So, I've been getting back into gaming in a big way these last few months, after a low back injury left me sidelined from my other, more physically active hobbies.
The silver lining (or I suppose cat nip) for my ASD brain is modding. In the past 6 weeks, I've modded a ds, a dsi, a wii u, a wii (which underrated as a "turn it on and play the classics" machine), several Android TVs... yeah...
While I've loved all of them (the Wii especially brought me great joy), I wished there was a way to play everything in one spot. A curated console, as it were.
Of course, you know where this is going - emulation.
Through the wonders of Ebay, I was able go score a Lenovo M93p tiny for around $80USD (a SFF pc from around 2014, about same dimensions as wii).
Throw in a faster processor, lobotomise windows, throw on Playnite, Dolphin Emulator and a bunch of personal classic and... well...let me introduce you to my SuperPretendo 5 :)
PS: ChatGPT gen art (and typos aside), I kinda love what it came up with for this.
It had Batocera on it :)
Batocera is wonderful, until you want to mix and match it with PC games or steam stuff. Then it makes your life more difficult than you'd expect.
(Weirdly, I find some of the standalone emulators legitimately work better in Windows that Bato.
Dolphin, PCSX2, PPSSPP etc are much more performant).
Some other perks: In windows, one neat thing is being able to run multiple instances of same emulator, slightly differently.
For example, Dolphin doesn't allow you to enable / disable Vsync per game.
Which means, you can have some games upscaled (but with screen tearing) or native resolution (but no screen tear)...but not both within same emulator. Think Rogue squadron etc.
No big deal if you're emulating on something with grunt, but when you're using office refuse from a decade ago, every little bit helps.
In Windows, I just create c:/dolphin1 and c:/dolphin 2, and tweak each game as needed.
TL: DR: i'm using win 8.1 for the OS, stripped to the bone, and replaced Explorer.exe with Playnite. I genuinely think it's a touch faster than Batocera and more maliable to PC stuff.
PS: I also had RetroBat for a while but it was doing something or other that made a few games less performant.
You should be able to do all that in Bazzite. I know nothing about batocera but it doesn't sound like it even compares.
Bazzite is just for steam, right? Would that mean it plays Windows based games via Proton layer? Proton blows on Batocera. Shame, because Bato was pretty nice.
I strongly dislike Windows, but it was the only way I could cobble together something for this use case that just works
Bazzite is an OS that is similar to SteamOS, but no it's not "just for Steam."
It's a full Linux distro that is built for gaming, but not only gaming. It is very well integrated with Proton. You don't need to use Steam to launch games, but it makes it easier.
I haven't run into a game that I couldn't run (with about 99% of them just running out of the box with no tinkering).
Proton must have come along in leaps and bounds since I last used it in that case.
What front end does Bazzite use? I understood it to have Steam baked in; most of my games are from other sources, like GoG.
I think once Steam kills support for Win 10 (probs in a year or two, based on history) the smart move is going to be something like Bazzite.
About tinkering, if you'd be interested at some point in the future, maybe also test something like a more general Linux system with either Kodi or RetroPie? Also maybe, if you have the money, to throw in a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 as the hardware? Think it'd give a nice console-like device.
So! I have a pi4 acting as my Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr etc server. (I'm actually debating adding Immich and Synchthing, as well as home CCTV to it's list of duties).
IME, emulation on the pi is weirdly hit or miss. For example, Dreamcast (Redream) is pretty good! N64 tanks it. Zero chance for PS2 etc... but then it plays Half life and Doom 3 just fine.
I lucked out when I got it - for what you pay for a Pi now, you'd get a lot more out of a NUC or a thinclient. Case in point: a barebones pi5 costs around $150 AUD near me. Literally just the board - no case, no power supply.
For a $150, you could replicate the machine I got, which is orders of magnitude more powerful, with 120gb SSD, power supply etc. And only slightly more power hungry than the pi.
I love my Pi, but that thing is like a box full of angry cats. Something about the Argon 40 case messes with it. You breath too hard near it, it drops wifi. It spontaneously decided "no RealVNC access for you - come back one year".
I really need to strip it back to parts and start again, but that's a job I keep putting off, because it works well enough for what it does.
Wouldn't want to game on it tho; I actually think even the Google Chromecast outperforms for some stuff.