The Ultimate Steam Deck Emulation Setup

After a few weeks of tinkering, I finally have my Steam Deck set up exactly the way I like. This video will show you my setup, which is a combination of EmuDeck, EmulationStation, Xbox Cloud Gaming, standalone Linux games, and my Steam library.

Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
02:30 Xbox Cloud Gaming
03:30 updated EmuDeck guide
07:04 Steam ROM Manager
09:26 cleaning up Steam
10:49 adding standalone Linux & PC games
17:33 final setup and conclusion

Theme song written by Jim Gray of Our Ghosts:

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This video is for entertainment and educational purposes only.

#SteamDeck #EmuDeck #EmulationStation

[zublits]

This is incredible. I thought setting up emulation was going to be a huge pain on the deck, but this confirms that I was dead wrong.

[Sergey_Latyshev]

9:39 - you can select several games and delete them at once, just like in any file manager or text editor: click on the first, hold Shift, click on the last. Ctrl to select one by one.

[samuelwillis]

Even Russ’ causal videos are ~20 minutes of helpful review and instruction.

[Vaskomyr]

This just gets me more hyped for my email for my deck. Hopefully next week or so 🤞

[gayleralan]

A tutorial for someone who has no experience with linux or emulators would be cool

[WickedGamerCollector]

Yeah it's mind blowing if you think how good the program works.
And how super fast you can setup eveything.. that tutorial you made was perfect 👌
Not forget the community that makes it all possible and in a short period of time after the steam deck was released. (first batch)
Looking forward what will happen in the future with support when many more people get there Handheld from Valve.

[TheSurrealist.]

Russ please never change your intro music. It’s so chillwave/Vaporwave.

[SweDownhill]

I was hesitating wether to buy the Steam Deck or not, but this video won me over 😍 The use cases for this machine just sky rocketed through the roof! Thanks for producing this video!

[thesuperzfamilyvlog]

Just got my steamdeck yesterday, and this guide is perfect. Thank you!

[nektworks]

I just got my Steam Deck two days ago and it has been a really great emulation experience. Personally, I still think my Vita is a nicer handheld for older games, but it's great how the Steam deck handles PS2, GameCube/Wii and some newer games really well.

Two things I've noticed:
1. If you use EmuDeck, you get the advantage of using different controller profiles per game. Some Wii games require you to turn your remote sideways, so it's nice to just change the controller profiles for that.
2. The back paddles are actually quite nice for emulator hotkeys. I've set one as a quick fast-forward button in PCSX2.

[DarklordofBarovia]

God I cannot wait for my steam deck - every video you release on it makes me more excited!

[Terreos]

This is awesome! Now I really can’t wait till my steam deck arrives. So many classic games that I’ll be able to play on the go and relive my childhood.

[guitarsimon]

Love that you put the Metroid Dread cartridge in shot at the end there, like 'yes yes get off my back Nintendo!'

[donogan]

For anyone new to steam, you can hide the games in the library too (instead of removing them), then you can access them in the hidden games section

[almightyhaggis]

Literally only preordered one for emulation! This looks so good I am buzzing!

[gingerbarstud]

Hey, thanks so so much for making this as easy as possible for a newb like myself, looking forward to adding all the retro games to my Steamdeck.

[adelin]

For heroic games laucnher, I recommend using heroic bash launcher, which adds each installed game as a non-steam game. So you don’t have to go through the launcher and you can have different controller profiles for each game.

One thing to be aware of: it might be buggy(not launch) if the game has a special character in its name(like LEGO (R) BATMAN) which has that R trademark. For this, you have to remove the R from the prefixes folder, change the path in heroic game launcher and THEN launch heroic bash launcher to create the shortcut. Other than that, it works great!

[riftacle]

When I exit steam on the desktop mode my trackpads all of a sudden gets rumble feedback and I cant open anything

[melancholicspirit]

this guide is incredible and so easy to follow. i was able to set up a bunch of emus/roms on my deck while watching and make it look super tidy in my steamOS. thank you so much!

[zul]

OMG thank you for this. I'm still waiting on my steam deck but I have saved this so I can jump into emulation right away when I get it. Thanks so much!