For the last few years, I have been delving into retro gaming, including attending the Classic Game Fest in Austin for the past several consecutive years.

Like many of us, I often reminisce about the days of gaming in my youth during the 80s and 90s. I’ll admit I still feel a bit of remorse for trading or selling off my original consoles and games back then, usually for what I thought would be the next best thing.

Recently, I tried to reclaim a bit of that magic and bought one of those cheap clone consoles that connects directly to a TV's HDMI port, complete with two wireless knockoff controllers. The very first game I tried to launch immediately produced a copyright error. I couldn't comprehend how someone could market a device that failed at its one basic function. Fraught with frustration, I decided to stop looking for shortcuts and look into building my own.

That's when I discovered Batocera. I initially installed it on a flash drive just to test it out on a PC, and I was completely amazed at how well it worked—especially how accommodating it was for older hardware. Before long, I was acquiring old PCs, wiping them, installing Batocera, and loading them up with classic ROMs.

So many incredible arcade games never received a proper home console port back in the day, and playing them meant spending a fortune in quarters. What I love most about this hobby is that it lets me experience that era all over again. It truly feels like being transported back to the arcades of my youth, finally getting the chance to play the titles I missed out on the first time around.