Best Way To Manage Growing Console Clutter?

An anonymous reader writes "Being the owner of several actively-used consoles, I have found myself in a perpetual state of tangled cords and controller 'land mines' when it comes to my living room. With each console supporting four controllers, and a couple of games having their own unique peripherals, this is becoming more and more of a problem. It's not so much that there isn't a place for all of this. as it is that there isn't a place that's visually pleasing, big enough to survive the growing collection, easy to use, and most importantly, cheap. I find myself having to untangle cords or digging through a box/drawer. no matter what solution I try. What have Slashdot readers resorted to when it comes to keeping all of this in check?"

Comments

My answer: emulators

[jvmatthe]

I propose using consoles to emulate other consoles, thus keeping the number of necessary consoles to a minimum. Still, there will be some clutter, but it will be greatly reduced.

I can currently play Atari 2600, Atari 5200, NES, Commodore 64, Genesis, GameBoy/GameBoy Color/GameBoy Advance, DreamCast, PSX, PS2, and GameCube games all using just three consoles: my Dreamcast, PS2, and GameCube. I could include the Sega Master System and NeoGeo Pocket in there, if I had games for those systems. (I don't do the piracy thing.) If I were willing to live with some slowdown, I could add the SNES to that list. There are MAME packs too, but I've not tried them and can't speak to their quality.

That's a lot of gaming from just three consoles, so I'm fairly happy. It takes some effort, though. You can read about it in my last Slashdot post which has links to all the important stuff, like modding a PS2 and how each of the emulators works.

Of course, the real solution is apparently to use an Xbox. Unfortunately, I've got qualms about doing that (see discussion here, esp. the comments below the story). Others don't.

Then again, you can also go with a tiny PC next to the TV. I'm seriously considering that, although it wouldn't get rid of the DreamCast, PS2, and GC, since they're not emulated (sufficiently well) by any system yet.