1. Get two boxes. This solution is probably the least annoying of the three, but it brings out some interesting issues. I would need little road map on top of the main box to figure out what combination of buttons I’d need to press to get my games to appear on the screen. “Super Nintendo? That’s 2-3. Dreamcast? 2-1. Genesis? 1.”
2. Splice them all together with Y-adapters. For about $5 a piece, you can buy a Y-adapter that will let you plug two RCA type plugs into one receptacle. So you can buy several and just chain them together like so (and yes, I’ve done this, it’s not pretty): Hook one Y-adapter into each input (Left Audio, Right Audio, and Video). We’ll call these A, B, and C. Now hook up your Super Nintendo into it’s respective adapters, and plug new Y-adapters into the other side. We’ll call these D, E, and F. Hook up your Dreamcast to the new Y-adapters, plug in more Y-adapters, call these new ones G, H, and I. GameCube, Y-adapters, J, K, L. Nintendo 64, Y-adapters M, N, O. Hook up your Genesis, now the new Geneses only have output for one audio, so you have to decide which speaker you want the sound to come out of and hook it up to that and the video feed. Oh, and new Y-adapters, called P, and Q. Same story for the NES. One audio, one video. Plug them in. You won’t need any more Y-adapters until you get a new system. (Some of you could keep going, I know, but that’s all the systems that I have).
The benefit to a system like this is that all the machines are hooked up to the television at the same time, and there’s no button combinations you have to remember. The problems? (Yeah, there are problems) 1. Signal loss. With all these connections to the TV, the quality of the signal is degraded a bit. The systems at the end of the chain are affected the worst, and it will only get worse as new systems are added, and 2. Let’s say that I want to take the N64 somewhere for some reason. Unless I labelled all the plugs in the above example, I’m going to have an incredibly tough time figuring out which wires to pull. Not to mentiion that there would be enough wires back there to strangle a buffalo.
3. Hybrid. I could combine the two methods and hook up two or more systems to each switch on a box, but then I have the same problems I faced in the earlier solutions, just lessened some. I’d still need a road map to figure how to get any given system on the screen (“All Sega systems are on Button 4, all Nintendo systems made before 1995 are on Button 3.” etc.), and to take a system on the road would be slightly easier, but still more trouble than it should be, especially with two or more wires coming out of each plug.
So what do I want? I want a box that I can plug about 12 systems into that is mechanical (so I don’t have to plug it into the wall). I figure that if I have space for about 12, I won’t have to complain again until about 2016.