before then it could be a little intimidating but like anything else, once you understand the underlying components then they're not too bad. Basically all hardware that make up those small embedded PCs - everything from the O/S to all the game ROMs live on the SD card (which is why there's sealed tape covering it). Like I mentioned before though, there are so many resources online about them. Even for your system, just look up "EmuELEC" - that's the name of the actual O/S image that's running everything (which is why you see that on the boot screen). There's several different variants but the most popular is called "OpenELEC / LibreELEC" or also known as "KODI". Those are the basic Operating Systems that are designed to be used for the sole purpose of building a Media Center PC from streaming your entire movie collection, TV series, music, etc and all the way to arcade gaming consoles on the other end of the spectrum.