As a child of the 80s, I amassed a decent collection of video game cartridges, including 155 NES games and 69 SNES games. But as a digital nomad, I don't have an easy means to access this library: they games are all sitting in the basement where I grew up with them, waiting to be played on an ancient CRT — not the most mobile setup for someone who practically lives out of their Prius.

When I visited Stone Age Gamer last year, I bought an EverDrive X6, a Super Nintendo cartridge that accepts microSD cards with SNES ROMs. My primary motivation was to play the English fan translation of the Super Famicom version of Dragon Quest II, the only NES game in the Dragon Quest series I'd never finished. (This was before Square Enix announced a 2D-HD remake.) It was important to me that I be able to play the game on original hardware, not in an emulator for macOS or on a tiny handheld like an Arcos or RetroPie; while those options were certainly more convenient for my lifestyle, they were too divorced from the experience the original developers intended.

As a secondary goal, I intended to copy all my existing NES and SNES games onto an SD card so I could play them on the EverDrive, enabling me to access the games I already own on actual hardware, but in a more portable format.

The EverDrive was a sufficiently hefty investment for one day, so I left Stone Age Gamer lacking a critical piece of hardware: a console to play it on. The store stocked used Super Nintendos and replicas aplenty, but I figured that was a problem for another day.

Six months later, an email from Stone Age Gamer informed me I'd won their monthly drawing. My prize was an EverDrive for the Game Boy Advance — or a $70 store credit. I opted for the latter, and after poring over their sizable inventory, I selected the missing piece to my EverDrive puzzle: Old Skool's Classiq II HD, a console that plays NES and SNES games and which supports HDMI output in either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.

Unboxing

The Classiq II comes with a USB power adapter, composite and HDMI cables, and both NES- and SNES-style controllers — all the hardware you need to start playing immediately, be it on a CRT or an HDTV. It's compatible with original Nintendo accessories, too, which means I can use my old controllers for an even more authentic experiences. And although the console has four controller ports (two each for NES and SNES), all games can be played using the SNES controllers.

Since I don't travel with Nintendo cartridges, I had to acquire some to test on the Classiq II. I bought some Super Famicom games at Vincon and borrowed some NES games from my friend Alon and some SNES games from my friend T.J. All of them worked great. The litmus tests were with Star Fox, which relies on the FX chip for additional graphics processing; and the EverDrive, which I used to play the homebrew game New Super Mario Land. Both worked great!

Although the Classiq II HD's SNES slot accepts Super Famicom games, Famicom games require an adapter — and the adapter I bought would not fit into the console's NES slot, unfortunately. I did have some American NES games, but I found if I inserted them too tightly, they wouldn't load; a gentle touch was called for.

You can see the unboxing as well as the software tests in my unboxing video:

I read on Tumblr that the Classiq II will play SNES games more accurately than NES games; and that the NES EverDrive won't work at all. I didn't have the opportunity to reach the same conclusions, but I'm confident the Classiq II will suit my needs.

Trifecta

To complete this suite of functionality, I need to buy one more thing — something that Stone Age Gamer doesn't sell: an Open Source Cartridge Reader. This ROM dumper will let me copy cartridge games to my Mac and then to the EverDrive for play on the Classiq II. Other gamers have suggested it'd be cheaper and easier for me to download the equivalent ROMs from the Internet. But I trust and prefer the provenance of my own games, knowing I'm playing legal backups of those exact cartridges and not a variant or hack.

Thank you to Stone Age Gamer for the Classiq II HD! It was just what I wanted and needed.