While The obvious use case for the Steam Deck is playing new (or current) PC games on the go, the unspoken use case is that it should also be a dream come true for anyone who wants to play emulated classics. Let’s see how the handheld fares a few weeks after release.
YouTuber ETA Prime has put a number of old consoles through their paces on Valve’s new machine, and while some of the older games run as well as you’d expect, there are also some surprising results for newer hardware.
I don’t have a Steam deck so I haven’t been able to put any of these games/emulators through their paces myself, but if there was one thing that would make me want to buy one, other than the emulation potential even here, it would be the unifying one front end (Startbox/BigBox) you can see at the beginning of the video that looks like a dream
You can see the ETA Prime results below and jump straight to the relevant emulators if you’re interested in a specific emulator. Note, however, that not every system’s footage can be viewed. While Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, PSP and PS3 all see games running successfully, Footage of Nintendo titles booting in the CEMU emulator has been omitted for obvious reasons
While most of these games perform fairly well, it should be noted – as ETA Prime points out in the video itself – that emulation is an ever-evolving art form, so just because a game is now performing poorly doesn’t mean we win. I see no improvement in the coming months and years.
If you’re curious how many PC games the system can run so well, Valve has it a list we put to the test a few weeks agowhich in turn is constantly being supplemented and improved.