Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: linux

The Power of Batocera

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post mostly deals with what Batocera can accomplish as an operating system for a PC. I recently bought a new personal computer. There were many reasons for this and one of them was the global transition to Windows 11. After October 14th (2025) Windows 10 wont be supported anymore by Microsoft. This means that there are no guarantees that your Windows 10 computer would be functional. There will be no security updates. So, I had to buy a new PC mainly because of these considerations.

My older PC was bought at the end of 2020. It wasn’t an old computer. It just wouldn’t be supported by Microsoft anymore after October 14th. I have to agree that it had some age already, but I really wasn’t ready to buy a new computer. I would have liked to use the old one a bit longer than was actually possible. My new PC runs the latest PC games smoothly. It also runs Xbox 360 and PS3 emulation which wasn’t possible with my older PC.

I figured that since my old PC was powerful enough to run PS2, GameCube and original Xbox emulation, I wanted to use it as a retro gaming platform. I have had some nice experiences with Recalbox, so, that was my first option. Well, I wasn’t at first able to get Recalbox installed directly to my older PC. It did run but it was kind of installed to my USB stick. I wanted to try to install Batocera instead. I had heard a lot of positive debate about it. So, I went with Batocera and finally it worked like a dream.

Batocera is an operating system that is very much related to Linux and is also dedicated to being able to run some retro games. My older PC was powerful enough for this purpose. After some fiddling with installations and moving some games to the computer I managed to get some games running. I think original Xbox, GameCube and PS2 have many interesting games for me to play and experiment with. Since all my gaming consoles of this particular era have ended up getting finally broken I figured that emulation could enable me to play these kinds of video games one more time.

I have this issue with older gaming hardware. I have a Nintendo GameCube, Sony Playstation 2 and also an original Xbox but they all broke down as I had them set up in my corner of gaming in my living room. I guess they are gathering too much dust and finally end up not reading the disc at all. I also have a Xbox 360 console that isn’t functional and the reason seems to be dust.

You can actually run Batocera from a USB stick but I wanted to install it to my older PCs hard drive. This required me to boot the computer to my USB stick. This required some fiddling with BIOS settings. This isn’t actually difficult but it requires some knowledge. However there are instructions that can be found online. I also wanted to wipe my disks completely. I did it with a program called ShredOS. Now, this procedure took about 14 hours. I ended up running it through overnight so I wouldn’t need to monitor this. After I got rid of all the content from my hard disks, that were a 2TB disk and a 256GB disk, both of them SSDs, the actual installation process was simple. Of course I had to set up all of these systems BIOSes and move over all the game roms.

I wanted to be able to play my retro games on the Batocera that I had installed with a controller of Xbox Series S/X. I find this controller to be as comfortable as a controller can be. I also bought a good quality cable that was three meters long. This way the controller didn’t need a battery at all. I don’t actually mind about the cable. I actually prefer using cable over using a battery in a controller. The latest Xbox’s controller is also a natural choice because it is very much compatible with a PC. I am playing my GameCube, original Xbox and PS2 games with this controller. It is very versatile as a game pad.

Batocera needs some power to run this kind of emulation. It is nice to be able to actually have a dedicated device for playing retro games like this. I am very content that the system is able to run also Dreamcast games if I would just set up the BIOS and move over the game roms. You can also play some older video game consoles games with Batocera. Some of these games feel a bit clunky since they are a bit old already. All in all I find Batocera a good video gaming operating system for any gamer. It is a good way to utilize also your old personal computer if you are replacing your old PC maybe because of the transition to Windows 11.

Clone Your Memory Card in PCSX2 Emulator

Posted on by Viljami

We are dealing with a PS2 emulator that is very capable and that provides you a good quality of emulation for your PC. PCSX2 is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS. Its system requirements include 2 GB of video memory and 8 GB of RAM. There are some requirements also for the CPU or processor. A 64-bit operating system is also a requirement. The recommended system settings are a bit higher. PCSX2 has a good and comprehensive website where you can also look for more details.

PCSX2 utilizes virtual memory cards that are files that have a filename that is ending in *.ps2.  Now, the standard memory cards have 8 MB of space. So, you have to use these memory cards just to save your progress in a game. I am currently playing, once again, Gran Turismo 4 and it takes about 1,5 MB just for the save. There were already some other saves and the emulator printed a message for me saying that the memory card is already full.

So, what do you do? You can of course start your PS2 with no disc inside so that it goes to BIOS. Then you can delete some saved games. You can access BIOS within PCSX2 by first clicking, on your upper left corner: System->Start BIOS. You should do this while there isn’t a game running. Now you can get an access to your memory card by selecting Browser->Memory card on your emulated virtual PS2.

However there is another and more practical way to handle this situation. With no game running on your PCSX2 head over to Settings->Memory cards. Now, click Open… button that is located on the right side of the part that reads Memory cars – Folder: and the location of your virtual memory cards or the files ending with .ps2. Click that button (Open…). Now these files are showing in your operating systems resource manager or the application that you actually handle your files. Now make a copy of the file. This memory card file should preferably be empty. You can empty the file within your PS2 system and then make a copy of the file. You can also leave an empty memory card file that you can copy or clone when you need more space for your saves. I know that I am not going to closely to how the memory card gets copied in your operating system, be it Linux, Windows or Mac, but I think you can manage to do this and will get the idea that I am telling you.

Now, move to your PCSX2 graphical interface. You should be in a windowed view and you should see every memory card file that you have in this specific folder. Make sure there is a tap on your memory card slot 1. Click the “eject” button.  Now the virtual memory card gets ejected. Next you must drag-and-drop your new and preferably suitably named memory card file to the slot that was emptied earlier. Congratulations! You have now a fresh virtual memory card to be used with your PCSX2 emulator. You can now click Close on the window and continue using your PCSX2 emulator.

PCSX2 is a very capable PS2 emulator. It makes playing all almost 4000 PS2 games a smooth experience. I found out that tweaking some graphics settings and also settings found from within the game you could actually make the visuals more detailed. You can manage the settings by going in PCSX2 to Settings->Graphics. From Display I changed Aspect Ratio to 16:9. It can be set to standard 4:3 that is the original aspect ratio. You can also change, from Rendering tap, your Internal Resolution. I changed it to 6x Native (4K UHD). You have to consider how powerful your host PC is. I have a compatible CPU, a video card with 8 GB of memory and 16 GB of RAM. I haven’t had any major issues while running PCSX2 with these settings.

I ended up using PCSX2 because my PS2 always kept breaking. I don’t know if it is because all this dust that you must have seen in my pictures here on this blog. Is it because of the poor overall quality of these game consoles or what. In any way I just find it easier to rip my PS2 games to my PC and then utilize PCSX2 to play them. I don’t get to play with a real PS2 controller but I think that is not so important. Okay then – I hope you found something interesting from this blog post. See you again soon!

Building Your Own Steam Based PC Setup

Posted on by Viljami

This article is here to introduce to you an idea and also an alternative to something I have achieved here with my Raspberry Pi 5. I am talking about an alternative to Recalbox. This means a PC system, maybe a mini PC one, that is running also Steam. With this kind of setup it would be possible to run any game that you own through Steam. Lets begin!

What I did earlier was that I setup a Raspberry Pi 5 as a retro gaming device. I connected it to my 4K television. This system is good. Its biggest flaw in my mind is that it is not a legit device to play your retro games on. What would be a nice solution is a sort of personal computer that you have a Linux OS running in it and you could also play Steam games on it this way.

Raspberry Pi 5 is a powerful computer. However if you really want something powerful you could get yourself a mini PC that might have something like 32 GB of RAM, a proper CPU and maybe a GPU and also some disk space like for example 2 TB of SSD. As system like this can cost above 1000 or even 1500 euros. This would however be noticed as a totally legit device. It would enable you to play any PC game that you have bought through Steam.

One solution to which operating system you could use for a project like this would be Bazzite. It is a Fedora based Linux distro that can run Steam. Just search for Bazzite through your favorite search engine. I also watched a video on YouTube about this. The video was TechDweebs “This is a fun project!”. You can watch it for some more inspiration. Of course you can find it from YouTube.

If you have a Raspberry Pi 5 or some earlier one you can also try to install some other Linux distro and also play games through Steam. There are many distros available. Just remember that even Raspberry Pi 5 has limited power and doesn’t run the latest games. However it is possible to play many games that don’t have such demanding system requirements. You can also consider getting a real Steam Deck handheld console that is priced somewhere between 600 € to 840 euros. There are ways to hook up Steam Deck to your televsiion.

I wrote this blog post just to remind you of some ways that you can achieve a nice experience while playing your favorite video games. There are many alternatives to Recalbox. I think you will find the right way just for you. You might even want to buy some older game collections for your latest console or maybe you want the original retro hardware. The choice is always yours and there are lots of choices available!