Advice/Help/Info Needed.

[Butcherdeliz]

Ok first off, Im only posting this cause I dont know the right keywords or terms to use to do my own research. Second, im a console noob. Famicom is the only console I own and although Im aware of the existence of the current generation Im totally ignorant of their capabilities.

So having said that heres my dillemma. Is there a way to play famicom roms from my USB direct to my TV? I dont know if there are hardware for it but basically I prefer USB roms/emulator because of the compactness and availability, not to mention they are free. But I also want to play them using a famicom controller so is there a way to achieve this?

Having played emulators, I noticed that in the 'input' tabs you can define whether you want keyboard or joystick/controller support. Any advice if there are pluggable famicom styled controllers available or what the closest similar ones are?

Also, a friend of mine suggested to just get a PSP and dl the emulator/roms there, plug it to the TV and its a go. Having zero experience with PSP, id like to ask if this is possible? And if so, how good is the graphics of a famicom game emulated on a PSP compared to an actual famicom game with AV output?

Hopefully my query doesnt seem too cluttered. I just dont know any other way to simplify it. >.< I do have 2 original famicom units at home but I have made a decision to just keep them for display purposes because of the risk of them getting broken and such. I also thought of buying a famiclone but that would still require me getting carts of each game that I like and that would also carry the risk of the carts getting damaged eventually. Thanks for reading through this and I appreciate any insight you can give me. Happy holidays all!

[jpx72]

You need a "middle man" for this, I haven't heard of a modern TV with emulators built in. So a PC or that suggested PSP. Or for example a Gamecube with SD-Loader, a Dreamcast with some custom software.... Many newer consoles can emulate Famicom games. The quality of image from this emulation will be dependent on the console's capabilities, so equal or better. The main problem will not be quality but compatibility with all Famicom games, or speed/slowdown problems

For a Famicom USB controller usable with many emulators, you can use this:
http://jpx72.detailne.sk/stuff_files/stuff/buffalo_box_front.jpg
http://jpx72.detailne.sk/stuff_files/stuff/buffalo_unboxed.jpg

[Butcherdeliz]

Thanks a lot jpx! Thats a start! Now I can do more research to see which middleman would be best for me.