Behold: a Chimera of Sedentary Pursuits!

"Oh go on, mate. It's for science. What?
 Is it weird for you if we watch?"

You know how in science fiction there's this reoccurring cliché where aliens use psychic powers or virtual reality to let humans live out their ideal lives? It can be a precursor to conquest, or a diversion so they can perform experiments on us. Sometimes they just want us to breed so they can populate some kind of human zoo. Whatever the reason, there's usually something that tips the humans off that all is not as it seems. Like, the fantasy goes too far and someone's like, 'hang on a minute, this is too good to be true...'

Well, hang on a minute, this is too good to be true. Yeah, I think we may be living in some kind of kinky alien experiment and if so, I don't want to wake up. Behold:

My twelve-year-old self's head just exploded.

Fortunately we learned from an early
age not to expect much from the future.

...what? You have no idea what you're looking at, do you? Fine, I'll explain and then you can get back to your rewarding, full life, with your human interaction and those ridiculous outdoor physical activities. If you had asked a room full of fifth graders in 1992 about their hopes for the future, they would describe this very thing. Not family, not a good job, but this. It's called a Retro Freak and it's some kind of magic, grey market video game console that plays like every important platform from our misspent and sedentary youths.

Blast Processing and Mode 7 in the
same console? What sorcery is this?

Original NES, Super-NES, Sega Genesis, Gameboy, even the misleadingly named and preposterously spelled TurboGrafx-16. They're all there, existing side-by-side in a single plastic shell and sold through a shady online retailer. How can such a thing be? Well, I gather it's essentially a cheap computer, pre-loaded with an emulator (software used to play pirated games on your PC) and attached to a bunch of cartridge slots. You can even copy games to an SD card meaning you won't have to physically change cartridges. You heard me, no more getting up like a goddamned barbarian. Yes, the future is here.

Although, in many ways I suppose it's probably for the best this didn't exist when I was a kid, getting up to swap games was my only exercise from 1987-2003. 

Nice try Nintendo. I discovered early on that it was much easier
to just kneel on the floor and pound the thing with your hands.