I went through this when I sold my collection of systems. Turns out CD's like Sega CD and Sega Saturn only have a 10+ year life span. Most cartridge games have a life span of a few decades but I was surprised how many Atari and Nintendo carts stopped working after sitting on a shelf for years. Most of them in good plastic cases too.
Your best bet is to build a small PC for your TV, invest in some proper controllers whether you want arcade or console, and get the games you want on an emulator. Emulators can also cleanup some of the problems with running old games on new TV's. N64 games are sometimes awful and blocky looking on new TV's. Sprites from old 16 bit games can look bad too but the emulators can clean it up a bit and make it look better.
I second the controller thing no matter how you're playing. I found a new respect for old console games when I quit trying to play them with an Xbox controller. Get something similar to what the game was meant to be played with.
I went through this when I sold my collection of systems. Turns out CD's like Sega CD and Sega Saturn only have a 10+ year life span. Most cartridge games have a life span of a few decades but I was surprised how many Atari and Nintendo carts stopped working after sitting on a shelf for years. Most of them in good plastic cases too.
Your best bet is to build a small PC for your TV, invest in some proper controllers whether you want arcade or console, and get the games you want on an emulator. Emulators can also cleanup some of the problems with running old games on new TV's. N64 games are sometimes awful and blocky looking on new TV's. Sprites from old 16 bit games can look bad too but the emulators can clean it up a bit and make it look better.
I second the controller thing no matter how you're playing. I found a new respect for old console games when I quit trying to play them with an Xbox controller. Get something similar to what the game was meant to be played with.