Let me set the scene; it’s very interesting. I’m sitting here listening to one of my many soccer podcasts (World Football Daily, for the curious), browsing YouTube like a complete dweeb. A couple of keystrokes later and I’m watching this video, wherein a fine upstanding gentleman by the nom de plume of Review Tech USA talks about the Retrode, a USB device that automatically turns your old SNES and Sega Genesis cartridges and turns them into emulator-friendly ROMs. Now, I don’t know where you come from, but in my neck of the woods, that’s a fine piece of kit.
The device is dead simple: you plug your cartridge into the appropriate slot, then connect the device via USB to your PC or Mac. That’s it! Your operating system will treat the Retrode as a plain ol’ mass storage device, and then you can either directly play the ROM from the device, or drag the ROM to your big ROM folder.
The device only works with SNES and Genesis cartridges, but it does look like work is being done on an N64 version—very handy for Dolphin, no?
All the ROMs you want, none of the icky piracy feeling required. Lord knows I have boxes filled with old cartridges.
And if you think I’m too cool to sit here all day and create ROMs out of my old cartridges, well, clearly you’re not a regular reader.
Oh, price: the online ship Stone Age Gamer sells the Retrode here in the U.S., and it goes for $96.99.
Seriously one of the neatest things I’ve seen in a long while. No, it’s not exactly “brand new,” but I’ve never seen it before, so hopefully it’s new to a few of you, too.
How far we’ve come from the days of the Doctor V64 and Z64…