For those of you who don’t know, I’m an old school gamer. I’m also old, which I guess technically makes me an old, old school gamer. I was born in the 1970s, raised in the 80s, and had a front row seat to the birth of home video games and home computers. I was four years old when my parents purchased a Pong console for our large console living room television (the only television in the house). Before long we had purchased an Odyssey II, an Atari 2600… and the rest is (literally) history. Our interests soon changed from home gaming consoles to home computers. We owned a TRS-80 Model III computer from Radio Shack, an Apple II, and multiple IBM computers. I got my own computer, a Commodore 64, in the early 80s. So yeah, I’ve played them all — Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft… been there, done that, got the storage tubs full of old games, consoles, and cables to prove it.

(This is reason #9271 why I would never be able to live in a van full time.)

So what about gaming inside your van? There are lots of portable solutions like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, but if you’re a retrogamer like me, things can get slightly more complicated.

As everybody knows, old video game consoles can be finicky. Some old consoles like the original Nintendo (NES) have developed issues with their pin connectors, and lots of disc-based (both CD and DVD) consoles can develop problems with their lasers and motor-spinning mechanisms. Even for consoles with historically good survival records (like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis), I wouldn’t necessarily recommend storing and regularly traveling with in a mobile earthquake machine like my Ford van. Another problem is that almost all of those old consoles use composite (RCA) connections for audio and video. While some flat screen television makes still include those connections, many budget televisions have dropped them.

All is not lost! Here are two gaming solutions that I have implemented in my van.

The first is a Raspberry Pi. A Raspnerry Pi is a tiny computer (about the size of a deck of cards) with essentially no moving parts. Instead of a hard drive, it stores its data on an SD card. There are USB ports too, for USB sticks or peripherals like mice, keyboards, and joysticks. I’ll tell you up front that setting up a Raspberry Pi as a gaming console is a relatively geeky undertaking. If you are comfortable with loading operating systems on computers and playing around with hardware then it shouldn’t be all that difficult to follow one of the dozens of guides out there to get you started, but if that’s not within your wheelhouse then you might want to reach out to a friend (or a kid) for assistance. The latest model of the Raspberry Pi is the 5, but could can pick a model 3b up relatively inexpensively online ($50 or less). One nice thing about the Pi is that it runs from USB power, which is great for setting up in a van.

While I kept a Raspberry Pi in my van for a while, a few months ago I switched to an “all in one” console (for lack of a better term). You can think of these consoles as essentially a Raspberry Pi dedicated to gaming that is super easy to set up, comes completely pre-loaded and ready to go. The one I purchased from Amazon cost around $40 and came with the console, two controllers, and all the cables needed for power and to connect to an HDMI television. The only thing I had to provide were AAA batteries for the wireless controllers. Setting up these consoles is as simple as connecting the HDMI cable to a television and the USB cable to power. The one I purchased came with 20,000 games, ranging from Atari 2600 classics up to PlayStation 1 games. Literally, all you have to do it plug it in and it’s ready to go. It’s about 1/3 the price of a Raspberry Pi setup, has no moving parts, and is essentially disposable. The downsides are that the game collection cannot be added to so you are limited to the 20,000 games it comes with.

If you want to see a review of the retro gaming console, here is a video I uploaded to my other YouTube channel:

Amazon Link: Retro Gaming Console

Like I said, there are lots of ways to play video games in a van. Some people enjoy handheld/portable gaming systems and enjoy playing games on their phones or tablets. And while I don’t mind those things for short periods, but for longer gaming periods I like a big screen and a real gamepad. Obviously the idea of vanlife is to travel and enjoy the outdoors and see the world, but late at night or when the weather’s bad, I still enjoy a quick round of Tetris or Super Mario Bros.