Emulation has come so far. To the point where you can actually play online multiplayer on PC and Steam Deck with Nintendo Switch games, thanks to the LDN version of Ryujinx. A number of benefits come with this, including: no need to cough up $20/year for a Nintendo Switch Online membership higher resolutions than 720p/1080p higher framerates the ability to use controllers outside of joycons, pro controllers, etc. So let’s walk through the process of getting this set up.

UPDATE (12/27/2022): updated Steam Deck guide is available! UPDATE (12/5/2022): video guide is up if you need it! Sonic Frontiers may have an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, but there are quite a few things we can do to make the gameplay experience even better. Such as: disable letterboxing during cutscenes unlocking framerate during cutscenes 4K video playback skipping intro video decreasing graphics quality for getting smoother gameplay on NVIDIA (or other low-end hardware including the Steam Deck) making speed upgrades faster reducing hitstop for more fluent gameplay improved physics for Cyber Space levels removing the cutscene when unlocking a portion of the map increased difficulty changing how Sonic looks and plenty of other enhancements With all these mods you could practically get a fresh new session in after beating the game.

Worried about the “Unsupported” mark on the Steam store page for Sonic Frontiers? Bah, that’s garbage. It runs out of the box with Proton 7.0-4 and GE-Proton. Though it’s a somewhat barebones PC port, we have a few options at our disposal for the best optimized settings. I’ve got some gameplay footage running anywhere between 40-60 FPS, but there are spoilers there, so watch out for that. After putting several hours into the game today on Deck, I’ve come across a few tweaks that I think you might like.

If you haven’t noticed, NVIDIA has a tendency of locking quite a few of their features behind a paywall. For instance, if you want to make use of DLSS, you have to have a RTX GPU. If you want to use their cloud streaming service, the host must be using a NVIDIA GPU and have the GeForce Experience app installed…which is only available on Windows. However, no one has to get frustrated at this.

There are quite a few ways in which you can free up storage on your Deck. Besides cleaning up shaders, you can also convert the default ext4 file system the Deck uses into btrfs. A few benefits that come from converting to btrfs include: disk space saved (a little over 50 GB in my case) with the compression method that it uses cross-compatibility with Windows, should you use that OS (ex.

You might have heard about NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). While it may be advantagous for achieving higher framerates at lower resolutions, while still retaining most of the same graphics quality, the downside is that the technology is essentially locked behind a paywall: you need to have a RTX GPU in order to use it. But you don’t need to pay an arm and a leg for said GPU. Fortunately for us, we can make use of an alternate technology that offers much of the same capabilities: FSR 2.

So, you found a bunch of startup videos for your Deck that you like. Maybe you found them over on Steam Deck Repo. But perhaps you’re a bit disappointed that you can only use one startup video at a time. Well, the good news is you can randomize the startup video each time you turn the Deck on. This way, you always have something fresh to watch. And it’s relatively simple.

EDIT (2/12/2023): this is for the UNOFFICIAL remaster. Not the official. If you’re like me, you were probably left with a bad taste in your mouth after this year’s Nintendo Direct. No Metroid announcements whatsoever. There were rumors of an official remaster of Metroid Prime coming this year. It would have made sense considering this year marks the 20th anniversary of the beloved title. But, of course, our expectations got crushed.

UPDATE (10/7/2022): this tutorial is no longer relevant, Valve has made it easier to replace the bootloader video with this week’s update to the Steam Deck client. The beauty of the Steam Deck is how insanely customizable it is. We can go so far as replacing the Steam intro video when turning the device on, or when switching to Game Mode. So if you wanted something like this: Your browser does not support the video tag.

When downloading games on the Steam Deck, more space on the hard drive gets occupied than just the game itself. Shaders will either be downloaded along with the game, or they will get added as you play the game. While these shaders can be useful for reducing in-game stutter, these shaders will pile up over time. Games that you no longer play will still have their shaders intact, thus taking up space that could be used for something more important.