The Complete Guide to Retro Gaming
The honest, no-nonsense beginner's handbook to playing, collecting, and fixing classic games - with real costs, real gear, and a realistic plan for your first month.
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
What do old games actually cost to play today? What gear do you truly need? This guide gives you honest numbers and a first-month plan - before you spend a cent.
About this book
So you've got a fond memory of blowing dust out of a Super Nintendo cartridge, or you watched a YouTube video about the hunt for a sealed copy of EarthBound, and now you're wondering: could I actually do this? Is retro gaming a fun weekend hobby, or a money pit? Do I need a CRT television, a soldering iron, and a wall of plastic boxes to be a 'real' player?
The internet will give you a thousand contradictory answers. Resellers want to sell you overpriced bundles. Purists will tell you that emulators are blasphemy. Tech YouTubers might as well be speaking Klingon with their talk of SCART cables and FPGA chips. This guide cuts through all of it. Written like a friend who's been collecting and fixing old consoles for over a decade, it starts with the truth: retro gaming is a deep and varied hobby, and you can enjoy it with as little as a $50 handheld or a $20 Bluetooth controller and a laptop. You just need to know what you're aiming for.
Every chapter deals with the real world: what a Sunday afternoon of actually playing feels like - the smell of old plastic, the oddity of an aspect-ratio menu you'll only touch once a year - what your first month's budget should be, and how to avoid the classic mistake of buying a console and then realizing the matching controller costs more than the machine. There's even a chapter that talks about when you should not start: if you hate tinkering, if your living room is already bursting, or if you're convinced the only way to play is on a $1,000 upscaler. There's a better way.
You'll finish this book not with a shopping list you were talked into, but with a decision you own. You'll know the $149 starter setup that fits your space, the $450 mid-tier step that unlocks real collecting satisfaction, and the $1,500 'I live and breathe this' path - and know exactly which one is right for you. And if the answer is 'none of these yet,' that's a success too. Let's find out.
Reader Reviews
Daniel Mitchell
★★★★★I've been on the fence about getting a retro console for a few years and this book finally made it make sense. The bit about the controller costing more than the console is exactly the trap I would have fallen into. The chapter on gear actually lists three different budget tiers with prices in a table, so I could see exactly what my $200 gets me. I bought a Super Nintendo and a CRT after reading it. It's not a huge book, but it's got everything I needed to make the call.
Betty Hall
★★★★★I found the tone a bit too reassuring in places, but I did appreciate the chapter about when NOT to start. I was feeling pressured to buy, and that honest look at the space and tinkering involved made me realize I should just stick to emulators on my laptop for now. That's something no other content I've found has ever told me. The typical session description in chapter 6 was kind of long, but it was honest about all the cable fiddling. Useful, but not a page-turner.
Cynthia Sanchez
★★★★★The 'Is This Right For You?' checklist in Chapter 2 is worth the price of the book alone. It asked me about my patience for fiddling with cables and my tolerance for repairability issues, which is something YouTubers never mention. I appreciated that it didn't try to convince me to spend $400 on a scaler right away - instead it showed me a $40 alternative that's good enough. It feels like advice from a practical friend, not a salesman.