Turns Out, The Steam Deck Is Ripe For Game Emulators

Now that the Steam Deck has officially launched, you might be wondering if it’ll run your favorite PC games, and that’s an understandable thing to wonder, but as it turns out, the Steam Deck is not just a really cool portable gaming PC, it’s also a great way to run emulators.

If you’re a fan of retro consoles like the NES, SNES, SEGA Genesis, PSP, PS1 etc., then the Steam Deck is something you want to keep your eyes on. According to PC Gamer, the Steam Deck is capable of running a wide list of console emulators. And, installing them is easier than burning a roux (if you know your food, then you know burning a roux is incredibly simple – though, unwanted).

The best part though, is that things apparently work well, and you can keep them updated just as easily as you installed them. What does this all mean? In short, the Steam Deck plays PC games, and games from a handful of consoles.

You can install the most popular emulators on the Steam Deck

First, I want to preface this with the fact that, I am in no way condoning piracy here. Support your game devs. Pay for the games you want to play. Having said that, if you already own copies of games from consoles like the PSP, Nintendo Wii, PS1 and so-on, it’s not too difficult to convert those into ROMs and play them with an emulator.

Now, with that out of the way, what types of emulators can you expect to find on the Steam Deck? While we can’t list them all because we don’t have a Steam Deck in our hands yet, PC Gamer found some of the most popular ones to be available. This includes Yuzu for the Nintendo Switch, Dolphin for the GameCube and Wii, DuckStation for the PS1, PCSX2 for the PS2, PPSSPP for the PSP, and bsnes for the SNES.

You’ll also find the Citra 3DS emulator and mGBA Game Boy Advance emulator available. And there are likely others too.

How does it all work?

It’s pretty simple, really. All you have to do is hold down the power button to bring up a menu. In that menu there’s an option to switch to desktop. From there, you’ll find a pre-installed app store called Discover, and inside that store you’ll find emulators. To which you can install to your heart’s content.

You will of course still have to go through the process of getting ROMs onto the Steam Deck to play inside of those emulators. And that we can’t help you with. But if you already know what you’re doing in that regard, then you don’t need our help anyways. One thing to note is, since the Steam Deck has a microSD card slot, you have an easy way to get those files onto the machine.

Simply copy them to the microSD card then slide it into the Steam Deck and go from there.