Finally bought a Raspberry Pi to start playing with. I bought one a few years back to install Pi-hole for ad-blocking, but I never took it out of the box till this year. When I did, it was broken.
A round of Christmas Nintendo Switch playing prompted me to think about getting a Pi for this purpose. I only really want to play retro games with the kids, and the Switch is such a delicate system. Seems like every time we pick it up there's something broken on it.
So I bought a Pi 4 Model B. So far so good. I've been reluctant to do this for years, not out of technical intimidation but because I thought it would require a bunch of aggravating messing around: power supplies, usb cables, controllers, terrible docs sites etc. But I was pleasantly suprised.
In less than an hour I was playing the original Super Mario via RetroPie and a hard-wired PS4 controller. Finding and loading games ("roms") was actually pretty easy too.
Way easier and less futzing than I was expecting. Huge win. And the boy is thrilled. If you're curious, you should give it a go. You can have all you need for less than a hundred bucks.