Welcome Gamer

I’ve gathered a list of worthiest ROMs for your portable console of choice, organized by classic system. I’ve also listed opinionated top tens across several systems.

Resources

I’ve included some resources below for tracking down portable consoles to fit your needs, instaling operating systems on those devices, and building your ROM library.

• Russ at Retro Game Corps is my favorite source for hardware and software reviews as well as guides for how to set things up. Russ is smart and opinionated and his taste matches mine.
• Next Portable Console is a short chat show and a great resource for news and opinions on retro emulation hardware and software. They also stray into more current gaming. NPC is available as a podcast and on YouTube. As of this writing, however, one of the hosts of NPC is departing the show so it remains to be seen whether NPC will continue.
• That host is Brendon Bigley, who runs the Blog and YouTube channel Wavelengths. Similarly to Russ, Brendon has a unique perspective and good taste in this space.
• Retro Handhelds is another good resource for reviews and guides.
• Finally, EmuReady is the largest community-driven hub for tracking emulation compatibility across devices, emulators, and platforms. If you’re new to the hobby this site will make you feel like you’re in the weeds, so I would not suggest starting here.

Consoles and Systems

I recommend buying a device and adding your own OS and ROMs rather than getting a system preloaded with hundreds of games. Following guides step-by-step and curating the games you want on your system will be a better experience in the long run. The resources above will help you with that.

Library

I’m not going to link to specific places to get ROMs but if you search Reddit for ROMs or search for “Roms Megathread” on your search engine of choice, you’ll be on the right track. You could also see about a man named Vimm. There’s a big community of people dedicated to preserving access to classic games that the major video game companies would prefer fade into obscurity.

This site, by Logan Robertson, is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. None of this appears on social media, so please share with your friends as you would have done in the '90s. The dream is alive.