[stormbrew]

The fixed selection of games on them means that if your goal is to play the games legally, the cost is either very reasonable or effectively infinity, depending on what you want to play.

Post-composite and pre-cd hardware doesn't really need to be all that expensive, if you don't go wild with modding (and use something like a retrotink to upscale composite directly, regardless of console). But of course some games are quite expensive. CD consoles and games do fail a lot more, though.

[ChuckNorris89]

Oh boy, wait till you hear about what retroarch can do and what pirate ROMs can get you.

[stormbrew]

The topic is playing games "legally." I think you can assume people who are talking about that are aware of the concept of getting them "illegally" as well.