The only thing that could have happened really is the yoke could have become misaligned if the tape that holds it to the tube was not holding very well. The convergence rings have lockrings on them that usually wouldn’t be effected by a hit or drop, but if they were loose they could shift as well.

The potential damage could range from slightly misaligned colors (convergence) to geometry warping (caused by yoke misalignment). To fix either of these you would likely need to open the TV to service it manually, which you should do anyways to adjust the focus potentiometer and the H/V Width potentiometers to reduce overscan. Only do this if you are comfortable with line voltage and have insulated electricians tools + gloves, as the TV must be plugged in and on top make adjustments. If you arent comfortable or cant be safe, you will just have to live with whatever you cannot fix with the service manual alone.

Most likely, nothing really changed. Unless it was hard enough to crack the plastic shell, it probably didnt do much of anything to the internals, unless it had a built in VJS or DVD player, as those can be more sensitive to kinetic shock.

Well, the R36S can technically run Dreamcast. Some Dreamcast games. At like, 50% resolution scale and with some frameskip probably. I was able to get it to run Phantasy Star Online pretty decently. But other games were unplayable.

Depending on where you live, legally speaking if you sold the carts you would have to delete the ROMs as well.

Personally I would just hold onto them. Plausible deniability aside, its nice to have them if the digital backup ever gets lost or accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Should turn on VSYNC to fix that horrendous screen tearing

/s

Japanese games primarily designed for use with NEC PC-88 and PC-98 computers that came on floppy disks had an even worse problem:

In order to save your game, you have to write to the floppy disk, usually wash disk needed to write somesort of data. Unfortunately, this means that the disk cannot be read-only protected. You probably see where this is going, but this sadly led to some players having uncompletable copies of games because they wrote to the wrong disk and accidentally ended up overwriting game data with save data.

Some games came with manuals that warned of this, and some games spent the cost of disk space to store actual in-game warning screens to try to prevent this.

EDIT: It has come to my attention that most people reading this probably don’t know this because they are too young, but these games that came on more than one floppy disk usually required you to insert at least 2 disks at the same time, one into both of the available drive slots. Then you would swap one or both out, depending on where in the game you were and if you needed to save or not. Each drive only appeared as a letter to save (usually A: and B:, which is why computer harddrives often start at C:, fun fact), and sometimes it didn’t prompt you to make sure after you selected one of the drive letters from the ingame menu that showed you nothing but the letter of the drive. So if you selected the wrong one, that sucks for you because they sometimes didn’t bother to check if there was already data on that disk or not before writing, which could cause data corruption, usually towards the end of the game.

There were a very small number of grey carts with 1.0 on them but most 1.0 carts at least in America are gold. Most grey carts are 1.2, but some have 1.1 as well. 1.1 is a general bugfixed version but also rare, while 1.2 is where all the censorship came in. Unfortunately for Europeans, all PAL versions are based on the censored 1.2 build. Due to this, grey carts are generally safe to assume are 1.2, because it is the most abundantly available build of the game, having been manufactured and sold the longest.

There are some reports of 1.1 having partial censorship as well, though these may be due to someone swapping the physical carts shell from a different version of the game.

I currently use an HP EliteDesk SFF (the middle size one) and use a DAC for DisplayPort to RCA.

DACs generally add less than 1 frame of lag. Youre thinking of scalers. If the adapter applies any sort of processing other than simply converting from digital to analog, then it adds more lag. But simply converting will usually have nearly imperceptible levels of lag. I can try to measure it when I use it next and see, but I can say that I don’t notice any “awful lag.” I am not a fighting game player, but timings in Shenmue for QTEs and Legend of Dragoon for combat don’t feel off or bad.

If you wanted, the EliteDesk Mini has a proprietary expansion slot in the rear for modular video output, and one of the available modules is VGA. VGA to RCA is just a cable adaption (analog to analog) and intoduces zero extra lag, so that could be an option if you for whatever reason feel like DAC conversion introduces too much lag.

Personally, I skip SSB64 entirely and go directly to the best Smash version on the GameCube. SSB64 on the N64 is fun, but it isn’t Melee.

It does hurt my heart a little to see a grey cart Ocarina of Time knowing it is so likely to be a version 1.2 game, meaning it was censored. I just can’t stand the Fire Temple music in 1.2, the chanting samples really elevate that BGM.

Also, I would highly recommend picking up Gauntlet Legends if you can. Excellent 4 player arcade hack-n-slash game. Although most of this collection seems to tell the tale that you likely don’t have other players often, so maybe not… The game is okay single player but way more fun with friends.

My only reason for not suggesting one and instead suggesting a mini PC is the lack of general availability when I went to get a Pi 5. And the cost, when I looked an Pi5 cost about $80, and for its price I figured a mini PC like an Intel NUC or even easier to find an HP EliteDesk mini, would vastly outperform it for a little higher cost.

They can regularly be found online or in person for $120 or less. I got a secondhand EliteDesk mini with a 9500T for about $60 USD, including a 256GB NVME and 16GB RAM, which is plenty for retro gaming in general. You can also get just the regular SFF and add a SFF GPU for PS3/Xbox 360 emulation at a pretty low cost as well. I put one together with a base PC cost of $99 for an i5 7500, 16GB RAM, and 500GB HDD, and added an AMD RX 6300 2GB for just $75. It easily handles PS3/X360 emulation at native resolutions. Sure it cant run most modern PC games because its an RX6300 designed for business PCs and not gaming, but that doesnt mean it cant run older stuff really well.

Being a genuine hardware owner and enjoyer myself, I know it might seem bad to recommend an emulation setup over genuine hardware. But in my experience, I find I spend a lot more time playing on a mini PC with emulators I have connected to a genuine CRT it 1x internal resolution than I do playing on the real hardware I have. Its a big hassle. Sometimes I pull them out for guests or jids or whatever to get to experience how things used to be, but for me I want to play the games and the genuine hardware is just extra steps.

Of course, using genuine hardware is going to give a more immersive and nostalgic experience. But if someone is wanting to actually play the games and not just experience nostalgia for a week before the hardware starts collecting dust, emulation is clearly superior.

The thing about genuine hardware is that constantly getting up to reset it when a glitch happens, or when you want to change games or change consoles, etc, gets annoying pretty fast. Eventually you figure you don’t have enough time or energy for it and thats when it starts collecting dust. I say just skip that step altogether and go the emulation route. Then if you really want a genuine console, buy a cheap one first and see how long you last playing on real hardware. I give you a week before you go back to the emulator.

My suggestion might seem sacrelige, but hear me out.

If you want something to actually use that is convenient, a mini PC that emulates them all is far better than genuine hardware. Kinda like how I will always say that driving a replica of an expensive car is better than driving a real one out on the road. Set up takes a lot longer, but in the long run it is far cheaper and much more convenient.

• modern TV compatible output
• modern CRT shaders very closely approximate actual CRT look especially at 4k with HDR (I have real CRTs to compare, and they do look similar)
• you dont have to unplug and plug in multiple consoles, wearing out the tv input port when you want to change consoles
• only takes up one tv input port
• some games can run at better framerates than the original hardware could handle, giving a more consistent experience
• no physical space lost to game boxes and multiple unused console accessories
• expandable storage to include all games from each console’s library
• can play handheld games on a TV without needing overpriced genuine hardware like the GameBoy Player for the GameCube ($75+ is ridiculous)
• you get to play games you will literally never be able to thanks to speculative buyers and collectors making the real thing too expensive (~$1,000 USD for Panzer Dragoon Saga NTSC should be illegal)

You could potentially invest in console themed controllers, so the inputs match the controller you are holding. Sure, the integrated graphics might not be good enough to PS3 on some older ones, but it’s hard to beat that at ~$150 USD for up to 6th gen. Lots of genuine hardware now is that price or more thanks to speculative buying and “collectors” ruining the hobby for people that actually want to play the games instead of just hoarding them.

Xenia does pretty well these days and keeps getting better

Personally, I emulate anything that I play on a modern display and run that straight through HDMI, or DisplayPort depending on what the display accepts.

If I am playing something older, I usually have a working console for it, but if I don’t I still emulate it. If I have a working console, I plug it into one of my CRTs via composite (RCA) as that is the input my CRTs accept and the most common output on consoles of the time (like HDMI is today). If the game I am playing is on a console that I have that no longer functions, I emulate it and output via HDMI to an RCA adapter and plug that into one of my CRTs. This has some delay but it is not noticeable to me.

Sometimes I have fun playing modern games on a CRT in 480p with the same setup. The graphics look really good since I can max everything out with a good framerate, but the text and UI is basically unreadable, even with max UI scaling in most games. They just don’t make them with low resolutions in mind.

If I am not using it, I unplug it from the TV and put it away.

For audio: CRT built-in speakers are the most authentic. But sometimes I use headphones.

I would be more concerned with difficulty of keeping them clean and how long it takes before they melt into goo.

Wii emulator for N64 isn’t going to be as accurate as the real N64 console though.

Considering the Dreamcast had such a tiny library, it truly was 5-10 years in the future.

Cry. And pilfer some E Waste drop offs one last time. Then cry some more, pour one out for the future generations of gamers who can never correctly experience a retro game designed to be played on a CRT (and they probably won’t even care honestly, they’ll be too absorbed in the new shiny thing to consume, its already happening now).

I immediately don’t like those silicone pads. Just expose the buttons underneath like a normal person, please. I imagine they designed it that way to try to obscure the fact that this is just a glorified Raspberry Pi Zero case with built in 720p display not all that dissimilar from something like the already existing PiGrrl.

This is something that should cost like, $50 USD or less, but is probably going to be listed for more. As this article points out, this market is oversaturated. You can already get other devices for that price or less with better or comparable specs. I don’t think they will be able to price this aggressively enough to compete.

Bagged, boarded, and sealed with a certificate? Won’t that just encourage speculation purchasers calling themselves “collectors” to try to resell them at absurd prices in a few years?