Retrode

The Retrode (formerly: snega2usb) is an easy to use USB adapter for *Super Nintendo / *Super Famicom and *SEGA Mega Drive / *Genesis game cartridges. Play your favorite 16-bit games – legally! – on your PC, smartphone, laptop, network router, *Wii, or *Pandora. There is a huge number of emulators for virtually all existing systems, and the Retrode is the link that enables them to load the ROM data straight from the cartridge. Of course, the savegame RAM on many *SNES cartridges can also be read and written.

What’s needed?

• Game cartridges, and lots of them
• Emulators for SNES/SFC and Genesis/Mega Drive: SNES9x, ZSNES, Gens, Fusion, …
• A computer with a USB port, running any of the above (Windows/Linux/MacOS/*NIX)

The Retrode is for you if…

• you like playing legacy video games on your PC, and doing so legally
• you want to preserve your investment in these games, even after all hardware has expired
• you want to back up your game progress, e.g. before replacing the cartridge battery
• you like emulator cheats, but prefer to finish the boss on the real console
• you simply think it’s cool to plug huge game cartridges into a PDA or cell phone

The Retrode is not for you if… you don’t see the difference between making private backup copies of games that you own, and downloading 10,000 ROMs from the internets.

This is ripped straight from their homepage.  After searching around a bit I found that most people were pleased with the product in that it delivered as intended. The Retrode II is also in production as we speak! -kaokensho