Lithium Dosage #4: RetroArch
It's the third week of semester break in law school and I have moved on from spamming horror films and League of Legends matches, to exploring the wonderful world of emulation.
When I was a kid, my family was not well-off. Consoles and gaming devices were definitely treated as luxury that we could barely afford. And so, the gaming experience of my childhood revolved around two consoles: a hand-me-down Gameboy Color and a knock-off Famicom. There aren't much games to play with as well.
In GBC, playing and replaying Pokemon Blue were all I did because it was the only game I had. Eventually, my parents bought me Tom and Jerry and Montezuma's Return. Not the best of games, but because I played them nonetheless because they're all that I had. Fortunately, some of my friends would lend me their cartridges for some limited time.
We also had a Famicom that was definitely a knock-off but was at least able to run basic games like Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and some Olympic games. I only played with our Famicom for a while because the console broke later.
Despite the scarcity of games, I was passionate about video games when I was a kid. I was pretty much an outsider in any crowd of kids in my neighborhood because I don't speak the same language (my father was from a different place so we spoke his language in the household). I also studied a lot in grade school because, well, I've got Asian parents. Video games and fiction books were my only form of entertainment.
And so, now that I'm older and relatively more financially capable, I turn to emulation to redirect all the gaming energy I had onto other games I could not get my hands onto back then. A few years back, when I got my first smartphone, I immediately installed a Gameboy emulator. When I bought a decent laptop on 2019, I tried Dolphin, a Wii/Gamecube emulator (but it still did not run right because the laptop had weak specs). Last year, after I built myself a modest gaming PC, I tried my hands on Cemu, a WiiU emulator. The PC can barely run Breath of the Wild, but it does well with other less demanding titles. In fairness, the PC runs Dolphin games smoother than my laptop does.
A few days ago, I revisited my emulation set up. The messiness of it all was definitely noticeable. My Cemu installation folder had another Cemu installation folder inside for some unknown reason. The installation and extraction directories of my WiiU USB Helper were all over the place. I thought, I've got time--I can definitely tidy things up.
Which brings me to RetroArch. This program is awesome. It brings all the said emulators, and many more, into one platform. Since I was in dire need of trying to organize my emulators, especially across devices, RetroArch was the solution. Instead of installing different apps/programs, with their separate directories, save files, save state folders, RetroArch allows me to put them all in one folder.
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| Fortunately, there are tons of videos in Youtube to save you from the labyrinth that is the Retroarch settings. (Image source: jordanhomeland.com) |
I'm not gonna lie though--it took me some time to understand how RetroArch works. I'm not tech-savvy by any means, but at least I am patient. I think RetroArch does not have the most intuitive interface, and it had to be that way to allow for a lot of customizations for different emulators.
That said, I'm pretty much done with my RetroArch set up. I am now looking forward to play classic games in their original (emulated) consoles. For example: I can now play Super Mario 64 in the NES instead of its Nintendo DS port. I am also super excited to review as much as I can before the next semester hits.
The little kid in me is very happy that I am still alive to this point.
If you are interested in installing RetroArch, you can visit their website https://www.retroarch.com/index.php or download the app on the Google Playstore. You can also donate to them via the same link. I will surely donate after I save up some money.
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