re: Raspberry Pi (RetroPie) users: Where to find reliable ROMs

If you want to play anything beyond PS1/N64 era games (like PS2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, Wii U, etc.), you should go with a PC build.

Otherwise, I think a Pi 3 B+ should be fine. Considering a Pi 3 B+ is really cheap compared to a PC ($50 vs several hundred), I'd probably try going that route first and then see if you are satisfied with it. There's not much monetary risk there and you can always use the hardware for some other project.

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Easy

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All of theirs are gone though thanks to Nintendo.

I can load the ones ppl are looking for on DropBox.

Okay, I just noticed this thread was made in 2016.

What PC specs would you need if you were to go the PC route for playing Xbox (1st version), PS1, N64, and below??

MAME is one of my main wants but pretty sure the Pi3B+ will do that no problem

Thanks, I'm aware that if I spend a gran on a PC I would have no issues. I don't wanna spend that, and certainly not $200US on a graphics card, and I'm sure I don't need a $200 graphics card to play the games from the consoles I mentioned above.

That laptop can probably play PS1 and N64 games just fine, with some possible tweaks, but I don't think it would handle PS2 and it certainly can't play original Xbox games, since emulation for the original Xbox is still in very early development.

I don't know your level of expertise in this area, but you may be wondering why your computer, which is 1 to 2 decades newer than these consoles, can't play these old games. The reason is that your computer hardware has to do all of the heavy lifting of both the console itself AND the game. That can be extremely taxing on a system, especially as hardware architecture has gotten more complex each console generation.

If you'd like to read more about this topic, this is a good ArsTechnica article that discusses it. LINK

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So really, there is no real benefit using this laptop over a Pi3B+???

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I haven't messed with PS2 emulation in a while, so you might be gaining that with the laptop, but you're going to need something a bit better to properly emulate Gamecube and beyond. Also, you might have some luck with Dreamcast, but I don't know how stable that is either. (As mentioned, original Xbox is still pretty unstable from what I've read.) You'll need significantly beefier hardware to play any console emulated beyond that.

There's just a lot of variables at play. The state of emulation for a particular console and how optimized the emulators are is one concern. Then you have to take into account what games you want to play. Some games push hardware harder than others. I can play PS1's Castlevania Symphony of the Night just fine on my Raspberry Pi 2, but that's a mostly 2D game. If I try to play something more graphically intensive, like Tekken 3, it's going to start stuttering and dropping frames. And that leads into the third variable, which is what you are willing to put with performance-wise? Are you okay with some stutters and frame rate loss or will you not settle for anything below rock solid performance?

I'm not a gaming fanatic by far, but I would rather leave a game out rather than having it stutter and lose frames.
So by the sounds, if nothing else, I will have better luck playing the consoles that I can play on the pi3B+, just at a better performance at least??