I spent a few days chatting to the RetroDECK team (who are well and truly friends by now!), with the idea that it might be a good chance to focus on their real passion: retro gaming. Too often RetroDECK (which is all about emulation/retro gaming for the Steam Deck/Linux) just gets bottled up and mentioned as being less than it is.
Sure you get the typical emulation projects in there: PS2, PS3, Wii U, SNES and so on, but it really has so much more to offer to users. From odd little projects and engines to things like MUDs, pinball and more.
This was a nice chat with the team, it shows them all sharing what they’re so passionate about. Retro gaming in all its forms.
From my friend Lazorne in the interview:
What I hope to do is simply provide people with an easy way to experience those memories again, provided they still have access to their old games. For one person retro might mean the PlayStation 3, while for others it could be systems like the TRS-80 or the BBC Micro.Both viewpoints are valid and that is how we approach the components included in RetroDECK as well.
You can find my article and the whole interview here:
https://gardinerbryant.com/retrodeck-is-more-than-emulation-an-interview-with-the-devs/
basically RetroDeck is a one and done type of deal. one package (flatpak) that has everything pre-configured and good to go as opposed to say RetroArch where you have to pick your cores (emulators) and what have you. on say a SteamDeck something like RetroDeck is naturally going to be easier to use and set up but when it comes to a Linux desktop it’s all really a non-factor. Like for example most distro repos have either a complete library of the cores for Retroarch or you can pick and choose which ones you want. like on Arch for example the package “libretro” will give you everything or on Nix/NixOS you can pick and choose which ones to install with Retroarch.
Yeah, I have a retro device that I spent hours configuring. When I finally had everything working… something got corrupted and I had to start over. I have not had the energy to try again.
I would vastly prefer a preconfigured setup.