In terms of the style of classic games that I play, I find myself gravitating toward the SNES. I love the RPGs from that era, and some of the Nintendo side-scrollers from around that time period are nothing short of stellar (Super Metroid is one of my favorite games of all time). I have a pretty harsh filter when it comes to older titles, since they tend to be chock full of bullshit mechanics. I'm very elective when it comes to NES titles, for instance.
I don't actually have much childhood nostalgia for consoles, so I tend to chase specific games more than systems. I've been a PC gamer pretty much since the beginning, so you could say that I'm a child of Apogee, id Software, and Epic (Mega)Games more than anything else. Generally, if I do have nostalgia for older titles, it's because I played them at a friends' house (which is one of the reasons I'm particularly fond of the NES port of Snow Bros and a lot of N64 titles).
The PS1/N64 era, specifically, is a bit of a weird one. I find myself gravitating more toward the N64 for the more action-orientated games just because the level of jank on the PS1 is off the scale in a lot of cases. I think Nintendo putting an analog stick on that sucker right from launch made a bigger difference than some people think it did. I can still have a hell of a good time with SM64. I doubt many people can go back to some of the pre-DualShock mascot platformers on the PS1 and not feel like something's missing.
That said, PS1 is unbeatable when it comes to RPGs. It's on the same level as the SNES for that genre as far as I'm concerned. And when it comes to 2D platformers...well, it hardly needs stated that SotN is a fucking masterpiece (real shame about the load times, though). And, naturally, one of the reasons that I've been fiddling around with PS1 systems a lot lately is because I want to play some of the Bemani titles from that era. I'm a sucker for classic 5-key Beatmania. And since you can now use an Arduino Uno as a modchip that makes me even more interested.
As far as soldering stuff goes, strap yourself in and prepare for a ton of links.
If you need pretty much everything, Adafruit has a
nice kit for $100 that includes an iron, a number of tools, a multimeter, an iron stand, and more. Pretty good value for the money.
If you're just looking for an iron, here's the one I've been using:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/180. Seems to work very nicely!
I'd also recommend a decent soldering iron stand. Those little flimsy things that some irons come with royally suck, and using them is a great way of burning yourself or your table. Here's one:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/150I use a brass sponge to clean my tip while I'm working. The specific one that I have is very open and has caused me to get pelted by molten solder. I'd recommend something like this to prevent crap from getting flung everywhere:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1172Here's some solder:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1886. Not much else to say about that.
I also have an adjustable magnifying glass and PCB holder:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/291. The magnifying glass is really useful. If you want something that grips the board a bit better, here's a good looking vice (haven't used this one personally):
https://www.adafruit.com/product/151For desoldering, I'd recommend both wick and a solder sucker. Here's the wick that I use:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/149 (you may want to order a few of those if you have a lot of work to do--5 feet doesn't seem to go very far if you're doing a lot of component replacements). I have the $5 solder sucker that Adafruit uses and it's a piece of shit, so I'm thinking of getting something better. I have my eye on this one ($17.50), though I'm not sure how good it is:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1597.
As far as tools go, I'd recommend a pair of
diagonal cutters,
wire strippers (if you're working with solid core or stranded wires--if you're just swapping components I wouldn't worry about it).
If you're missing more than a few of these things, just do yourself a favor and get the kit.