An epic gaming machine

We sometimes direct your attention to hardware, often portable, that gives gamers a new way to play their old cartridges, discs or even smaller carts. While ROMs are always a sticking area, there's plenty of hardware out there designed to give fresh life to all of the physical copies of retro classics.

One new example, called Project Unity, is perhaps unique above all others, however. John "Bacteria" Grayson has taken parts from retro systems and created a unit that can run a boggling range of games, all with a specially designed controller that should be functional right across the board. Unity can run physical copies for the following systems — Atari 7800, Colecovision, Dreamcast, GameCube (with GBA Player), Amstrad GX4000, Intellivision, Mega Drive, Nintendo 64, NeoGeo, NES, PSone, PS2, Sega Master System, Saturn, Super Nintendo and Turbo Grafx games.

Grayson explained the reasoning for producing a physical unit very clearly, saying the following about emulated ROMS.

They're not one-to-one copies of the original. Playing it on the real hardware gives the nostalgia feeling you don't get from emulation. You don't just play a retro game, you experience it.

The unit and its "Master Controller" took three years and roughly £700 in costs to put together, and its creator has no serious plans to sell due to it being "for my own enjoyment and achievement". If you want to see how this was made and gaze upon it in action, check out the video below.

[source eurogamer.net]