After giving up on it due to not completely understanding how to set it up early on, I'd written off Retroarch for a few months, opting for separate emulators for each separate console.

Holy crap. What a mistake.

After trying it again on my phone and suddenly having everything "click" after an hour or so of tinkering, I tried it again on my PC with EmulationStation, my emulator box frontend of choice.

Compared to setting up the emulations separately, it's insanely easy. You use the same basic parameters to load every emulator, only appending the .dll of the core for different platforms.

Configuration sticks between all emulators, since they're all launched via retroarch, so there's no pain in the ass configuring each emulator to go fullscreen and "autoconfig" handles controllers, so none of that either.

Really, the only problem, is a lack of documentation. I had to search a bit to figure out the right BIOS to get Sega CD working, but aside from that, it was incredibly smooth.

Not to mention the UI is awesome. Before, I had to figure out a way to close down each separate emulator when I was done - often being forced to grab a keyboard to do it. Now I can save, load, change shaders, screenshot, exit, and a whole slew of other stuff straight from the in-game menu.

I'm sure most of the members of this subreddit already know this, but I was just floored by how good it's gotten and figured if I could help even one other emulation fan, it's worth it.