michaelp: They are great because many like myself grew up with the things.
Theres not really much in the way of homebrew for them and the flash carts to play roms are rare and would cost more than buying the games you want legit.
The games used to be so cheap (when it was old, but not 'retro'), theyre harder to come by these days.
The contollers were easy to hack up to a parallel port on a PC too (back when PCs still had them that is).
Worst thing about them, battery backup packing up. Mario allstars is probably the worst for this for some reason.
Emulation will keep them alive forever though.
I think I have 3 lying around the place. The plastic on one started to discolour so I got another
