mac.iLounge

Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games have held up surprisingly well since the platforms were put to rest years ago. In our experience, old consoles usually stop working well before their cartridges, but the desire to play some of the classic games never really goes away. That’s why we were seriously intrigued by the Retrode 2 ($85) from Retrode—a peripheral that allows you to effectively play your original cartridges on your Mac, using the actual console controllers. How cool is that?

Despite continued ambiguities over exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Retrode says that the device is legal, and there’s every reason to think that it should be, since it eliminates the need to hunt down ROM files you may or may not have the right to play. It does, however, require that you download console emulators to run the games on your Mac; once you have those easily-obtainable programs on your machine, you simply plug the device in to one of your USB ports, plug your cartridges in, and you’re ready to play your games using your Mac’s screen rather than a TV. If you’ve wanted to keep playing your old cartridges—or just needed an excuse to go digging in your closet for them—Retrode 2 is worth checking out. Now we just have to find where we left that copy of Super Mario RPG…