First Things' First:

Maybe you're used to all of this now, but my attempt is to share an older style of gaming news post. Something maybe a lil bit like the old gaming blogs / news sites that the internet used to have. Casual, opinion-based, image-heavy and maybe-filled-with-things-you-already-spotted.

My last post (News #2) is here via this link, if you wanted to read over it before I share some more things I have spotted :)

This might lean towards a more Steam Deck-oriented post, but of course I'll inevitably deviate and ramble on and most likely cover everything but the Steam Deck. So let's begin!

Emulation:

NxEmu

Another Nintendo Switch emulator - NxEmu, which saw some focus and activity some time ago before seemingly disappearing into abandonment - has come back with a post sharing the dev will be refocusing on the project.

Personally, I recommend everyone focuses on the more reputable Switch emulator called Ryubing / Ryujinx. It is made with one of the original devs of Ryujinx itself, and the updates actually have substance - and you can see by the GitHub: work is consistent and constant on this one.

But back to the point of this, the NxEmu dev states: "the plan is to be able to run pre-decrypted games, so if people want to run a game it will have to be decrypted first with some other tool."

• You can find the site/blog/announcement here with this link

• You can find the GitHub link with this link

RCPS3 on Android

If you don't recognize the emulator name, it's an emulator for the PS3. This was announced, build and released (the alpha test build, at least) in less than a week. This is not perfect, and at the moment I'm going to look at it as more of a proof of concept than something you should really install, but it's still incredibly interesting news.

The original devs of RPCS3 stated around December that they wouldn't be entering the Android emulation scene because the fandom is toxic as heck, demanding as heck, and rather unpleasant. However, just a few months after that we see DH (a member) take the lead and release this for Android gamers.

• If you want to visit the bare-bones GitHub page, you can with this link

Following though, is an image showing Dragon Ball Burst Limit demo booting in emulation:

Games News

Abuse

Do you remember the 1996 run-and-gun DOS game called Abuse? I sure don't, since I wasn't alive, but if you did and do, and want to re-play the game, a developer has cleverly removed the notorious 15 FPS lock on the game, and released it as an AppImage, DEB , RPM and tar.gz

• The link to the GitHub page is here, if you're interested

• [If you want to see what the heck this all means, then this link to the YouTube video might be more suited to you, showing the 15 FPS locked version (original) and the unlocked FPS version (this mod)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTwDu3ZNE68]

Heroic Games Launcher update

Heroic, "...a Free and Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. Also available on the SteamDeck!" has just released an update.

This is one of their biggest releases so far, and a lot of work has gone into this, especially considering the dev team's busy life and commitments outside of Heroic.

Some changes include:

• Env Variables in Known Fixes: Customize game fixes with environment variables for better compatibility.
• Launch Arguments via URLs: Pass game arguments directly through protocol URLs for streamlined launching.
• Steam Shortcuts for Uninstalled Games: Add Steam shortcuts for games you haven’t installed yet.
• Anti-Cheat Logging: Anti-cheat details now appear in logs for easier troubleshooting.
• Gamescope "Force Grab Cursor" Toggle: Prevent cursor escapes in full-screen games.
• GOG game setup improvements.
• DXVK-NVAPI Enabled by default for NVIDIA GPU users on Linux.
• Various UI improvements and other smaller updates.

The full list and detailed explanation of all their changes is here on GitHub, via this link if you want to read all they have done!

Xbox Game Pass games leaving:

I personally both own a Series X console, and use the XBPlay program to play my Xbox games, and the Xbox Game Pass library. I use XBPlay on my Steam Deck. Their site can give you an idea of what they do, but the benefit to me (buying on Steam for a once-off $5 USD payment) is that it allows higher resolution upscaling that is possible just by streaming the games directly from a browser.

• The site is here
• The Steam page is also here if you want to see some reviews

Anyway, back on topic, some big games are leaving the Game Pass library this month:

• Yakuza 5

• Yakuza 6

• Lies of P

• No More Heroes 3

• Evil West

• Solar Ash

• Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated

• MLB The Show 24

DREDGE MOBILE

DREGDE is my favorite game of a couple years back. Maybe in the top 3 of all time for me. It's the perfect combination of cozy and creepy - beautifully stylized graphics and art style, story and Lovecraftian horror.

The dev team (Black Salt Games, based in New Zealand) released their Android and iOS port of the game a couple of days ago. It's not a simple straight forward port process, they've gone to a lot of custom work on making the game perfect for the 'small screen'.

Here's a lovely review on Forbes, if you want to read more about their game on mobile, and the process it took to get it there!

One Gamer Plays Epic's Free Games Each Week:

I've discovered one user on the Epic Games (unofficial) sub-reddit who came up with a plan to help them clear their backlog of games, and stop them buying more games.

Simply, they're going to play and review one of the games Epic gives away for free, each and every week. This was their New Years' Resolution:

"I need to branch out my video game taste, and I'm going to have quite a lot of free time next semester. However, there's a big problem. I'm a broke college student.

So I've resolved that for the first four months of 2025, I will play every free weekly Epic game to completion before the next one launches. That should be 17 games in 17 weeks. I'll make a post on this subreddit after finishing every game detailing my thoughts. I don't expect very many people to read, but this is mostly to keep myself accountable."

I find this amazing. And it's been fascinating (and helpful) to read someone's review of the games so far, meaning if they're terrible...I won't bother.

The link to their initial post (on Reddit) is here, and you can find their weekly posts by clicking on their profile, and filtering by posts

Quick Fire Interesting - Dot Points:

• 10 years ago, Steam announced the release of the Source 2 engine - free to use for all developers
• The Nintendo Switch was released 8 years ago now. Sure, they show their age, but they really did so much for the modern handheld gaming market (and I have a V2 on its way from Japan right now, for me to micro-solder a mod chip in for CFW when it arrives!)
• Both IndieGala and Fanatical have Robocop: Rogue City on heavy discount right now - at 90% off. The general consensus is though to hold off at least a day, so that the chance of it being included on Humble will be proven, or disproven
• Steam passed 40m CCU (concurrent users) for the first time. It's crazy to think their previous highest number a few short years ago (March 2020) was only 20m!

FUN!

Steam Deck Power Button:

This one is a specific and super amazing little one I found. An acquaintance on Mastodon shared with me this little creation they made for the Steam Deck's power button:

The user is @[email protected] on Mastodon.

• Tinkercad link here
• Printables link here!

(thanks for being able to share this!

Steam Giving a User $4,000 of Free Games:

A user named "Sonix" discovered a bug in Steam’s refund system that mistakenly refunded his money but let him keep the games. He reported the issue to Valve, and instead of punishing him, they thanked him for his honesty!

• Sonix now owns 37,474 games, making his collection one of the largest on Steam.

• now owns 20,898 DLCs.

• and 22,490 games on his wishlist.

• Despite having thousands of games, he primarily plays Dota 2 (76% of the time).

• His Steam account is Level 299, with 105 badges

• The estimated total value of his library is around $372,543.

His profile on Steam can be seen here

Sonic Unleashed:

I wrote a guide (which you can find here, with this link!) for running (installing) and playing the new recompiled PC port of Sonic Unleashed. If you're interested, take a look!

finally?

I hope you enjoy this. My plan is to just...post these when I get the urge to, with no fixed schedule (I know they've been far too regularly rapid lately. If you can think of any improvements you want me to make on them, or want to tell me off for formatting or some error in the post...do feel free!

And, you can reach me elsewhere:

(Matrix)

(Mastodon)

First Things' First:

Maybe you're used to all of this now, but my attempt is to share an older style of gaming news post. Something maybe a lil bit like the old gaming blogs / news sites that the internet used to have. Casual, opinion-based, image-heavy and maybe-filled-with-things-you-already-spotted.

My last post (News #2) is here via this link, if you wanted to read over it before I share some more things I have spotted :)

This might lean towards a more Steam Deck-oriented post, but of course I'll inevitably deviate and ramble on and most likely cover everything but the Steam Deck. So let's begin!

Emulation:

NxEmu

Another Nintendo Switch emulator - NxEmu, which saw some focus and activity some time ago before seemingly disappearing into abandonment - has come back with a post sharing the dev will be refocusing on the project.

Personally, I recommend everyone focuses on the more reputable Switch emulator called Ryubing / Ryujinx. It is made with one of the original devs of Ryujinx itself, and the updates actually have substance - and you can see by the GitHub: work is consistent and constant on this one.

But back to the point of this, the NxEmu dev states: "the plan is to be able to run pre-decrypted games, so if people want to run a game it will have to be decrypted first with some other tool."

• You can find the site/blog/announcement here with this link

• You can find the GitHub link with this link

RCPS3 on Android

If you don't recognize the emulator name, it's an emulator for the PS3. This was announced, build and released (the alpha test build, at least) in less than a week. This is not perfect, and at the moment I'm going to look at it as more of a proof of concept than something you should really install, but it's still incredibly interesting news.

The original devs of RPCS3 stated around December that they wouldn't be entering the Android emulation scene because the fandom is toxic as heck, demanding as heck, and rather unpleasant. However, just a few months after that we see DH (a member) take the lead and release this for Android gamers.

• If you want to visit the bare-bones GitHub page, you can with this link

Following though, is an image showing Dragon Ball Burst Limit demo booting in emulation:

Games News

Abuse

Do you remember the 1996 run-and-gun DOS game called Abuse? I sure don't, since I wasn't alive, but if you did and do, and want to re-play the game, a developer has cleverly removed the notorious 15 FPS lock on the game, and released it as an AppImage, DEB , RPM and tar.gz

• The link to the GitHub page is here, if you're interested

• [If you want to see what the heck this all means, then this link to the YouTube video might be more suited to you, showing the 15 FPS locked version (original) and the unlocked FPS version (this mod)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTwDu3ZNE68]

Heroic Games Launcher update

Heroic, "...a Free and Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. Also available on the SteamDeck!" has just released an update.

This is one of their biggest releases so far, and a lot of work has gone into this, especially considering the dev team's busy life and commitments outside of Heroic.

Some changes include:

• Env Variables in Known Fixes: Customize game fixes with environment variables for better compatibility.
• Launch Arguments via URLs: Pass game arguments directly through protocol URLs for streamlined launching.
• Steam Shortcuts for Uninstalled Games: Add Steam shortcuts for games you haven’t installed yet.
• Anti-Cheat Logging: Anti-cheat details now appear in logs for easier troubleshooting.
• Gamescope "Force Grab Cursor" Toggle: Prevent cursor escapes in full-screen games.
• GOG game setup improvements.
• DXVK-NVAPI Enabled by default for NVIDIA GPU users on Linux.
• Various UI improvements and other smaller updates.

The full list and detailed explanation of all their changes is here on GitHub, via this link if you want to read all they have done!

Xbox Game Pass games leaving:

I personally both own a Series X console, and use the XBPlay program to play my Xbox games, and the Xbox Game Pass library. I use XBPlay on my Steam Deck. Their site can give you an idea of what they do, but the benefit to me (buying on Steam for a once-off $5 USD payment) is that it allows higher resolution upscaling that is possible just by streaming the games directly from a browser.

• The site is here
• The Steam page is also here if you want to see some reviews

Anyway, back on topic, some big games are leaving the Game Pass library this month:

• Yakuza 5

• Yakuza 6

• Lies of P

• No More Heroes 3

• Evil West

• Solar Ash

• Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated

• MLB The Show 24

DREDGE MOBILE

DREGDE is my favorite game of a couple years back. Maybe in the top 3 of all time for me. It's the perfect combination of cozy and creepy - beautifully stylized graphics and art style, story and Lovecraftian horror.

The dev team (Black Salt Games, based in New Zealand) released their Android and iOS port of the game a couple of days ago. It's not a simple straight forward port process, they've gone to a lot of custom work on making the game perfect for the 'small screen'.

Here's a lovely review on Forbes, if you want to read more about their game on mobile, and the process it took to get it there!

One Gamer Plays Epic's Free Games Each Week:

I've discovered one user on the Epic Games (unofficial) sub-reddit who came up with a plan to help them clear their backlog of games, and stop them buying more games.

Simply, they're going to play and review one of the games Epic gives away for free, each and every week. This was their New Years' Resolution:

"I need to branch out my video game taste, and I'm going to have quite a lot of free time next semester. However, there's a big problem. I'm a broke college student.

So I've resolved that for the first four months of 2025, I will play every free weekly Epic game to completion before the next one launches. That should be 17 games in 17 weeks. I'll make a post on this subreddit after finishing every game detailing my thoughts. I don't expect very many people to read, but this is mostly to keep myself accountable."

I find this amazing. And it's been fascinating (and helpful) to read someone's review of the games so far, meaning if they're terrible...I won't bother.

The link to their initial post (on Reddit) is here, and you can find their weekly posts by clicking on their profile, and filtering by posts

Quick Fire Interesting - Dot Points:

• 10 years ago, Steam announced the release of the Source 2 engine - free to use for all developers
• The Nintendo Switch was released 8 years ago now. Sure, they show their age, but they really did so much for the modern handheld gaming market (and I have a V2 on its way from Japan right now, for me to micro-solder a mod chip in for CFW when it arrives!)
• Both IndieGala and Fanatical have Robocop: Rogue City on heavy discount right now - at 90% off. The general consensus is though to hold off at least a day, so that the chance of it being included on Humble will be proven, or disproven
• Steam passed 40m CCU (concurrent users) for the first time. It's crazy to think their previous highest number a few short years ago (March 2020) was only 20m!

FUN!

Steam Deck Power Button:

This one is a specific and super amazing little one I found. An acquaintance on Mastodon shared with me this little creation they made for the Steam Deck's power button:

The user is @[email protected] on Mastodon.

• Tinkercad link here
• Printables link here!

(thanks for being able to share this!

Steam Giving a User $4,000 of Free Games:

A user named "Sonix" discovered a bug in Steam’s refund system that mistakenly refunded his money but let him keep the games. He reported the issue to Valve, and instead of punishing him, they thanked him for his honesty!

• Sonix now owns 37,474 games, making his collection one of the largest on Steam.

• now owns 20,898 DLCs.

• and 22,490 games on his wishlist.

• Despite having thousands of games, he primarily plays Dota 2 (76% of the time).

• His Steam account is Level 299, with 105 badges

• The estimated total value of his library is around $372,543.

His profile on Steam can be seen here

Sonic Unleashed:

I wrote a guide (which you can find here, with this link!) for running (installing) and playing the new recompiled PC port of Sonic Unleashed. If you're interested, take a look!

finally?

I hope you enjoy this. My plan is to just...post these when I get the urge to, with no fixed schedule (I know they've been far too regularly rapid lately. If you can think of any improvements you want me to make on them, or want to tell me off for formatting or some error in the post...do feel free!

And, you can reach me elsewhere:

(Matrix)

(Mastodon)

First Things' First:

Maybe you're used to all of this now, but my attempt is to share an older style of gaming news post. Something maybe a lil bit like the old gaming blogs / news sites that the internet used to have. Casual, opinion-based, image-heavy and maybe-filled-with-things-you-already-spotted.

My last post (News #2) is here via this link, if you wanted to read over it before I share some more things I have spotted :)

This might lean towards a more Steam Deck-oriented post, but of course I'll inevitably deviate and ramble on and most likely cover everything but the Steam Deck. So let's begin!

Emulation:

NxEmu

Another Nintendo Switch emulator - NxEmu, which saw some focus and activity some time ago before seemingly disappearing into abandonment - has come back with a post sharing the dev will be refocusing on the project.

Personally, I recommend everyone focuses on the more reputable Switch emulator called Ryubing / Ryujinx. It is made with one of the original devs of Ryujinx itself, and the updates actually have substance - and you can see by the GitHub: work is consistent and constant on this one.

But back to the point of this, the NxEmu dev states: "the plan is to be able to run pre-decrypted games, so if people want to run a game it will have to be decrypted first with some other tool."

• You can find the site/blog/announcement here with this link

• You can find the GitHub link with this link

RCPS3 on Android

If you don't recognize the emulator name, it's an emulator for the PS3. This was announced, build and released (the alpha test build, at least) in less than a week. This is not perfect, and at the moment I'm going to look at it as more of a proof of concept than something you should really install, but it's still incredibly interesting news.

The original devs of RPCS3 stated around December that they wouldn't be entering the Android emulation scene because the fandom is toxic as heck, demanding as heck, and rather unpleasant. However, just a few months after that we see DH (a member) take the lead and release this for Android gamers.

• If you want to visit the bare-bones GitHub page, you can with this link

Following though, is an image showing Dragon Ball Burst Limit demo booting in emulation:

Games News

Abuse

Do you remember the 1996 run-and-gun DOS game called Abuse? I sure don't, since I wasn't alive, but if you did and do, and want to re-play the game, a developer has cleverly removed the notorious 15 FPS lock on the game, and released it as an AppImage, DEB , RPM and tar.gz

• The link to the GitHub page is here, if you're interested

• [If you want to see what the heck this all means, then this link to the YouTube video might be more suited to you, showing the 15 FPS locked version (original) and the unlocked FPS version (this mod)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTwDu3ZNE68]

Heroic Games Launcher update

Heroic, "...a Free and Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. Also available on the SteamDeck!" has just released an update.

This is one of their biggest releases so far, and a lot of work has gone into this, especially considering the dev team's busy life and commitments outside of Heroic.

Some changes include:

• Env Variables in Known Fixes: Customize game fixes with environment variables for better compatibility.
• Launch Arguments via URLs: Pass game arguments directly through protocol URLs for streamlined launching.
• Steam Shortcuts for Uninstalled Games: Add Steam shortcuts for games you haven’t installed yet.
• Anti-Cheat Logging: Anti-cheat details now appear in logs for easier troubleshooting.
• Gamescope "Force Grab Cursor" Toggle: Prevent cursor escapes in full-screen games.
• GOG game setup improvements.
• DXVK-NVAPI Enabled by default for NVIDIA GPU users on Linux.
• Various UI improvements and other smaller updates.

The full list and detailed explanation of all their changes is here on GitHub, via this link if you want to read all they have done!

Xbox Game Pass games leaving:

I personally both own a Series X console, and use the XBPlay program to play my Xbox games, and the Xbox Game Pass library. I use XBPlay on my Steam Deck. Their site can give you an idea of what they do, but the benefit to me (buying on Steam for a once-off $5 USD payment) is that it allows higher resolution upscaling that is possible just by streaming the games directly from a browser.

• The site is here
• The Steam page is also here if you want to see some reviews

Anyway, back on topic, some big games are leaving the Game Pass library this month:

• Yakuza 5

• Yakuza 6

• Lies of P

• No More Heroes 3

• Evil West

• Solar Ash

• Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated

• MLB The Show 24

DREDGE MOBILE

DREGDE is my favorite game of a couple years back. Maybe in the top 3 of all time for me. It's the perfect combination of cozy and creepy - beautifully stylized graphics and art style, story and Lovecraftian horror.

The dev team (Black Salt Games, based in New Zealand) released their Android and iOS port of the game a couple of days ago. It's not a simple straight forward port process, they've gone to a lot of custom work on making the game perfect for the 'small screen'.

Here's a lovely review on Forbes, if you want to read more about their game on mobile, and the process it took to get it there!

One Gamer Plays Epic's Free Games Each Week:

I've discovered one user on the Epic Games (unofficial) sub-reddit who came up with a plan to help them clear their backlog of games, and stop them buying more games.

Simply, they're going to play and review one of the games Epic gives away for free, each and every week. This was their New Years' Resolution:

"I need to branch out my video game taste, and I'm going to have quite a lot of free time next semester. However, there's a big problem. I'm a broke college student.

So I've resolved that for the first four months of 2025, I will play every free weekly Epic game to completion before the next one launches. That should be 17 games in 17 weeks. I'll make a post on this subreddit after finishing every game detailing my thoughts. I don't expect very many people to read, but this is mostly to keep myself accountable."

I find this amazing. And it's been fascinating (and helpful) to read someone's review of the games so far, meaning if they're terrible...I won't bother.

The link to their initial post (on Reddit) is here, and you can find their weekly posts by clicking on their profile, and filtering by posts

Quick Fire Interesting - Dot Points:

• 10 years ago, Steam announced the release of the Source 2 engine - free to use for all developers
• The Nintendo Switch was released 8 years ago now. Sure, they show their age, but they really did so much for the modern handheld gaming market (and I have a V2 on its way from Japan right now, for me to micro-solder a mod chip in for CFW when it arrives!)
• Both IndieGala and Fanatical have Robocop: Rogue City on heavy discount right now - at 90% off. The general consensus is though to hold off at least a day, so that the chance of it being included on Humble will be proven, or disproven
• Steam passed 40m CCU (concurrent users) for the first time. It's crazy to think their previous highest number a few short years ago (March 2020) was only 20m!

FUN!

Steam Deck Power Button:

This one is a specific and super amazing little one I found. An acquaintance on Mastodon shared with me this little creation they made for the Steam Deck's power button:

The user is @[email protected] on Mastodon.

• Tinkercad link here
• Printables link here!

(thanks for being able to share this!

Steam Giving a User $4,000 of Free Games:

A user named "Sonix" discovered a bug in Steam’s refund system that mistakenly refunded his money but let him keep the games. He reported the issue to Valve, and instead of punishing him, they thanked him for his honesty!

• Sonix now owns 37,474 games, making his collection one of the largest on Steam.

• now owns 20,898 DLCs.

• and 22,490 games on his wishlist.

• Despite having thousands of games, he primarily plays Dota 2 (76% of the time).

• His Steam account is Level 299, with 105 badges

• The estimated total value of his library is around $372,543.

His profile on Steam can be seen here

Sonic Unleashed:

I wrote a guide (which you can find here, with this link!) for running (installing) and playing the new recompiled PC port of Sonic Unleashed. If you're interested, take a look!

finally?

I hope you enjoy this. My plan is to just...post these when I get the urge to, with no fixed schedule (I know they've been far too regularly rapid lately. If you can think of any improvements you want me to make on them, or want to tell me off for formatting or some error in the post...do feel free!

And, you can reach me elsewhere:

(Matrix)

(Mastodon)

What is it?

Unleashed Recompiled is an unofficial PC port of the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed created through the process of static recompilation. This means you get to play Sonic Unleashed on your PC with the following benefits:

• Unlocked frame-rates
• Ultra-wide support
• Built-in achievements
• Controller icons (Xbox, PS)
• Rebuilt natively for PC

You can watch the trailer here, if you want to see it in action (alongside a side-by-side comparison of Unleashed next to the original

Step One

Download the Xbox 360 ROM of the game. You can find it in a number of places. I can't share the link to where here (because of the obvious reasons), but it's everywhere - you need this before you can do anything else!

You will also need the game's DLC and Updates. I found both on archive.org, with minimal searching. Here is a picture of the two folders which you need as well as the Sonic game:

From here, open the DLC folder. You'll have six files to extract (select all of them and then right-click and select extract auto detect sub folder). Once extracted, each of those will have a file you'll need. It's much quicker to do this now before we begin, so go into each folder and grab the file at the end. Like this:

Step Two

Head on over to this GitHub link, and download the UnleashedRecomp-Flatpak.zip file. We're choosing this because (obv) we're on a Steam Deck, and Linux is what we're running. So...Flatpak!

Click here for the GitHub link

Once this is downloaded, open your downloads folder, extract it (right-click, extract auto-detect sub folder) and run the extracted flatpak

It will then open up in the Discover Store - ready to go! Just click on 'install' in the top-right corner:

Once this is done, the top-right hand corner will change from 'install', to 'launch' - so select that this time. It will open up for us:

Step Three:

This next part is really self-explanatory. Follow the installer, it will ask you to select your game's ISO file, then it will ask you to select the update, then finally it will ask you to select the DLC files (there will be six of these, which we took from those folders earlier!):

This will take you through it, there's only one way to do this, just make sure you have your:

• Game's ISO
• Games Update
• Game's DLC (six individual files)

All handy, in a folder or two ready to select.

Step Four

That's it! The hard part is over now! It will open the game once it is all done, but exit to the desktop, because we want to add it to gaming mode too!

Once you've exited, open all applications, and scroll down to 'U' - you'll find Unleashed there. Right-click on it, and select 'add to Steam':

Once this is done, we'll change from desktop mode to Gaming Mode!

Once you're in Gaming Mode, you can find the game in your library / non-Steam

If you're fancy (like me!) you can change the title to Sonic Unleashed and use Decky Loader + the SteamgridDB plugin to choose some game art for the title: I changed the title due to, as of writing this, there is no art uploaded yet specific to the title name of Unleashed - so I opted to have some there with the original title

Finally:

We'll open the game and play! Don't forget for settings, you can pick and choose what you want for your Steam Deck!

From the main menu:

• Press Start
• Choose Options
• Press RB to choose VIDEO in Options
• Change FPS to 90 (for OLED) or 60 (LCD)

...and choose whatever you want, to run it how you want!

I'm not sure if I made any errors, maybe I did while typing this up, so if you spot something, tell me and I'll edit this!

Is it worth it? - yes! It's fantastic, and even better it gives us a glimpse at what is possible in the future with recomps of 360 games on PC and Steam Deck!

Have fun! <3

What is it?

Unleashed Recompiled is an unofficial PC port of the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed created through the process of static recompilation. This means you get to play Sonic Unleashed on your PC with the following benefits:

• Unlocked frame-rates
• Ultra-wide support
• Built-in achievements
• Controller icons (Xbox, PS)
• Rebuilt natively for PC

You can watch the trailer here, if you want to see it in action (alongside a side-by-side comparison of Unleashed next to the original

Step One

Download the Xbox 360 ROM of the game. You can find it in a number of places. I can't share the link to where here (because of the obvious reasons), but it's everywhere - you need this before you can do anything else!

You will also need the game's DLC and Updates. I found both on archive.org, with minimal searching. Here is a picture of the two folders which you need as well as the Sonic game:

From here, open the DLC folder. You'll have six files to extract (select all of them and then right-click and select extract auto detect sub folder). Once extracted, each of those will have a file you'll need. It's much quicker to do this now before we begin, so go into each folder and grab the file at the end. Like this:

Step Two

Head on over to this GitHub link, and download the UnleashedRecomp-Flatpak.zip file. We're choosing this because (obv) we're on a Steam Deck, and Linux is what we're running. So...Flatpak!

Click here for the GitHub link

Once this is downloaded, open your downloads folder, extract it (right-click, extract auto-detect sub folder) and run the extracted flatpak

It will then open up in the Discover Store - ready to go! Just click on 'install' in the top-right corner:

Once this is done, the top-right hand corner will change from 'install', to 'launch' - so select that this time. It will open up for us:

Step Three:

This next part is really self-explanatory. Follow the installer, it will ask you to select your game's ISO file, then it will ask you to select the update, then finally it will ask you to select the DLC files (there will be six of these, which we took from those folders earlier!):

This will take you through it, there's only one way to do this, just make sure you have your:

• Game's ISO
• Games Update
• Game's DLC (six individual files)

All handy, in a folder or two ready to select.

Step Four

That's it! The hard part is over now! It will open the game once it is all done, but exit to the desktop, because we want to add it to gaming mode too!

Once you've exited, open all applications, and scroll down to 'U' - you'll find Unleashed there. Right-click on it, and select 'add to Steam':

Once this is done, we'll change from desktop mode to Gaming Mode!

Once you're in Gaming Mode, you can find the game in your library / non-Steam

If you're fancy (like me!) you can change the title to Sonic Unleashed and use Decky Loader + the SteamgridDB plugin to choose some game art for the title: I changed the title due to, as of writing this, there is no art uploaded yet specific to the title name of Unleashed - so I opted to have some there with the original title

Finally:

We'll open the game and play! Don't forget for settings, you can pick and choose what you want for your Steam Deck!

From the main menu:

• Press Start
• Choose Options
• Press RB to choose VIDEO in Options
• Change FPS to 90 (for OLED) or 60 (LCD)

...and choose whatever you want, to run it how you want!

I'm not sure if I made any errors, maybe I did while typing this up, so if you spot something, tell me and I'll edit this!

Is it worth it? - yes! It's fantastic, and even better it gives us a glimpse at what is possible in the future with recomps of 360 games on PC and Steam Deck!

Have fun! <3

What is it?

Unleashed Recompiled is an unofficial PC port of the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed created through the process of static recompilation. This means you get to play Sonic Unleashed on your PC with the following benefits:

• Unlocked frame-rates
• Ultra-wide support
• Built-in achievements
• Controller icons (Xbox, PS)
• Rebuilt natively for PC

You can watch the trailer here, if you want to see it in action (alongside a side-by-side comparison of Unleashed next to the original

Step One

Download the Xbox 360 ROM of the game. You can find it in a number of places. I can't share the link to where here (because of the obvious reasons), but it's everywhere - you need this before you can do anything else!

You will also need the game's DLC and Updates. I found both on archive.org, with minimal searching. Here is a picture of the two folders which you need as well as the Sonic game:

From here, open the DLC folder. You'll have six files to extract (select all of them and then right-click and select extract auto detect sub folder). Once extracted, each of those will have a file you'll need. It's much quicker to do this now before we begin, so go into each folder and grab the file at the end. Like this:

Step Two

Head on over to this GitHub link, and download the UnleashedRecomp-Flatpak.zip file. We're choosing this because (obv) we're on a Steam Deck, and Linux is what we're running. So...Flatpak!

Click here for the GitHub link

Once this is downloaded, open your downloads folder, extract it (right-click, extract auto-detect sub folder) and run the extracted flatpak

It will then open up in the Discover Store - ready to go! Just click on 'install' in the top-right corner:

Once this is done, the top-right hand corner will change from 'install', to 'launch' - so select that this time. It will open up for us:

Step Three:

This next part is really self-explanatory. Follow the installer, it will ask you to select your game's ISO file, then it will ask you to select the update, then finally it will ask you to select the DLC files (there will be six of these, which we took from those folders earlier!):

This will take you through it, there's only one way to do this, just make sure you have your:

• Game's ISO
• Games Update
• Game's DLC (six individual files)

All handy, in a folder or two ready to select.

Step Four

That's it! The hard part is over now! It will open the game once it is all done, but exit to the desktop, because we want to add it to gaming mode too!

Once you've exited, open all applications, and scroll down to 'U' - you'll find Unleashed there. Right-click on it, and select 'add to Steam':

Once this is done, we'll change from desktop mode to Gaming Mode!

Once you're in Gaming Mode, you can find the game in your library / non-Steam

If you're fancy (like me!) you can change the title to Sonic Unleashed and use Decky Loader + the SteamgridDB plugin to choose some game art for the title: I changed the title due to, as of writing this, there is no art uploaded yet specific to the title name of Unleashed - so I opted to have some there with the original title

Finally:

We'll open the game and play! Don't forget for settings, you can pick and choose what you want for your Steam Deck!

From the main menu:

• Press Start
• Choose Options
• Press RB to choose VIDEO in Options
• Change FPS to 90 (for OLED) or 60 (LCD)

...and choose whatever you want, to run it how you want!

I'm not sure if I made any errors, maybe I did while typing this up, so if you spot something, tell me and I'll edit this!

Is it worth it? - yes! It's fantastic, and even better it gives us a glimpse at what is possible in the future with recomps of 360 games on PC and Steam Deck!

Have fun! <3

So in Iran people take old PlayStation consoles, refurbish them and sell them as new stock. My favorite part of this is that they do so with this incredible custom box.

I kinda love this, and if I was there? I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

To be honest, retro gaming on the PS1 is a bit 50/50 for me. Early 3D gaming before my time can be rough. But I have such a soft spot for how beautiful the console is from a design and hardware standpoint. That boxy gray box is such beauty.

I'd probably play it more than the PS5 I ended up selling!

To start with:

After my previous post 24 hours ago (the link to which is here), I asked you all if the way I share mostly Steam Deck news here is okay, and if you'd enjoy more of these.

I hope you'll endure one more such post in this short time. Consider this maybe...idk, news you may already know, but that which I'm sharing while I practice formatting these posts in a better way..?

Here we go!

GOG THINGS

GOG-CHAN

Perhaps my favorite GOG decision was back in 2018, when GOG got their JRPG-obsessed graphic designer (KosmicznaPluskwa) to create a mascot for their Japanese Games Sale of the time. GOG-Chan was created, and the internet being as internet-y as it is, she's never been allowed to be forgotten. She's also adorable!

(if you want a link to explore KosmicznaPluskwa's pintrest page - this will give you a good look at the graphic designer's inspirations and looks!)

Purple is my favorite color (along with my friend, 'AA' - the developer of Decky Loader! Hi, 'A!), and GOG's essence is purple. I'm guilty of trying to dye my hair the same shade as this once, but I did a terrible job and tried hiding my pony-tail until I could fix it...

GOG FORUMS

Being my fav platform for the Steam Deck (honestly, the amount of Steam games I have VS how many GOG games...mine is literally a GOG Deck), I'm sometimes surprised by not only how few people know about it, but how few explore it more than just a platform to buy games.

The GOG forums are a great space to post. It's not only GOG's games, there's plenty of general interest spaces to chat about everything. My fav however, is the totally niche, interesting things like the 'Unofficial DVD Covers for GOG.COM Games' thread.

You've guessed it, it's a space for people to create physical covers for their digital games. It's very niche - for people who miss physical games collections, and who are great at designing their own covers. I'm going to leave the link to the most recent page of the forum thread here, if you wanna take a closer look, but I'll share just one or two images of one cover for those who don't:

GOG UPDATES

There's been quite a lot of games updates over the last week (or two?). I keep up with these, because I get a lil OCD with making sure my library (at least my installed library...which can be hard to admit is extensive) is the best it can be. This might be a bit boring, but I'll rapid-fire some of the more notable (subjective, I know) titles which have had recent updates:

• Darkest Dungeon II (this updates SO often!) - 5 days ago
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition (wins for the longest running updates/mods for any game, at least in my experience!) - 7 days ago
• Art of Rally (my FAV racer, I LOVE it!) - 11 days ago
• Core Keeper - 11 days ago
• Myst - 11 days ago
• Planet Crafter - 11 days ago
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - 12 days ago
• Drova - Forsaken Kin - 12 days ago
• No Man's Sky - 12 days ago
• Resident Evil 2 - 12 days ago

...okay I could keep on going. There's something inherently, and weirdly, therapeutic about ticking off a list I made. Yeah. Odd, I know.

MORE ON WHAT I USE TO PLAY GAMES ON MY DECK

I had a few comments/messages yesterday asking more about what I use. Why I choose Heroic Games Launcher, RetroDECK and Junk-Store. I thought maybe if you cared, I'd share a few links for you to follow here. It might be a bit more specific-to-those-curious, so feel free to skip past this if its not for you!

Heroic

Heroic is for more than the just the Steam Deck. Being open-source, it is also made for MacOS, Windows, and...well obv for Linux distros. I love the little things in Heroic's design:

The UI (by default, but choosable by the user!) stays monochrome for each game's cover...until you install it. Then it's in beautiful color for that title.

I adore Comet integration, meaning achievements and playtime are logged with GOG, so when I'm done playing, I can log in to GOG on my computer and see all my progress has been noted.

• You can find their website here with this link
• You can find their GitHub page here with this link
• I've forgotten if I shared this last post, but you can find a great video by fediverse-adorer Gardiner Bryant, here in this YouTube link. He compares Heroic with Junk-Store, and is also a lovely person too (Hi, Gardiner!)
• Heroic's community and 'help desk' is on Discord, which you can find with this last link here
• You can find more on their work, through Liam's (GamingOnLinux) site, or Noah's (SteamDeckHQ), if you wanna read up more on Heroic!

Junk-Store

Junk-Store is built specifically for the Steam Deck. And that is its benefit in my eyes, the program (plug-in*) was built from the ground up for the Deck. Eben, the dev, started the project as a way to add his own games to the Deck for he and a handful of friends.

What started off that way became something he released. Like I said in my last post, the design of Junk-Store is different, it works (for now, though in the future this will be changing to be possible in another way) as a plugin via Decky Loader. It will open up as a library of your games, Epic will show up in a tab and you'll see all your redeemed or purchased Epic titles in there.

Eben tells me I'll be raked over the hot coals if I share what he has planned for Junk-Store next. But there is more than just what JS has right now. At the moment it supports Epic and GOG, but there is more to come.

• You can find a link to the site here, for Junk-Store, where you can find out more about it, and follow a guide to installing
• You can find the github page for it here, too
• This is the link to their Discord. In the Discord server you'll find users who share all kinds of settings and findings of (often obscure) games they own, and how to run them best! Also...everything else.

RetroDECK

This is less about links (I'll share though), and more about a rapid-fire for the features I adore most about it. I was a user of EmuDeck when I first got my first Steam Deck, but the record of things that break is there for all to see. My installation ran three emulators, and the storage it took on my SSD (in a trillion-and-one different places, not organized) was over 33GB. Again, this is my personal opinion of which software I favor. No hate for those on EmuDeck, it does the job. For me I adore RetroDECK because:

• It runs everything from one SD card. You run the emulators, the ROMs, the bios, the file trees, mods, texture packs. It sits neatly organized on the SD card and leaves the SSD free for PC games. I find this helps me a lot. There is no performance drop or any issue running it from a nice SD card. Nor is it locked to only run from a card. You can choose to install it wherever you want!
• RetroDECK only updates periodically. There is no emulator updates individually. Some users find this inconvenient, but I find it a nice relief to know the team waits to see that each update is stable for the user. There's been countless issues over time where a update to one can ruin an experience, I much prefer stable to flying too close to the sun!
• 'The radial wheel' ...honestly I've forgotten if that's what it is called, but Retro has the left trackpad on the Steam Deck default (via their custom controller configuration) to being a lovely radial dial. From there you can fast-forward a game (if it is old enough to support the feature, no, you're not fast-forwarding a PS3 game -_-), save quickly, open a quick setting to quickly upscale the resolution. It's extensive and fun. I love that damn dial.

There is more, but I tend to ramble (I already shudder to think at the length of this. Again, watch Russ from Retro Game Corps' recent video on RetroDECK, he takes you through it step-by-step and is lovely with the details!

Or alternatively, if you want to read more on my thoughts in my guide with plenty of pictures! ...you can find it here with this link. I take you through setting it up, and even some specific things like replacing textures with HD texture packs on PS2, etc

• Find the RetroDECK website here

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, I ACTUALLY HAVE TWO GAME CODES, FEEL FREE TO REDEEM

^TXV6-HP3TV-DC262-7DYXJ-C4FVZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for PC (Windows' Microsoft Store) - it's objectively a terrible game, but hey...someone may want this! The '^' is actually the number after 6

^FHXQ-4T2RP-JC4J2-CTXGW-626QZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for Xbox - it's just as terrible on Xbox, sadly no improvement on the game depending on the platform! The '^' is the number after 2.

EPIC GAMES

Epic has a sordid reputation. Personally, I have no qualms with them, if there is a game cheaper there (as was the case when they ran their coupons - long since abandoned) then I'm all for it. Their free weekly games on their site are a absolute gift for gamers who can't afford much, or any, modern gaming.

One of my fav things on their site is the blogs they run, or blog posts. Occasionally they will have some truly amazing personalities in the game dev world there to, ostensibly promote a game, but then go into detail of their own lives. Some of my favs on this theme are (click the link to go to the page!):

• The interview Creative Director (of Sonic X Shadow Generations) Takashi Lizuka gave with them. He himself is the man who created the Shadow character in the first place
• An interview with Alan Wake 2: The Lake House's Director and lead writer

There's countless others. The hard thing is knowing what is filler, and which are interesting from a creative and development standpoint. Regardless, I love things like this, as these days with stupid attention-grabbing conflict headlines and A.I. articles, it's harder to find this kind of content.

A NEW GAME FROM MercurySteam

This was the crew responsible for developing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows and Metroid Dread. They have a new game coming called Blades of Fire - and it will be exclusive (on PC) to Epic Games, but available to Series X and PS5 as well.

*EPIC GAMES' 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW:

• if you wanna see the image in full resolution, this is a link to it on imgur here

QUICKLY, THIS IS INTERESTING:

If you missed it, and you're interested in the PC gaming landscape - particularly in regards to how Steam is the clear favorite above others like GOG + Epic Games and Amazon's own Prime Gaming then this LinkedIn post by the former VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon is a fascinating read. He details why he thinks the attempt at winning gamers over with their platform failed.

• It did the rounds a few days ago, but I know a lot missed it, it's a fascinating read on a company trying to enter an established landscape of gaming, and...clearly this is the link

Really, worth a read for all!

Ironically, the weekly Prime Gaming giveaways are my fav part of gaming lately

JUST A COUPLE' GAMES I RECOMMEND!

We're winding down here, I think I have a terrible habit of using 750237634563456 words, when I could say the same thing with 15. But if you're still interested, I might just take the opportunity to recommend (quickly!) two games I've enjoyed on my Steam Deck, kinda cozy, but also not quite so. But, here we go:

Tunic

My cozy gaming recommendation today, which does actually have some souls like elements to it (sounds strange, I know!) is this adorable fox.

If you love the old (or remake) Nintendo Zelda games (Link's Awakening) then you'll LOVE this game:

"Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in TUNIC, an isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure."

You're an adorable fox with puzzles and combat, and it is SO good on the Deck!

Graveyard Keeper!

Think...Stardew Valley, but if you like the idea of management a sim with a gothic twist, this one’s worth checking out.

You’ll bury bodies, craft, and maybe even question your life choices as you balance morality and efficiency. Plus, there’s a talking skull. What more could you want?

It's adorable. I think by now I'm well and truly addicted. And it's on sale on GOG so often

Srsly, kinda dark! 💀💀💀

Racing games I love on the Steam Deck:

This is (yet again) weirdly niche, but I've been rather obsessed with rally racing in general the last few months. Specifically Group B...which, if you're interested was just the most terrifying time of motor racing, where people's hair, skin and even fingers would be found after the races were over; stuck in the grills of the cars because the crowd were so close to the sidelines.

A great mini 10 min doco on YouTube called The Absolute INSANITY of Group B Rally is here, if you wanna see it for yourself

• Art of Rally is a beautiful alternate history game, where Group B rally racing never stopped being a thing. I love their quote: "To do something dangerous with style is art...". Racing is isometric, the colors are beautiful, the atmosphere is so pretty, and the driving can be casual or require great skill. I love this game on my Steam Deck! It is also -50% off on GOG right now, if you want to check it out!

• DRIVE: Rally: "DRIVE Rally lets you relive the 90s in the most exciting era in motorsport history, where dust, mud, and snow are badges of honor. Unleash the raw power of legendary rally beasts, admire every second of the stunning landscapes, and remember: the faster you go, the better! DRIVE Rally not only nails the spirit of the 90s. It reignites it for a new generation of drivers. Whether you're a veteran of dirt roads or a rookie just looking to get their tires wet, this game will let you redefine speed over and over again." - I love this game because it is just pure fun. Arcade-y as heck, the art style is very distinct, and it feels like what you imagine a Playstation 1 game made today would be like. [https://www.gog.com/en/game/drive_rally](The store page on GOG is here, if you want to see the trailer and GIFs embedded in the page to get a good look at it

FINALLY?

Maybe that should be it for now. Please let me know how the formatting looks this time 'round. I hope I figured this out a little better, I know the last one was rough, but with each subsequent post I hope it gets prettier.

Some of you may remember me on reddit, I went by flwwhtrbt there. There was a time where I was 'interviewing' not only developers of everything Steam Deck had running on it (Lutris, Heroic, Decky, Junk-Store, EmuDeck, and others!), but I was also interviewing the big names in gaming piracy last year also: befriending FitGirl, Dodi, even chatting to Empress, KaOs and more.

If I can find my files (I think I purged everything, but may have back-ups!), then I might share them here, if anyone is interested.

Please share your thoughts, if there's something I can do better here, let me know! If there's a better way to format this, then by all means I need to know.

If you wanna reach out elsewhere, I am on Matrix and Mastodon:

To start with:

After my previous post 24 hours ago (the link to which is here), I asked you all if the way I share mostly Steam Deck news here is okay, and if you'd enjoy more of these.

I hope you'll endure one more such post in this short time. Consider this maybe...idk, news you may already know, but that which I'm sharing while I practice formatting these posts in a better way..?

Here we go!

GOG THINGS

GOG-CHAN

Perhaps my favorite GOG decision was back in 2018, when GOG got their JRPG-obsessed graphic designer (KosmicznaPluskwa) to create a mascot for their Japanese Games Sale of the time. GOG-Chan was created, and the internet being as internet-y as it is, she's never been allowed to be forgotten. She's also adorable!

(if you want a link to explore KosmicznaPluskwa's pintrest page - this will give you a good look at the graphic designer's inspirations and looks!)

Purple is my favorite color (along with my friend, 'AA' - the developer of Decky Loader! Hi, 'A!), and GOG's essence is purple. I'm guilty of trying to dye my hair the same shade as this once, but I did a terrible job and tried hiding my pony-tail until I could fix it...

GOG FORUMS

Being my fav platform for the Steam Deck (honestly, the amount of Steam games I have VS how many GOG games...mine is literally a GOG Deck), I'm sometimes surprised by not only how few people know about it, but how few explore it more than just a platform to buy games.

The GOG forums are a great space to post. It's not only GOG's games, there's plenty of general interest spaces to chat about everything. My fav however, is the totally niche, interesting things like the 'Unofficial DVD Covers for GOG.COM Games' thread.

You've guessed it, it's a space for people to create physical covers for their digital games. It's very niche - for people who miss physical games collections, and who are great at designing their own covers. I'm going to leave the link to the most recent page of the forum thread here, if you wanna take a closer look, but I'll share just one or two images of one cover for those who don't:

GOG UPDATES

There's been quite a lot of games updates over the last week (or two?). I keep up with these, because I get a lil OCD with making sure my library (at least my installed library...which can be hard to admit is extensive) is the best it can be. This might be a bit boring, but I'll rapid-fire some of the more notable (subjective, I know) titles which have had recent updates:

• Darkest Dungeon II (this updates SO often!) - 5 days ago
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition (wins for the longest running updates/mods for any game, at least in my experience!) - 7 days ago
• Art of Rally (my FAV racer, I LOVE it!) - 11 days ago
• Core Keeper - 11 days ago
• Myst - 11 days ago
• Planet Crafter - 11 days ago
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - 12 days ago
• Drova - Forsaken Kin - 12 days ago
• No Man's Sky - 12 days ago
• Resident Evil 2 - 12 days ago

...okay I could keep on going. There's something inherently, and weirdly, therapeutic about ticking off a list I made. Yeah. Odd, I know.

MORE ON WHAT I USE TO PLAY GAMES ON MY DECK

I had a few comments/messages yesterday asking more about what I use. Why I choose Heroic Games Launcher, RetroDECK and Junk-Store. I thought maybe if you cared, I'd share a few links for you to follow here. It might be a bit more specific-to-those-curious, so feel free to skip past this if its not for you!

Heroic

Heroic is for more than the just the Steam Deck. Being open-source, it is also made for MacOS, Windows, and...well obv for Linux distros. I love the little things in Heroic's design:

The UI (by default, but choosable by the user!) stays monochrome for each game's cover...until you install it. Then it's in beautiful color for that title.

I adore Comet integration, meaning achievements and playtime are logged with GOG, so when I'm done playing, I can log in to GOG on my computer and see all my progress has been noted.

• You can find their website here with this link
• You can find their GitHub page here with this link
• I've forgotten if I shared this last post, but you can find a great video by fediverse-adorer Gardiner Bryant, here in this YouTube link. He compares Heroic with Junk-Store, and is also a lovely person too (Hi, Gardiner!)
• Heroic's community and 'help desk' is on Discord, which you can find with this last link here
• You can find more on their work, through Liam's (GamingOnLinux) site, or Noah's (SteamDeckHQ), if you wanna read up more on Heroic!

Junk-Store

Junk-Store is built specifically for the Steam Deck. And that is its benefit in my eyes, the program (plug-in*) was built from the ground up for the Deck. Eben, the dev, started the project as a way to add his own games to the Deck for he and a handful of friends.

What started off that way became something he released. Like I said in my last post, the design of Junk-Store is different, it works (for now, though in the future this will be changing to be possible in another way) as a plugin via Decky Loader. It will open up as a library of your games, Epic will show up in a tab and you'll see all your redeemed or purchased Epic titles in there.

Eben tells me I'll be raked over the hot coals if I share what he has planned for Junk-Store next. But there is more than just what JS has right now. At the moment it supports Epic and GOG, but there is more to come.

• You can find a link to the site here, for Junk-Store, where you can find out more about it, and follow a guide to installing
• You can find the github page for it here, too
• This is the link to their Discord. In the Discord server you'll find users who share all kinds of settings and findings of (often obscure) games they own, and how to run them best! Also...everything else.

RetroDECK

This is less about links (I'll share though), and more about a rapid-fire for the features I adore most about it. I was a user of EmuDeck when I first got my first Steam Deck, but the record of things that break is there for all to see. My installation ran three emulators, and the storage it took on my SSD (in a trillion-and-one different places, not organized) was over 33GB. Again, this is my personal opinion of which software I favor. No hate for those on EmuDeck, it does the job. For me I adore RetroDECK because:

• It runs everything from one SD card. You run the emulators, the ROMs, the bios, the file trees, mods, texture packs. It sits neatly organized on the SD card and leaves the SSD free for PC games. I find this helps me a lot. There is no performance drop or any issue running it from a nice SD card. Nor is it locked to only run from a card. You can choose to install it wherever you want!
• RetroDECK only updates periodically. There is no emulator updates individually. Some users find this inconvenient, but I find it a nice relief to know the team waits to see that each update is stable for the user. There's been countless issues over time where a update to one can ruin an experience, I much prefer stable to flying too close to the sun!
• 'The radial wheel' ...honestly I've forgotten if that's what it is called, but Retro has the left trackpad on the Steam Deck default (via their custom controller configuration) to being a lovely radial dial. From there you can fast-forward a game (if it is old enough to support the feature, no, you're not fast-forwarding a PS3 game -_-), save quickly, open a quick setting to quickly upscale the resolution. It's extensive and fun. I love that damn dial.

There is more, but I tend to ramble (I already shudder to think at the length of this. Again, watch Russ from Retro Game Corps' recent video on RetroDECK, he takes you through it step-by-step and is lovely with the details!

Or alternatively, if you want to read more on my thoughts in my guide with plenty of pictures! ...you can find it here with this link. I take you through setting it up, and even some specific things like replacing textures with HD texture packs on PS2, etc

• Find the RetroDECK website here

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, I ACTUALLY HAVE TWO GAME CODES, FEEL FREE TO REDEEM

^TXV6-HP3TV-DC262-7DYXJ-C4FVZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for PC (Windows' Microsoft Store) - it's objectively a terrible game, but hey...someone may want this! The '^' is actually the number after 6

^FHXQ-4T2RP-JC4J2-CTXGW-626QZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for Xbox - it's just as terrible on Xbox, sadly no improvement on the game depending on the platform! The '^' is the number after 2.

EPIC GAMES

Epic has a sordid reputation. Personally, I have no qualms with them, if there is a game cheaper there (as was the case when they ran their coupons - long since abandoned) then I'm all for it. Their free weekly games on their site are a absolute gift for gamers who can't afford much, or any, modern gaming.

One of my fav things on their site is the blogs they run, or blog posts. Occasionally they will have some truly amazing personalities in the game dev world there to, ostensibly promote a game, but then go into detail of their own lives. Some of my favs on this theme are (click the link to go to the page!):

• The interview Creative Director (of Sonic X Shadow Generations) Takashi Lizuka gave with them. He himself is the man who created the Shadow character in the first place
• An interview with Alan Wake 2: The Lake House's Director and lead writer

There's countless others. The hard thing is knowing what is filler, and which are interesting from a creative and development standpoint. Regardless, I love things like this, as these days with stupid attention-grabbing conflict headlines and A.I. articles, it's harder to find this kind of content.

A NEW GAME FROM MercurySteam

This was the crew responsible for developing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows and Metroid Dread. They have a new game coming called Blades of Fire - and it will be exclusive (on PC) to Epic Games, but available to Series X and PS5 as well.

*EPIC GAMES' 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW:

• if you wanna see the image in full resolution, this is a link to it on imgur here

QUICKLY, THIS IS INTERESTING:

If you missed it, and you're interested in the PC gaming landscape - particularly in regards to how Steam is the clear favorite above others like GOG + Epic Games and Amazon's own Prime Gaming then this LinkedIn post by the former VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon is a fascinating read. He details why he thinks the attempt at winning gamers over with their platform failed.

• It did the rounds a few days ago, but I know a lot missed it, it's a fascinating read on a company trying to enter an established landscape of gaming, and...clearly this is the link

Really, worth a read for all!

Ironically, the weekly Prime Gaming giveaways are my fav part of gaming lately

JUST A COUPLE' GAMES I RECOMMEND!

We're winding down here, I think I have a terrible habit of using 750237634563456 words, when I could say the same thing with 15. But if you're still interested, I might just take the opportunity to recommend (quickly!) two games I've enjoyed on my Steam Deck, kinda cozy, but also not quite so. But, here we go:

Tunic

My cozy gaming recommendation today, which does actually have some souls like elements to it (sounds strange, I know!) is this adorable fox.

If you love the old (or remake) Nintendo Zelda games (Link's Awakening) then you'll LOVE this game:

"Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in TUNIC, an isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure."

You're an adorable fox with puzzles and combat, and it is SO good on the Deck!

Graveyard Keeper!

Think...Stardew Valley, but if you like the idea of management a sim with a gothic twist, this one’s worth checking out.

You’ll bury bodies, craft, and maybe even question your life choices as you balance morality and efficiency. Plus, there’s a talking skull. What more could you want?

It's adorable. I think by now I'm well and truly addicted. And it's on sale on GOG so often

Srsly, kinda dark! 💀💀💀

Racing games I love on the Steam Deck:

This is (yet again) weirdly niche, but I've been rather obsessed with rally racing in general the last few months. Specifically Group B...which, if you're interested was just the most terrifying time of motor racing, where people's hair, skin and even fingers would be found after the races were over; stuck in the grills of the cars because the crowd were so close to the sidelines.

A great mini 10 min doco on YouTube called The Absolute INSANITY of Group B Rally is here, if you wanna see it for yourself

• Art of Rally is a beautiful alternate history game, where Group B rally racing never stopped being a thing. I love their quote: "To do something dangerous with style is art...". Racing is isometric, the colors are beautiful, the atmosphere is so pretty, and the driving can be casual or require great skill. I love this game on my Steam Deck! It is also -50% off on GOG right now, if you want to check it out!

• DRIVE: Rally: "DRIVE Rally lets you relive the 90s in the most exciting era in motorsport history, where dust, mud, and snow are badges of honor. Unleash the raw power of legendary rally beasts, admire every second of the stunning landscapes, and remember: the faster you go, the better! DRIVE Rally not only nails the spirit of the 90s. It reignites it for a new generation of drivers. Whether you're a veteran of dirt roads or a rookie just looking to get their tires wet, this game will let you redefine speed over and over again." - I love this game because it is just pure fun. Arcade-y as heck, the art style is very distinct, and it feels like what you imagine a Playstation 1 game made today would be like. [https://www.gog.com/en/game/drive_rally](The store page on GOG is here, if you want to see the trailer and GIFs embedded in the page to get a good look at it

FINALLY?

Maybe that should be it for now. Please let me know how the formatting looks this time 'round. I hope I figured this out a little better, I know the last one was rough, but with each subsequent post I hope it gets prettier.

Some of you may remember me on reddit, I went by flwwhtrbt there. There was a time where I was 'interviewing' not only developers of everything Steam Deck had running on it (Lutris, Heroic, Decky, Junk-Store, EmuDeck, and others!), but I was also interviewing the big names in gaming piracy last year also: befriending FitGirl, Dodi, even chatting to Empress, KaOs and more.

If I can find my files (I think I purged everything, but may have back-ups!), then I might share them here, if anyone is interested.

Please share your thoughts, if there's something I can do better here, let me know! If there's a better way to format this, then by all means I need to know.

If you wanna reach out elsewhere, I am on Matrix and Mastodon:

To start with:

After my previous post 24 hours ago (the link to which is here), I asked you all if the way I share mostly Steam Deck news here is okay, and if you'd enjoy more of these.

I hope you'll endure one more such post in this short time. Consider this maybe...idk, news you may already know, but that which I'm sharing while I practice formatting these posts in a better way..?

Here we go!

GOG THINGS

GOG-CHAN

Perhaps my favorite GOG decision was back in 2018, when GOG got their JRPG-obsessed graphic designer (KosmicznaPluskwa) to create a mascot for their Japanese Games Sale of the time. GOG-Chan was created, and the internet being as internet-y as it is, she's never been allowed to be forgotten. She's also adorable!

(if you want a link to explore KosmicznaPluskwa's pintrest page - this will give you a good look at the graphic designer's inspirations and looks!)

Purple is my favorite color (along with my friend, 'AA' - the developer of Decky Loader! Hi, 'A!), and GOG's essence is purple. I'm guilty of trying to dye my hair the same shade as this once, but I did a terrible job and tried hiding my pony-tail until I could fix it...

GOG FORUMS

Being my fav platform for the Steam Deck (honestly, the amount of Steam games I have VS how many GOG games...mine is literally a GOG Deck), I'm sometimes surprised by not only how few people know about it, but how few explore it more than just a platform to buy games.

The GOG forums are a great space to post. It's not only GOG's games, there's plenty of general interest spaces to chat about everything. My fav however, is the totally niche, interesting things like the 'Unofficial DVD Covers for GOG.COM Games' thread.

You've guessed it, it's a space for people to create physical covers for their digital games. It's very niche - for people who miss physical games collections, and who are great at designing their own covers. I'm going to leave the link to the most recent page of the forum thread here, if you wanna take a closer look, but I'll share just one or two images of one cover for those who don't:

GOG UPDATES

There's been quite a lot of games updates over the last week (or two?). I keep up with these, because I get a lil OCD with making sure my library (at least my installed library...which can be hard to admit is extensive) is the best it can be. This might be a bit boring, but I'll rapid-fire some of the more notable (subjective, I know) titles which have had recent updates:

• Darkest Dungeon II (this updates SO often!) - 5 days ago
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition (wins for the longest running updates/mods for any game, at least in my experience!) - 7 days ago
• Art of Rally (my FAV racer, I LOVE it!) - 11 days ago
• Core Keeper - 11 days ago
• Myst - 11 days ago
• Planet Crafter - 11 days ago
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - 12 days ago
• Drova - Forsaken Kin - 12 days ago
• No Man's Sky - 12 days ago
• Resident Evil 2 - 12 days ago

...okay I could keep on going. There's something inherently, and weirdly, therapeutic about ticking off a list I made. Yeah. Odd, I know.

MORE ON WHAT I USE TO PLAY GAMES ON MY DECK

I had a few comments/messages yesterday asking more about what I use. Why I choose Heroic Games Launcher, RetroDECK and Junk-Store. I thought maybe if you cared, I'd share a few links for you to follow here. It might be a bit more specific-to-those-curious, so feel free to skip past this if its not for you!

Heroic

Heroic is for more than the just the Steam Deck. Being open-source, it is also made for MacOS, Windows, and...well obv for Linux distros. I love the little things in Heroic's design:

The UI (by default, but choosable by the user!) stays monochrome for each game's cover...until you install it. Then it's in beautiful color for that title.

I adore Comet integration, meaning achievements and playtime are logged with GOG, so when I'm done playing, I can log in to GOG on my computer and see all my progress has been noted.

• You can find their website here with this link
• You can find their GitHub page here with this link
• I've forgotten if I shared this last post, but you can find a great video by fediverse-adorer Gardiner Bryant, here in this YouTube link. He compares Heroic with Junk-Store, and is also a lovely person too (Hi, Gardiner!)
• Heroic's community and 'help desk' is on Discord, which you can find with this last link here
• You can find more on their work, through Liam's (GamingOnLinux) site, or Noah's (SteamDeckHQ), if you wanna read up more on Heroic!

Junk-Store

Junk-Store is built specifically for the Steam Deck. And that is its benefit in my eyes, the program (plug-in*) was built from the ground up for the Deck. Eben, the dev, started the project as a way to add his own games to the Deck for he and a handful of friends.

What started off that way became something he released. Like I said in my last post, the design of Junk-Store is different, it works (for now, though in the future this will be changing to be possible in another way) as a plugin via Decky Loader. It will open up as a library of your games, Epic will show up in a tab and you'll see all your redeemed or purchased Epic titles in there.

Eben tells me I'll be raked over the hot coals if I share what he has planned for Junk-Store next. But there is more than just what JS has right now. At the moment it supports Epic and GOG, but there is more to come.

• You can find a link to the site here, for Junk-Store, where you can find out more about it, and follow a guide to installing
• You can find the github page for it here, too
• This is the link to their Discord. In the Discord server you'll find users who share all kinds of settings and findings of (often obscure) games they own, and how to run them best! Also...everything else.

RetroDECK

This is less about links (I'll share though), and more about a rapid-fire for the features I adore most about it. I was a user of EmuDeck when I first got my first Steam Deck, but the record of things that break is there for all to see. My installation ran three emulators, and the storage it took on my SSD (in a trillion-and-one different places, not organized) was over 33GB. Again, this is my personal opinion of which software I favor. No hate for those on EmuDeck, it does the job. For me I adore RetroDECK because:

• It runs everything from one SD card. You run the emulators, the ROMs, the bios, the file trees, mods, texture packs. It sits neatly organized on the SD card and leaves the SSD free for PC games. I find this helps me a lot. There is no performance drop or any issue running it from a nice SD card. Nor is it locked to only run from a card. You can choose to install it wherever you want!
• RetroDECK only updates periodically. There is no emulator updates individually. Some users find this inconvenient, but I find it a nice relief to know the team waits to see that each update is stable for the user. There's been countless issues over time where a update to one can ruin an experience, I much prefer stable to flying too close to the sun!
• 'The radial wheel' ...honestly I've forgotten if that's what it is called, but Retro has the left trackpad on the Steam Deck default (via their custom controller configuration) to being a lovely radial dial. From there you can fast-forward a game (if it is old enough to support the feature, no, you're not fast-forwarding a PS3 game -_-), save quickly, open a quick setting to quickly upscale the resolution. It's extensive and fun. I love that damn dial.

There is more, but I tend to ramble (I already shudder to think at the length of this. Again, watch Russ from Retro Game Corps' recent video on RetroDECK, he takes you through it step-by-step and is lovely with the details!

Or alternatively, if you want to read more on my thoughts in my guide with plenty of pictures! ...you can find it here with this link. I take you through setting it up, and even some specific things like replacing textures with HD texture packs on PS2, etc

• Find the RetroDECK website here

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, I ACTUALLY HAVE TWO GAME CODES, FEEL FREE TO REDEEM

^TXV6-HP3TV-DC262-7DYXJ-C4FVZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for PC (Windows' Microsoft Store) - it's objectively a terrible game, but hey...someone may want this! The '^' is actually the number after 6

^FHXQ-4T2RP-JC4J2-CTXGW-626QZ is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for Xbox - it's just as terrible on Xbox, sadly no improvement on the game depending on the platform! The '^' is the number after 2.

EPIC GAMES

Epic has a sordid reputation. Personally, I have no qualms with them, if there is a game cheaper there (as was the case when they ran their coupons - long since abandoned) then I'm all for it. Their free weekly games on their site are a absolute gift for gamers who can't afford much, or any, modern gaming.

One of my fav things on their site is the blogs they run, or blog posts. Occasionally they will have some truly amazing personalities in the game dev world there to, ostensibly promote a game, but then go into detail of their own lives. Some of my favs on this theme are (click the link to go to the page!):

• The interview Creative Director (of Sonic X Shadow Generations) Takashi Lizuka gave with them. He himself is the man who created the Shadow character in the first place
• An interview with Alan Wake 2: The Lake House's Director and lead writer

There's countless others. The hard thing is knowing what is filler, and which are interesting from a creative and development standpoint. Regardless, I love things like this, as these days with stupid attention-grabbing conflict headlines and A.I. articles, it's harder to find this kind of content.

A NEW GAME FROM MercurySteam

This was the crew responsible for developing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows and Metroid Dread. They have a new game coming called Blades of Fire - and it will be exclusive (on PC) to Epic Games, but available to Series X and PS5 as well.

*EPIC GAMES' 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW:

• if you wanna see the image in full resolution, this is a link to it on imgur here

QUICKLY, THIS IS INTERESTING:

If you missed it, and you're interested in the PC gaming landscape - particularly in regards to how Steam is the clear favorite above others like GOG + Epic Games and Amazon's own Prime Gaming then this LinkedIn post by the former VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon is a fascinating read. He details why he thinks the attempt at winning gamers over with their platform failed.

• It did the rounds a few days ago, but I know a lot missed it, it's a fascinating read on a company trying to enter an established landscape of gaming, and...clearly this is the link

Really, worth a read for all!

Ironically, the weekly Prime Gaming giveaways are my fav part of gaming lately

JUST A COUPLE' GAMES I RECOMMEND!

We're winding down here, I think I have a terrible habit of using 750237634563456 words, when I could say the same thing with 15. But if you're still interested, I might just take the opportunity to recommend (quickly!) two games I've enjoyed on my Steam Deck, kinda cozy, but also not quite so. But, here we go:

Tunic

My cozy gaming recommendation today, which does actually have some souls like elements to it (sounds strange, I know!) is this adorable fox.

If you love the old (or remake) Nintendo Zelda games (Link's Awakening) then you'll LOVE this game:

"Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in TUNIC, an isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure."

You're an adorable fox with puzzles and combat, and it is SO good on the Deck!

Graveyard Keeper!

Think...Stardew Valley, but if you like the idea of management a sim with a gothic twist, this one’s worth checking out.

You’ll bury bodies, craft, and maybe even question your life choices as you balance morality and efficiency. Plus, there’s a talking skull. What more could you want?

It's adorable. I think by now I'm well and truly addicted. And it's on sale on GOG so often

Srsly, kinda dark! 💀💀💀

Racing games I love on the Steam Deck:

This is (yet again) weirdly niche, but I've been rather obsessed with rally racing in general the last few months. Specifically Group B...which, if you're interested was just the most terrifying time of motor racing, where people's hair, skin and even fingers would be found after the races were over; stuck in the grills of the cars because the crowd were so close to the sidelines.

A great mini 10 min doco on YouTube called The Absolute INSANITY of Group B Rally is here, if you wanna see it for yourself

• Art of Rally is a beautiful alternate history game, where Group B rally racing never stopped being a thing. I love their quote: "To do something dangerous with style is art...". Racing is isometric, the colors are beautiful, the atmosphere is so pretty, and the driving can be casual or require great skill. I love this game on my Steam Deck! It is also -50% off on GOG right now, if you want to check it out!

• DRIVE: Rally: "DRIVE Rally lets you relive the 90s in the most exciting era in motorsport history, where dust, mud, and snow are badges of honor. Unleash the raw power of legendary rally beasts, admire every second of the stunning landscapes, and remember: the faster you go, the better! DRIVE Rally not only nails the spirit of the 90s. It reignites it for a new generation of drivers. Whether you're a veteran of dirt roads or a rookie just looking to get their tires wet, this game will let you redefine speed over and over again." - I love this game because it is just pure fun. Arcade-y as heck, the art style is very distinct, and it feels like what you imagine a Playstation 1 game made today would be like. [https://www.gog.com/en/game/drive_rally](The store page on GOG is here, if you want to see the trailer and GIFs embedded in the page to get a good look at it

FINALLY?

Maybe that should be it for now. Please let me know how the formatting looks this time 'round. I hope I figured this out a little better, I know the last one was rough, but with each subsequent post I hope it gets prettier.

Some of you may remember me on reddit, I went by flwwhtrbt there. There was a time where I was 'interviewing' not only developers of everything Steam Deck had running on it (Lutris, Heroic, Decky, Junk-Store, EmuDeck, and others!), but I was also interviewing the big names in gaming piracy last year also: befriending FitGirl, Dodi, even chatting to Empress, KaOs and more.

If I can find my files (I think I purged everything, but may have back-ups!), then I might share them here, if anyone is interested.

Please share your thoughts, if there's something I can do better here, let me know! If there's a better way to format this, then by all means I need to know.

If you wanna reach out elsewhere, I am on Matrix and Mastodon:

As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you'll indulge me!

This isn't entirely all Steam Deck news though, and there's only a touch of pirate-y news in here. But regardless, I hope you might find it interesting, and if you do enjoy it, I'm happy to make this a regular thing.

I've been made a mod here, so I guess this is my first official post!

...again, these are my opinions, and my own poor formatting because I'm still getting used to Lemmy. So, let's get started?

EMULATION NEWS

• RetroDECK (a emulation suite known for its use on the Steam Deck system) has had a recent update and sub-sequent blog post which you can read in its entirety here! showing the recent video tutorial by Retro Game Corps on YouTube gave it a huge boost in user-base.

I'm personally thrilled with this, as I adore RetroDECK. I was a user of the far-more-popular EmuDeck for some time, but Retro won me over long ago, and I keep on pushing others to try!

If you'd like to see the video showing comparisons between it and EmuDeck, and a full installation guide, here is Russ' video on YouTube

• MAME 0.275 has been released: This release adds support for several arcade games on PlayStation-based hardware, a few PowerBook Duo sub-notebook computers, some hand-held LCD games, and a couple of Casio music keyboards.

You can read the blog post on MAME Dev here!

• RSPC3's founder "DH" has come back, and announced that they will be developing a port for Android phones. This looks to be a proper port, and not just encapsulating termux. Funny to see since the last week has seen a lot of dodgy builds from a lot of dodgy 'developers' for Android.

You can find the link to the GitHub page right here, if you wanna check things out

• Xbox One Emulation Well, it's not emulation, it's a compatibility layer much like Wine, but emulation as a term is far more recognizable than what it really is!

I'm only sharing this because it is fascinating to see what is possible, and what will be possible soon. This is just a video on YouTube by a creator by the name of MattKC Bytes. It's a great look at what is new, what options are available and what is happening in the scene.

A link to which is right here. Again, really recommend watching this one, it's a great video!

Pirate News

gog-games has proposed new changes, and briefly on his site was asking for devs to help build in a new element to the site: browsing by genre.

Seems a massive undertaking, as if you know the site you'll know their library is extensive to say the least. That work is going on right now, and I'm told it's going perfectly. No expected date on when it will be made public though.

Denuvo In the past few weeks, we have seen Denuvo removed from:

• Visions of Mana
• Deliver us Mars
• Immortals of Aveum
• The Great War: Western Front

GOG AND EPIC

What I use to play GOG (and Epic, and Amazon) games I have the tiniest Steam library, like a handful of games. The bulk of my library (thousands) is on GOG, along with the cliche of claimed Epic Games' titles most PC gamers collect each and every week.

I use a combination of Heroic Games Launcher and Junk-Store. I use Heroic on my gaming desktop, but I also use it on my Steam Deck alongside Junk-Store.

Heroic has the benefit of a partnership between the devs and GOG itself, whereby GOG game purchases made from within Heroic will give a small % of the total to the devs, and also using their affiliate link will give them a small %. This is unique, and rather amazing.

It might be no surprise, considering GOG (in)famously announced their planned native Linux support, then abandoned doing so...leaving Heroic to fill that space.

Junk-Store has the benefit of running through Decky Loader, and opening up in it's own little world. It's like a Steam Deck within a Steam Deck. The thing I adore most about it is how it replicates the native Steam games library on the Deck - it feels almost native.

(the developers of both Heroic and Junk-Store are personal friends of mine, so in case it matters, thought I'd mention it!)

GOG Preservation

GOG made two announcements in the last 24 hours or so, bringing more games to their lovely games Preservation Program (if you're unaware of this program, this is a link to GOG's site detailing exactly what it is here!

• F.E.A.R. Platinum (2005) coming to the program next month "...featuring the base game and both expansions – will be available as part of the GOG Preservation Program by next month. Originally scheduled for a later timeframe, we’ve decided to accelerate this release to properly recognize Monolith’s contributions to gaming"

And more good news was seeing 11 LEGO games titles added, including 4 new titles to GOG:

• The LEGO Movie - Videogame
• The LEGO Movie 2 - videogame
• LEGO City Undercover
• The LEGO Ninjago Video Game

...these are just the titles brand-new to GOG, you can see the full list AND the whole amazingly written blog post here with this link to their site/blog

GOG also ran a billboard in Times Square, showing Dino Crisis. It's impossible to see who actually paid for this placement, could be either GOG or Capcom (most likely, in my opinion). I posted the billboard here on Lemmy if you'd like to see it

EPIC GAMES

Epic is always a little (lot) harder to write about. Despite their size, their reputation is always quite awful with PC gamers, and their news cycle seems to be quite barren - for the most part. Still, two things of note have happened, in quick-succession I'll say:

• Dauntless, one of Epic's first exclusives is shutting down on May 29th. An (ironic) post about which was shared here on Steam, if you want to see it

• Epic Games have their mobile app released. They're giving free games away on there, one (actually two this time) each month. The app is extremely bare-bones right now, but this month if you're interested you can grab Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic as well as the sequel for free.

---

I guess this is a short post, by my typical standards. There may be errors (they're my own), there may be some odd opinions (definitely my own), and there will be formatting errors (formatting here seems not-so-easy.

But please let me know how this goes! If you'd like to see more, then please let me know, I used to adore making these. The sad thing is at least on Reddit I'd go crazy with images for each point I found, GIF's, etc. Here that's not possible, but I've peppered it with links for those curious to follow things further!

Hope you enjoy!

<3

As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you'll indulge me!

This has a focus on Steam Deck, as the damn thing is my obsession. But what is appropriate for the 'Deck might be elsewhere also, and obviously is for Linux.

...again, these are my opinions, and my own poor formatting because I'm still getting used to Lemmy. So, let's get started?

EMULATION NEWS

• RetroDECK (a emulation suite known for its use on the Steam Deck system) has had a recent update and sub-sequent blog post which you can read in its entirety here! showing the recent video tutorial by Retro Game Corps on YouTube gave it a huge boost in user-base.

I'm personally thrilled with this, as I adore RetroDECK. I was a user of the far-more-popular EmuDeck for some time, but Retro won me over long ago, and I keep on pushing others to try!

If you'd like to see the video showing comparisons between it and EmuDeck, and a full installation guide, here is Russ' video on YouTube

• MAME 0.275 has been released: This release adds support for several arcade games on PlayStation-based hardware, a few PowerBook Duo sub-notebook computers, some hand-held LCD games, and a couple of Casio music keyboards.

You can read the blog post on MAME Dev here!

• RSPC3's founder "DH" has come back, and announced that they will be developing a port for Android phones. This looks to be a proper port, and not just encapsulating termux. Funny to see since the last week has seen a lot of dodgy builds from a lot of dodgy 'developers' for Android.

You can find the link to the GitHub page right here, if you wanna check things out

• Xbox One Emulation Well, it's not emulation, it's a compatibility layer much like Wine, but emulation as a term is far more recognizable than what it really is!

I'm only sharing this because it is fascinating to see what is possible, and what will be possible soon. This is just a video on YouTube by a creator by the name of MattKC Bytes. It's a great look at what is new, what options are available and what is happening in the scene.

A link to which is right here. Again, really recommend watching this one, it's a great video!

• Azahar (3DS) Emulator The successor to the rather popular Citra 3DS emulator has gone live now: "Starting from now, eager developers who wish to begin contributing to the project can start opening pull requests..." (and so on, it was a long statement, but you get the idea.

The GitHub page for Azahar is here

• Anbernic Not really all that relevant, but this is pretty interesting. The popular SBC retro gaming company Anbernic (SBC standing for Single Board Computer - once it was relevant to the Orange/Rasp Pi boards, but has transitioned over the years to mean primarily the Chinese retro handheld companies) has backtracked on the firmware they released for only two days which allowed users to download ROMs directly to their device. Controversial for the obvious reason, and also ironic considering the company ships thousands upon thousands of ROMs with the devices on SD cards, but that firmware has been removed now.

Obv it has been backed up elsewhere on the internet, as you can never put the genie back in the bottle! Here is a link if you want to read more/the details, but fair warning the site is pretty horrendous with pop-ups

GOG AND EPIC

What I use to play GOG (and Epic, and Amazon) games I have the tiniest Steam library, like a handful of games. The bulk of my library (thousands) is on GOG, along with the cliche of claimed Epic Games' titles most PC gamers collect each and every week.

I use a combination of Heroic Games Launcher and Junk-Store. I use Heroic on my gaming desktop, but I also use it on my Steam Deck alongside Junk-Store.

Heroic has the benefit of a partnership between the devs and GOG itself, whereby GOG game purchases made from within Heroic will give a small % of the total to the devs, and also using their affiliate link will give them a small %. This is unique, and rather amazing.

It might be no surprise, considering GOG (in)famously announced their planned native Linux support, then abandoned doing so...leaving Heroic to fill that space.

I love their UI and themes (users customizable) and that they integrate Comet for GOG - this means that playtime and achievements are logged with your GOG account, which is an obsession of mine!

Junk-Store has the benefit of running through Decky Loader, and opening up in it's own little world. It's like a Steam Deck within a Steam Deck. The thing I adore most about it is how it replicates the native Steam games library on the Deck - it feels almost native.

(the developers of both Heroic and Junk-Store are personal friends of mine, so in case it matters, thought I'd mention it!)

GOG Preservation

GOG made two announcements in the last 24 hours or so, bringing more games to their lovely games Preservation Program (if you're unaware of this program, this is a link to GOG's site detailing exactly what it is here!

• F.E.A.R. Platinum (2005) coming to the program next month "...featuring the base game and both expansions – will be available as part of the GOG Preservation Program by next month. Originally scheduled for a later timeframe, we’ve decided to accelerate this release to properly recognize Monolith’s contributions to gaming"

And more good news was seeing 11 LEGO games titles added, including 4 new titles to GOG:

• The LEGO Movie - Videogame
• The LEGO Movie 2 - videogame
• LEGO City Undercover
• The LEGO Ninjago Video Game

...these are just the titles brand-new to GOG, you can see the full list AND the whole amazingly written blog post here with this link to their site/blog

GOG also ran a billboard in Times Square, showing Dino Crisis. It's impossible to see who actually paid for this placement, could be either GOG or Capcom (most likely, in my opinion). I posted the billboard here on Lemmy if you'd like to see it

EPIC GAMES

Epic is always a little (lot) harder to write about. Despite their size, their reputation is always quite awful with PC gamers, and their news cycle seems to be quite barren - for the most part. Still, two things of note have happened, in quick-succession I'll say:

• Dauntless, one of Epic's first exclusives is shutting down on May 29th. An (ironic) post about which was shared here on Steam, if you want to see it

• Epic Games have their mobile app released. They're giving free games away on there, one (actually two this time) each month. The app is extremely bare-bones right now, but this month if you're interested you can grab Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic as well as the sequel for free.

I guess this is a short post, by my typical standards. There may be errors (they're my own), there may be some odd opinions (definitely my own), and there will be formatting errors (formatting here seems not-so-easy!)

But please let me know how this goes! If you'd like to see more, then please let me know, I used to adore making these. The sad thing is at least on Reddit I'd go crazy with images for each point I found, GIF's, etc. Here that's not possible, but I've peppered it with links for those curious to follow things further!

Hope you enjoy!

<3