Similar issue for me -- I kept my childhood collection and slowly added to it, but hardly ever actually played anything -- until I got a Retron 2 HD that can handle both NES and SNES games, outputting to HDMI.

And then I got the wireless 8bitdo controllers that can work with the original NES/SNES ports, because fuck cables (briefly tried using OG controllers and it was awful).

Now I actually play the games a decent amount, and my wife plays Tetris or Dr Mario all the time.