I figure it will be a good thing to throw onto a wish list for whatever holiday is coming next. In a perfect world, it would run a Linux-based OS, be moddable, have decent ergonomics for an adult, and kinda just generally not suck. Is a hundred bucks a reasonable price point? One hundred fifty? I grew up in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras but never completely stopped gaming, so I’d be interested in emulating somewhat newer stuff too. I normally just plug in a controller and find a desktop emulator, but portable could be fun, especially if it had potential for general SBC computing.
Edit: I think I have a better idea what I’m looking for now. The Anbernic devices seem to more or less match up with what I am looking for, so I’ll start there with a more informed search. Thanks! Happy to get more suggestions and tips, though.
This is probably not what you’re looking for, but I have two suggestions that don’t really fit your criteria but you might find at least mildly interesting:
Playstation Vita. Moddable, retroarch gives you most retro games, and you can stream your PC with Moonlight. It’s a bit small but it roughly fits your price point and is just awesome
Surface Duo & Duo 2. A bit out of your price range but with a good expandable controller, I consider this the ultimate Nintendo ds emulator. And I mean, I guess android is sort of like Linux? lol
The original Surface Duo is dirt cheap on ebay and I enjoy it
I am certainly interested in something that fits your criteria more closely. But it most likely doesn’t exist out of the box. You’d probably have to hobble it together yourself with a Raspberry Pi and other hardware
The Vita also has a lot of source ports.
For the right price it can be a pretty good deal considering it can play PSX and below as well as PSP games and a lot of handheld emulators still struggle with Vita emulation.