The funniest thing about retro gaming in 2026 is how much modern equipment it takes to feel old. In Modern Retro Gaming, Scott Wozniak of the Scott The Woz channel spends just under an hour working through clone consoles, reissues, mini PCs and upscalers, and his description sums up the premise neatly: he becomes a true retro gamer, which apparently means having a lot of free time to spend thousands of dollars.
The verdict up front: this is well worth the hour if you're trying to work out how to play old games on a modern telly. It isn't a buying guide with a winner at the end, and that's the most useful thing about it.
A note on what this is. I haven't tested any of this hardware. This is a review of Scott's video, and every judgement on a product below is his.
A tour of things that almost work
The early stretch belongs to the clone consoles, and Scott isn't gentle. The Hyperkin Retron 5 gets the sharpest treatment: he treats it as a middle ground between real cartridges and emulation, and he isn't sold on the compromise. Its wireless controller, in his telling, is one of the worst ever designed. The Retron Sq comes in for long load times and a shortage of menu options.
The bigger swings don't fare much better. He frames the Dreamcade Replay as a poorly optimised mini PC, not the plug-and-play answer it wants to be. The Polymega has a concept and interface he likes, but he reckons its add-on costs and lack of original memory card ports hold it back. There's real charm in how these machines fail. Each one is a small monument to somebody deciding this would be simple.
It's not all bad news. Scott says the Atari 2600+ feels closer to original hardware than the clones do, and he's warm about the Evercade's cartridge-collecting appeal, even if its compilations are well-travelled.
Where he ends up
The section that earns the running time starts around the 40-minute mark, when he moves on to adapters and upscalers. His pick for the ideal picture on a modern display is original hardware through SCART RGB cables and a RetroTINK-5X Pro. He also likes Analogue's FPGA machines, while finding its limited runs and pre-orders needlessly frustrating for buyers.
Then he declines to crown anything. His closing argument is that there's no single correct way to enjoy old games, and that personal satisfaction matters more than the priciest or most technical setup. On paper that sounds like a cop-out. After 57 minutes of watching a man discover new ways to be mildly disappointed, it lands as hard-won advice.
The argument I like best comes much earlier, though. Scott says up front that retro and modern gaming both have great releases and poor ones, and that neither era is inherently better. It's a sensible thing to hear from someone with a room full of old consoles.
Who should watch it
This suits anyone who's about to spend money on retro gear and wants a funny, opinionated map of the options, particularly people deciding between emulation convenience and original hardware. It's less useful if you want specifications or current prices, because it's a comedy essay first and a reference second. Check those yourself before buying.
The early comments, up to the six-hour mark, were largely delighted by The Pixel Protector, a retro-reviewer parody that Scott plays in skits through the video. That's fair enough. It's a good bit, and it's aimed squarely at the people most likely to be watching.
The verdict: watch it before you buy anything. It probably won't tell you what to get, but it may well talk you out of the wrong thing, which in this hobby is the more expensive mistake to avoid.
From the creators
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