When looking ahead to the year in games, it's natural to tally up the upcoming releases you're most excited for. However, interest in retro gaming hardware continues to grow, as seen in the demand for the NES Classic and SNES Classic. And at CES 2018, we saw what the year has in store in terms of new options to play old games. Third-party gamepads and systems to play games of the past aren't entirely new, but modern tweaks and technical refinement bring us closer to the original experiences and in more accessible ways. Let's look into the past's future with a quick rundown of the throwback controllers and retro consoles on the way.

We've covered plenty of hardware that taps into gaming nostalgia, and you can check out reviews of the Analogue Nt Mini, Retron 5 console, Retron HD, and the Sega Genesis Flashback system. If you need to catch up on the biggest stories from CES 2018, be sure to read about Nvidia's 65-inch monitor, Razer's phone-laptop hybrid project, or what AMD has in store for PC gaming's future.