I was just thinking about how there’s so many ways to play our old favorite games these days: Collecting for original hardware, playing ports and remasters on modern consoles, throwback consoles like the SNES Classic, having a dedicated emulation machine or handheld, etc.
What method works best for you? Has it changed over time?
I have a mini PC running batocera, which has been great! It’s hooked up to the TV and can run up to PS3, and even Switch, though I haven’t been able to get a Switch emulator running yet.
And I can technically do Xbox360 too, but 360 emulation is in a sorry state, in general. And it’s even worse on Linux, because there’s no native Linux version, so batocera has to run the 360 emulator through Wine.
Other than that though, it’s great! Considering dual booting Steam OS to play more modern stuff, as well.
Try Bazzite. No need to dual boot
My use case is that this Mini PC acts as a living room console, and I like the Emulation Station front end, and that Emulators, controller setup, etc. more or less work out of the box.
But my big issue with it, is that Steam has effectively been broken on Batocera for a long time now. So, if I could run all of my ROMs and more modern stuff via Steam, all on one OS, that would be great
How would Bazzite fair in a living room console kind of use case? What is setup like? Especially for emulators. Could I have it boot straight into a front end, like ES or Lutris?
I’m holding out hope for a good Linux build of the 360 emulator. Because, like, I love Fable II and would like to eventually finish Lost Odyssey, but not enough to keep an entire console in my collection for.
The original XBOX emulator struggled too, but now runs well on Linux, so I think we’ll get there before long.