I’ve barely played anything Nintendo post-SNES, so my assumptions are largely academic.
But to me at least, the primary advantage of dedicated emulation devices such as this (o er a smartphone + controller), is that you’re somewhat actively invested into the games you’re playing, and not distracted by notifications etc.
For me, having access to every single ROM/ISO means I’m rarely as engaged into any single title than I was as a kid and only had access to maybe 2-3 new games a year. Back then, I played the hell out of every single title because I didn’t have a choice; that was my Birthday/Christmas present, or I saved up all of my pocket money for a while.
But to each their own, I’m quite happy with my Steam Deck - and it does the job of enabling me to play my PS2 collection admirably!
Bit of a tangent, but a thing that has absolutely rekindled that sense of exploring a thing at a time instead of being frozen by choice is Retroachievements.org.
Not only is tracking progress and having leaderboards inherently promoting that in the first place but they have a bunch of community events pointing people at interesting stuff. And they add game coverage one by one, so just looking at the “what’s new” space is a surprisingly fun tool for discovering things you missed, although I imagine jumping in today does that less, since they have almost full coverage of older platforms at this point.
Still, if that’s an issue you feel you’ve been having, I recommend messing with it for that purpose.
I’ve barely played anything Nintendo post-SNES, so my assumptions are largely academic.
But to me at least, the primary advantage of dedicated emulation devices such as this (o er a smartphone + controller), is that you’re somewhat actively invested into the games you’re playing, and not distracted by notifications etc.
For me, having access to every single ROM/ISO means I’m rarely as engaged into any single title than I was as a kid and only had access to maybe 2-3 new games a year. Back then, I played the hell out of every single title because I didn’t have a choice; that was my Birthday/Christmas present, or I saved up all of my pocket money for a while.
But to each their own, I’m quite happy with my Steam Deck - and it does the job of enabling me to play my PS2 collection admirably!
Bit of a tangent, but a thing that has absolutely rekindled that sense of exploring a thing at a time instead of being frozen by choice is Retroachievements.org.
Not only is tracking progress and having leaderboards inherently promoting that in the first place but they have a bunch of community events pointing people at interesting stuff. And they add game coverage one by one, so just looking at the “what’s new” space is a surprisingly fun tool for discovering things you missed, although I imagine jumping in today does that less, since they have almost full coverage of older platforms at this point.
Still, if that’s an issue you feel you’ve been having, I recommend messing with it for that purpose.