Buying a retro console in 2026

Three routes lead to playing old games on a television. Each suits a different person, and the difference that matters most is the one people check last: what the picture looks like.

Original hardware

The real thing, with real quirks. Consoles from the 1980s and 1990s are now thirty-plus years old: capacitors dry out, save batteries die, and connectors oxidise. A refurbished unit with fresh parts beats an untested one from a garage sale.

The catch is the television. These machines output a low-resolution analogue signal made for CRTs, and a modern TV makes a mess of it.

FPGA

An FPGA is a chip you can rewire in software. Devices such as the Analogue Pocket and the open-source MiSTer recreate the original hardware as circuits rather than simulating it in code. The result behaves like the original with almost no added lag, and outputs a clean digital picture.

Emulation boxes and the picture problem

Cheap emulation boxes play thousands of games and vary wildly in quality. For original consoles on a modern TV, a dedicated upscaler such as the OSSC or the RetroTINK line converts the old signal properly instead of leaving it to the TV's own scaler.

What you could build here

Three directions that would work on this name. None of them is the only answer — it is your name once it is yours.

1. A refurbished-hardware store. Tested, recapped, cleaned consoles with a warranty. Buyers pay for trust.
2. A buying guide. Original, FPGA or emulation box: which suits which player, updated as hardware changes.
3. A repair service. Battery swaps, recaps, video mods. Local demand everywhere, little competition online.

Worth a look

• MyNESGamesPlay NES ROMs straight in the browser
• MiSTer FPGAThe open-source FPGA project and its documentation

What it could look like

A sample concept, built to show the name in use. It is a starting point, not a business that exists.

Who you would be buying from

We build and run the sites below. That is the whole pitch: this name is not sitting in a speculator's spreadsheet — it comes from people who make things on the web and know what a good name is worth to someone who is going to use it.

• OMXUSThe studio behind all of this — software, licensing, and the infrastructure the rest of these sites run on.
• DnD Dice RollerA dice tool with no ads, no sign-up and no loading screen. It exists because every other one is exhausting.
• Legend RollerCharacter sheets, campaign rolling and party state, built for people who actually run games weekly.
• HorrorMoviesListCurated horror with real writing behind the picks, not scraped metadata dressed up as a list.
• MyNESGamesYour own NES ROMs, playable in a browser tab, with nothing uploaded anywhere.
• VoteAussieDigital identity with no central authority — Australia already runs elections without ID, so this asks why the internet cannot.
• The Price of WarA 3D memorial that makes the number of dead something you have to move through rather than read.
• NumeroscopeNumerology written honestly — for reflection, not prophecy. Proof that a mystical niche can be done without lying to anyone.
• Text Diff OnlinePaste two things, see what changed. Free, instant, nothing leaves the browser.
• NeuAIs ObservatoryA modular observatory for watching how AI systems actually behave.

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