[khedoros1]

> Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie

It seems like a different set of tradeoffs. RetroPie (if you're running on a Raspberry Pi, and not on a PC) will have fewer game systems that it can support, of course. But it's also cheap enough to just buy one as a dedicated game system that you leave connected to a TV, so the kids aren't grabbing your laptop to play retro games, or something. For a little more money, you could set up an NUC or something, of course.

> You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card

A lot of kits come with NOOBS loaded on them. You can load RetroPie directly into Raspbian by using a setup script that they provide. You could also boot into Raspbian via NOOBS and use a USB adapter to flash a microSD with another OS.

You could even take a blank SD, extract NOOBS onto it with your phone, and boot the Pi off that (NOOBS and Berryboot just need to be unzipped onto the SD; they don't require images to be flashed).