As someone with a great interest in game history, I use a lot of emulators. Games are unfortunately a highly disposable medium, and a combination of technological advancements and a lack of interest or passion on behalf of publishers means it’s nearly impossible to get your hands on the best games of yesteryear through fully legal or official means. Games like Paper Mario, Eternal Darkness or even Silent Hill 2 are available almost exclusively through emulators for many people.
Hooray for emulation then, where would we be without it? But what’s the best way to get started? Getting them to work on consoles can be a chore, and there’s a bit of tethering involved in playing them on a PC. That’s where the Steam Deck comes in – the perfect handheld emulation station.
Getting emulators up and running was a very simple process. If you’ve ever dipped your toe in the waters of emulation before, there’s nothing here to catch you off guard. It’s easy to forget that the Steam Deck is a fully featured PC, but it absolutely is, making getting solid emulators like PCSX2 (PS2), Dolphin (GameCube), SNES9X (SNES) and the like installed completely hassle-free. I was playing Dragon Quest before I knew it.
Don’t be put off by the fact that the Steam Deck also runs a modified form of Linux. I know that particular operating system scares people more than black magic does, but Valve did a great job of making it familiar and you don’t have to use the terminal. Most of what you need is available through a pre-installed app store, and to top it off, most emulators are automatically compatible with your gamepad.
Games of more recent generations – Playstation 2 and 3 in particular – run surprisingly well. I managed to run Demon’s Souls at a solid 30fps, and Skate 3 ran at 60fps with only a few minor dips. PS2 games run even better. Even Shadow of the Colossus runs well north of 45 fps, and less demanding games like Ratchet: Deadlocked and Jak 2 never went below 50 fps. It’s remarkable that these games are running at all, to have so many ready to play was a nice surprise. Leaving the house with games from that era in my backpack, I never thought I could.
As a fan of retro games, Valve’s handheld really shone for me when playing simple, older games on the go. As much as I love the PS2 and the PS3, games like Earthbound and the SquareSoft RPGs just feel that way cozy on the steam deck. Their relative simplicity makes them perfect for playing in short bursts, they don’t really benefit from being blown up on a 32-inch gaming monitor, and the smaller Steam Deck display keeps those pixels compressed and those images sharp.
Portable Game Boy games like Pokémon are also great on Steam Deck. Playing Pokémon Emerald while waiting for a bus, or doing some farming in Harvest Moon in between college classes, felt great. I even found time to play a little Super Mario RPG in my dentist’s waiting room – I never thought I’d live through the day!
There always felt something wrong playing SNES games at the same desk I work at, but curled up on the couch is a completely different proposition. I want an emulator to help me get some of that old-fashioned console magic back, and that’s exactly what the Steam Deck does.
The hybrid nature of the Steam Deck is what makes it so successful. It’s a strong value proposition and has all the convenience and low barrier to entry of a console, but the power and customizability of a PC. It can handle just about anything and emulating my favorite games is a breeze. I don’t know if Valve focused specifically on emulation, but if they did, they couldn’t have done better. Freedom is really the keyword. The Steam Deck has so many strengths and so few caveats that it’s a natural emulation powerhouse.
There’s another reason to mimic games on the Steam Deck that puts Valve in a slightly less favorable light. As impressive as the Deck is on the hardware front, the number of games currently rated “Great on Deck” isn’t as high as it should be. That number will almost certainly increase as time goes on, but right now you might feel like there are just one or two major holes in your handheld library. We have a list of incompatible games here.
I have over 200 games in my Steam library, only 49 of which have been given the green light by Valve, while games like Halo Infinite and Destiny 2 don’t work at all because they use incompatible anti-cheat software. Emulators fill the gap perfectly as we wait for the Deck to expand its collection of games confirmed to work well with them.
If you’re anything like me, you might find yourself using more emulators than SteamOS itself.
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