Hi all,

Just wondering how you guys play your Nintendo classic games. My SNES stays at my folks' place, and I haven't had a Nintendo console in years. I've been really looking into figuring out the best way to play some of my childhood favourites since I recently got the Megaman Collection on PS4 and the itch came back. Maybe get into some of the Wii and WiiU Mario games as well.

The way I see it, I can either get a WiiU and go for the virtual console, though the WiiU seems pretty expensive for what it is. Or I could wait until the Switch comes out and either get that, or a WiiU at that point, if there's a price drop. Or a pawn shop and grab an old console, but there's plenty of issues going that route too.

Otherwise I've got a fairly powerful Android box and I can go the way of emulators and ROMs...

Just wondering how you guys get your classic Nintendo games fix, and what you'd suggest for me.

Thanks

Emulation on PC. It's much more convenient than anything else, though occasionally I'll break out the actual NES

There are some re-releases that are worth getting, like the recent Mega Man NES collection, but most stuff can be emulated on DS or Wii or yeah, your Android box.
If you want to go the legal route, there are a bunch of games that were exclusive to the Wii VC which I believe you can still access through the Wii-U VC.

It's been ever a decade since I messed around with emulators on a regular basis but even then I thought they gave the best experience. I have to imagine it's even better today so that's the route I'd go personally.

Retroarch + Dolphin covers you all the way through the Wii.

Those virtual console re-releases are the easiest and most convenient. They're also 100% legal! I'd always go the VC route if Nintendo digital games weren't tied to the physical console.

Unfortunately not everything is available on VC and emulation is really easy to do these days so I go with that instead.

There are many ways to do it and many price ranges if you want to do it legally. There likely are as many "easy ways" as there are ways....

• Some people might find just buying an OLD NES the easy way because they have an old tube TV and they know where to buy one or they feel confident buying off eBay or Amazon.
• Some people might just say, "Nope, give man an NES Classic and I'll play be satisfied with 30 great games." For people that want plug&play using a modern TV that might be the 'easy way' for them.
• If you own the games already, using emulation and ROMs on your PC might be easy for you. But really to be 'legally' doing that you are supposed to own the games, and depending on where you download from taht can get shady fast and knowing how computers and emulation works takes effort and trial and error sometimes. But, for some people that is the 'easy way'.
• Buying a Wii U and using Nintendo's store that might be teh easy way, but ist does add to teh costs jumping straight in with just that in mind.

@justin258: The VC games you download are locked to the console? You can't download them again on another console, i.e. be linked to a gamertag or whatever Nintendo's equivalent of that is?

You know what Nintendo need to do? Treat VC as a platform. Like a compliment to Steam.

Hack your Nintendo Wii and plug it up to an SD TV. With that you can play every single Nintendo game on the NES, SNES, most N64 titles, Gamecube and Wii on one system with almost no differeance from playing them on orginial hardware.

My brother and I held on to our old Nintendo consoles, and a few months ago I found a working tube TV (with a table to hold it) from going through a house my dad and I flipped. My brother set things up to where we can play these games now. Only hiccup was that the NES and SNES were pretty much caput. I was able to find a working SNES through eBay for a decent price, which came with a working controller, plus I found a compatible controller at a local store for even cheaper. Presto, our SNES collection is available to us again for any of our retro needs. I'm in no rush to find a working NES since we have Super Mario All-Stars for SNES, but my brother still wants to play Battletoads...

Well despite all the news I had heard about the Wii's online being defunct, turns out that somehow the Virtual Console store still works!

So I alternate. For all the NES goodness like the early Castlevanias and Super Mario Bros 3, I'll use my 2DS.

For all the games I can't get on there because it's not a "New" model, like Super Mario World and Super Metroid, plus all my 64 games, I'll use my Wii.

For you, I'd advise a Wii, Wii U or Switch, just because I can't abide doing something illegal.