The Steam Deck is my favorite piece of tech ever made
When I was a kid in the 2000s, I played the heck out of my GameBoy Advance SP. The clamshell design wsa crazy portable, the screen was beautiful and bright, and the games were fun to play and very addictive even.
As much as I loved my GBA though, a part of me couldn’t help but wish that I had one single device that could play all of my favorite games from not just the one platform, but all platforms. While I did have my PC to get that done, the dream was to get a handheld version of my PC, so I could bring all my favorite games with me everywhere I go.
Now devices like this did exist in the 2000s, however they were usually not available in my home country, and even if they were available they would have been extremely expensive, and chances are not remotely worth it. Portability back then was more a novelty than anything else, and it often came with a ton of compromises, especially as far as performance goes. These things were not particularly powerful.
Sony Vaio UX Micro PC
Regardless, it was still a big dream of mine to have a device like this. Now the GBA did get close, as it was pretty much a portable SNES. But I was still limited to only being able to play GBA games on it, or older games from the original GameBoy or GameBoy Color. I certainly wasn’t gonna play Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Year of the Dragon, or Halo 2 on the thing. We did get DOOM on it, so hey that is something at least.
That was quite a while ago though. A lot has changed since then, technologies have gotten much better, and companies are now fully capable of making a darn good handheld PC that plays games remarkably well, so long as you still keep relatively realistic expectations.
The Nintendo Switch was a great step in the right direction, it having a massive library of games mostly consisting of ports from other platforms. But you still needed to re-purchase the games you already owned on other platforms, plus retro game support was very scarce on that platform, outside of the Nintendo Switch Online service.
As much as I like the Switch, I felt like it was still miles away from the dream that I had to be able to play all the games I owned on one single device. Fast forward to today however, we finally have the perfect solution; Steam Deck!
Steam Deck has been very well known for a while now, due to the impact it has had on handheld gaming, and devices like it. Equiped with PC hardware, the best feeling controller I have ever used on any gaming device (yes that does include the Xbox One controller), and the amazing SteamOS, based on Arch Linux.
While the hardware inside is not as powerful as that of a typical overkill gaming PC, with a bit of tinkering, and tweaking your video settings, tons of games you would want to play will still work beautifully on here, like Need for Speed Rivals, and DOOM 2016. But Steam games are not the only thing I wanted the Deck for. For me, where this handheld really shines is emulation.
Thanks to tools like EmulationStation, RetroArch, and EmuDeck, emulation is an absolute ease, and I was finally able to fulfill the dream of playing all my favorite games from all platforms on one single device. The controller on the Deck feels fantastic for basically any retro game I throw at it, and even some platforms like Xbox, which can be a nightmare to emulate, plays beautifully on Steam Deck. Much like many of my other favorite systems like SNES, and GBA.
There are of course a couple of caveats to playing a system like this. This is a Linux machine. And as much as I love Linux, there are a couple of problems with it. Some games flat out won’t work, Arch Linux loves to break on occasion, and some games require bit of work to even get going at all. But when it all works, the results are truly fantastic.
Frankly I could not be happier with my Steam Deck. I love it, and I will certainly enjoy playing on it for many more years to come.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’mma go play some more Burnout Revenge.
Have a nice day, creators! Unite!
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