A lot of gamers go to great lengths to find a portable retro gaming device with the lightest and most compact kit. The Linux powered Raspberry Pi 5 does a decent job on that front.
But what many players don’t know is that an even smaller and lighter solution is available by turning the humble USB flash drive into a portable gaming console. You still need a PC to play, but it means you can get around with more compact gear. Here’s how to do it for under $100…
Your flash drive needs to be set up with the open-source OS Batocera to play. Here are the steps:
Now that the OS is installed, you need to boot into your flash drive. There are two ways to do this, so if the right options don’t appear the first way, try the second way.
Now that you have Batocera installed you’re going to want to populate the OS with some games. Batocera is an emulation frontend that supports a large number of game emulators for retro game consoles.
PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo 3DS games are just a small fraction of the game types you can play using Batocera. The OS does come with a limited number of game ROMs preloaded, which are free and legal to use, but if you want more than that you’ll need to install your own ROMs.
I can’t tell you where to get these from. It’s illegal to use ROMs without a license, so you’ll want to own each and every one. Here’s how to load them up.
You should be up and running now and can use your flash drive on any PC to play retro games. As a general rule any PC with mid-range specs will work a treat; you should hit about 60fps in most games.
This whole process can be done with an SD card or a portable hard drive instead of a USB flash drive. Personally, I find a USB flash drive is the ideal size to carry, being neither too small, nor too large.
To get the best out of Batocera and your games, it’s also worth watching a few “How to” videos to familiarize yourself with the OS. You’ll want to learn how to adjust the video settings and resolution for specific emulators, for example, so that your games will look great. For these and more tutorials, a great source of information is the YouTube channel Batocera Nation.
That’s all for now. Happy retro gaming!
