RetroPi or RetroAndroid?

[DonMegel]

I want to get my wife an NES/SNES/Sega/N64 emulator for Christmas but I am having trouble deciding what rout to take.

A RetroPi looks good and has a great interface, but I’m not sure about the performance. Will it handle, say, Mario Kart 64 on split screen? Can it have more than 1 wireless controller (using an Xbox dongle or Bluetooth, nothing wired), is it stable? (my ODROID keeps crashing)

My other idea was an Android tablet (specifically the Yoga Tab 3 for its battery life). The tablet would be portable and could do other things when not playing games. But, I have other concerns about that. Will it support split screen? Will it support multiple controllers/players? If I use Chromecast to get the games to the TV, is there a lag between what happens and what we see?

Which platform would give me the best performance for N64 games? The Raspberry Pi 2 (900mhz Cortex-A7 and 1 gig of RAM), or a Yoga Tab 3 (1.1ghz Qualcomm APQ8009 with 1 gig of RAM)? What should I look for when judging hardware specifications for this purpose? RAM? CPU speed? Graphics processing?

Finally, if I am looking in the wrong place, please direct me to the proper place for these questions.

Thank you,

[DonMegel]

If this is the wrong place to ask this, please direct me to a better venue.

[kryptalivian]

Look into recalbox http://www.recalbox.com . It has smother n64 gameplay.

[DonMegel]

So you think the RaspberryPi 2 with RecalBox would give me better performance than an Android tablet?

[kryptalivian]

I cannot confirm it will be better than the tablet, but I can say it would be easier for 2 player gaming.

I didn't see anything on the tablet having a video out port and it had 1 micro USB port. Makes it more difficult to use if you want to play multiplayer on the TV. Your micro USB port would go to either connecting to the TV or to a controller.

The Raspberry Pi would be much cheaper and give you access to 4 USB ports and an Ethernet port.

[DonMegel]

That makes sense. Have you tried a Recalbox before? Smooth game play? Any big issues?

[kryptalivian]

I've tried Lakka, Recalbox and Retropie.

Recalbox, is basically Retropie, but heavily customized. I personally have found that with Recalbox, I spend less time setting up controls and the things of that nature. Here is a video of Recalbox in action. Keep in mind this is from 9 months ago so a lot of progress has been made since then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onC8Z9bQh4w

[DonMegel]

That interface is perfect for my wife. She knows how to work electronics but can't go into troubleshooting and finicky issues. Just chose your system, your game, and go!

I think this is what I will do. Now I just need a cheap source of Xbox wireless controllers.

[kryptalivian]

I bought a bluetooth dongle off amazon and then synced my ps3 controller through the settings menu(Pretty darn simple). An Xbox Wireless receiver should do the trick for the Xbox Controller.

Bluetooth- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FYS7SIU
Xbox Dongle - http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Official-Xb ... SwuMFUcF4p

For the games portion, it's pretty simple to transfer them over your network.