Best Start for Emulation?

[Karavanth]

I know there's threads on this, but it's a fast-moving scene and threads even a couple of months old can be out of date.

After dozens of hours of my OLED playing new and old games from my Steam library, it's time to set up its emulation side.

I've set up a Retroid Pocket and an Odin Pro in the past. Emudeck is supposed to be faster, yeah? Please? I don't want to dive into a multi-hour setup for a *third* time just because I'm a dork and had to keep getting bigger and better 🤣

Anyway:

1) Is Emudeck the way to go for Steam Deck emulation?

2) Whatever the right path is, what's the best guide for it?

Thank you!

[Haruspex]

Emudeck is super easy, and it configures everything for you. I recommend it.

However, I stopped letting Steam Rom Manager upload all the games as non-Steam games, because if you have a lot it can get really cluttered really fast. Instead, I just have a shortcut to Emulation Station and launch the games from there.

[WarnerCK]

I used RetroDeck. It was pretty easy.

[Karavanth]

Is it pretty intuitive to skip Steam ROM Manager?

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Karavanth:

Is it pretty intuitive to skip Steam ROM Manager?

Yep. Just don't use it. Emudeck will create a shortcut for Emulation Station anyway, and you can run that from game mode.

[Karavanth]

Many, many thanks

[Zef]

Originally posted by Haruspex:

Emudeck is super easy, and it configures everything for you. I recommend it.

However, I stopped letting Steam Rom Manager upload all the games as non-Steam games, because if you have a lot it can get really cluttered really fast. Instead, I just have a shortcut to Emulation Station and launch the games from there.

The only reason why i don't use emulation station is because as far as i'm aware you can NOT setup different power plan and SMT profiles per game when launched from ES-DE.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Zef:

Originally posted by Haruspex:

Emudeck is super easy, and it configures everything for you. I recommend it.

However, I stopped letting Steam Rom Manager upload all the games as non-Steam games, because if you have a lot it can get really cluttered really fast. Instead, I just have a shortcut to Emulation Station and launch the games from there.

The only reason why i don't use emulation station is because as far as i'm aware you can NOT setup different power plan and SMT profiles per game when launched from ES-DE.

This is a drawback, true. Steam treats emulation station as one game.

I stopped putting individual ROMS in Steam itself because my collection was getting big and unwieldy, and there was a glitch in the beta branch for a bit there where non-Steam games were acting weird. I think that's fixed now.

A better recommendation for those with large ROM collections might be to use Steam ROM Manager for just a select few games you launch frequently and want independent power plans and SMT profiles for, and use ES-DE for all the rest.