Yearning to sit on the couch and play some Super Mario Bros like the good ol' days? Or wait, no, Sonic 2. Wait jk Crash Bandicoot! Lakka's got your back. In just a few minutes it'll turn virtually any PC into a dead simple all-in-one emulation machine.

More streamlined than installing a whole bunch of different emulators onto your laptop, Lakka is a custom Linux distribution that crams nearly every retro emulator you could want into one bundle with a slick UI. All you have to do is go to the Lakka website and follow six-step instructions that'll walk you through getting Lakka on a thumb drive, then onto your target PC, and then getting some games on there.

Lakka doesn't require a whole bunch of horsepower, so you can throw it on any old laptop or PC you might have hanging around, or even just chuck it on a $35 Raspberry Pi and hook it up to a TV—although performance might suffer if you're emulating more modern games. And Lakka supports PS3 and Xbox 360 controllers, which you probably already have lying around somewhere.

A great gift for the youngins in your life who need to be learned up about classic games

The only thing Lakka won't do for you is bring the games. Downloading ROMs is sort of a legal grey area (or sometimes a legal black area), so that's on you. That, and a few of the emulators require you to find system BIOS files somewhere, considering it's illegal to provide them.

But once you can get that all taken care of, Lakka seems like a great way to condense all your old-school emulated gaming onto one device that's easy to boot up and play. It's a fun little DIY project, and the finished product would probably make a great gift for the youngins in your life who need to be learned up about classic games. If only we'd had this 20-some years ago.

Source: Lakka

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