Turn a USB Flash Drive into a Portable Gaming 'System'!

The Batocera firmware lets you flash a lightweight, emulation-focused operating system onto any flash drive, hard drive, or SD card. So what if we flashed it onto a flash drive, loaded it all up, and then used that as a portable gaming "system" that could be plugged into any x64 Windows PC? That's what we're going to explore in this video.

Artists featured in this video:

Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
01:18 tools and tips
02:46 installation and startup
05:00 transferring files onto the flash drive
06:55 how to configure settings
11:00 testing on a different PC
12:01 gameplay testing + tunes
21:32 summary and conclusion

Intro theme song sampled from "Hexadecimal Genome" by Bit Shifter:

Note that this description may contain affiliate links. By clicking on an affiliate link and buying something, I may earn a small commission of the sale at no extra cost to you.

This video is for entertainment and educational purposes only.

#Batocera #Emulation #RetroGaming

[ripmowt]

For people new to the emulation scene, you should emphasize that this does NOT suddenly turn your old pc into a gaming beast. Hardware is important for smooth 1080p emulation gaming for the ps2 and ps3 for example.

[KC-nrou]

this is probably the most exciting thing i've seen in terms of having a emulation daily driver setup. the handhelds are cool but can't beat the idea behind this.

[doisnerds]

"yeah man i wanna do it" love it.

[scottgilbert]

Russ, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you putting this video out. I've been running Batocera off a flashdrive like this since you made this last year and it's been awesome running it on an old Dell optiplex with a 1030 video card on our living room setup. Can't tell you how many hours we've spent playing NGC Animal Crossing and Diablo 1 Hellfire through DevilutionX. I've been doing retro game emulation since 1997, but it's astonishing how simple and easy it is today.

[kevindavis]

I'm impressed I never knew how easy it was to set up on a USB Flash Drive until I tried it was easer than I thought it would be thank you for uploading this awesome video! 👍🙂

[JK-ljlp]

I've been running Batocera on a 12 year old laptop. Dust off those old machines!

Edit (2024) Sorry! I had no idea there were any replies to this. FWIW, I'm still regularly playing/running Batocera on a couple of old 10" netbooks from 2010, very portable. Plays GBA and below just fine. I removed the internal HD and am running the OS from an SD card. You'll need to change the boot sequence on the PC to look for the USB or SD card first. I'm running an old version of Batocera 5.26 -- I seem to recall it ran the smoothest on my machines. I'm going to test later versions of the 32-bit OS to see if they work.

Old versions of the OS are still available for download on the Batocera site. It might be worth trying some out to see what works best for your PC. I have an Acer Aspire One and a Toshiba NB-305, both are 10" netbooks. Luckily, the original batteries still hold a decent charge.

[fabiofabiobio]

I'm really feeling this musical gameplay montage you got goin on here! More of that in the future plzzz

[raymondcartagena]

Wow, that "Unknown NES Title" at 7:24 looks pretty good. You should showcase that game on your channel more often. It's way better than that other game you were using before.

[Tony-iusw]

"Are you sure you- ..." "YEAH man, I wanna do it " 🤣🤣🤣

[Atrus]

Just tried this today and it works great! It's really nice being able to play my games on my PC without putting a ton of different apps on it. Thanks for the video!

[Woodwerker]

Great video. One thing to keep in mind when using Batocera is remember that it is a Linux-based operating system. One thing that Windows OS has which is an advantage when playing retro games is DirectX graphics backend. DirectX in a lot of cases will allow for better speeds than the only 2 graphic backends that batocera offers: OpenGL and Vulkan. If you run a Windoiws version of Batocera called "Retrobat" you will still get the same menu settings and options that Batocera offers but it will also include DirectX as an option. Just thought I would mention this. I use both Batocera and Retrobat all the time and each has their advantages and disadvantages. DirectX will alloow older PCs to have better performance in emulating systems like Ninteno Game Cube and Wii, for example. Nice video - keep up the great work my friend. On really older PCs say like i5 4570 processors Windows does better especially because Vulkan is not an option.

[philliprufino]

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you for uploading this Retro Game Corps! I love it!!!

[HerecomestheCalavera]

I tried Batocera recently and it is a pretty useful piece of software. I have an old laptop with no HDD and it was nice to be able to just plug in a USB stick and turn it into a retro gaming machine. I went through each system and picked the games that I might actually play and copied them over. It is pointless to have a full set of NES, SNES, Genesis etc... roms because you aren't ever going to play 90%+ of them!

[brotendo]

Honestly as soon as I saw the title I was hooked. Watched the video and let's just say I'm playing Pokémon XD off my USB rn

[dhibbard]

This is awesome. I was thinking of buying a retro gaming console but the only good ones cost more than I was willing to spend. This is the perfect solution and I can’t wait to do this for my laptop. Thanks for the walkthrough this is the perfect little setup.

[TheDumontShow]

I can fully confirm this trick. It worked flawlessly like he said. Did everything he said. It worked. Nothing more, nothing less. Do as he tells you to do and you should be playing it. I love using my laptop as a gaming machine since I have a extra laptop I wasn't using. Win-win situation for me. Thank you so much Retro Game Corps

[DukeofGrease]

took my old gaming laptop from 2015 and put a batocera USB on it for all my ROMs and emulators.
Perfect way to keep that thing useful to me. I love booting it up for some emulation. Even runs ps2 great !

[madmommy]

Recently loaded Batocera onto an older external hard drive, and discovered I could use it to boot into a 2010 Macbook I had lying around. I'm going to swap to a USB flash drive to make it a more portable system. Nice to have essentially a portable multi-console setup with built-in display. Plays beautifully!

[hideokojimajr]

Awesome concept. The only hiccup I would anticipate is with the modern-ish systems that need some more tailoring to the PC you're running on.

[ogreofgormley]

Well you've sold me on batocera. I'm going to buy a mini pc to sit by my tv and be my new gaming system