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.
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Goddamn AI slop.
You don’t remember buying an Xbox 260 in 2805?
Back in my day, AIs would play chess and murder people and pretend to be human and maybe get that wish granted.
Oh how times change.
Unfortunately, you mentioned using ChatGPT on Lemmy, so you must suffer the consequence of a negative score on your post and comments.
I don’t dislike it because an image-generative model was used; I dislike it because it’s gibberish. It is full of nonsense and misspellings, and most importantly, it doesn’t say or show what a Super Pretendo 5 actually is.
I’m getting that vibe lol. My bad.
You ever thought about loading it w Linux? Batocera or Bazzite could be of interest
Yeah, why only “lobotomize Windows”? Get rid of that trash completely and never look back.
Windows sucks…but the M93p is old and Windows has bespoke drivers for it to coax the most out of the iGPU. The m93p really is tiny (1L case) and presents no real possibility for plugging in a GPU.
I’ve also had really shitty luck getting stuff to run under Proton.
Don’t worry. It’s the only thing in the house running windows. We’re all about the penguin here (Raspbian, Zorin, PopOS and a few others)
Besides which, there’s a peverse pleasure in torturing Windows into doing what you want :)
I’ve also had really shitty luck getting stuff to run under Proton.
When is the last time you tried, because this seems kind of unlikely if it’s been any time in the last year.
Heck my miyoo mini plus is just a linux handheld. So much fun from PS1 down.
Ayyyyy I have the MM+ too. Great handheld, I just wish it had some kind of syncing capability
It kinda sorta does? With onion https://onionui.github.io/docs/apps/syncthing will do it. Although for me I just pull down the sd card once in a while and save the whole thing when I remember to do it.
Nice! Glad more people are using it. For me, its my pokemon pinball machine. My ooooold gameboy has it but I cant see it anymore, no backlight :(
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.
Proton is amazing these days.
I don’t know what you mean by “front end.” It replaces Windows entirely.
Or do you mean the desktop environment? I use KDE but I think you can use Gnome if you want.
The OS itself is based on an immutable/atomic version of Fedora and then optimized for gaming.
There are other launchers for non-Steam games, or you can just add the game to Steam as a non-Steam game and launch it from there with Proton.
It’s like shockingly easy to do.
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.
I’m toying around with the idea of 3D printing a case for this, in classic console style. If i can just figure out how I can incorporate some IR LEDs into the front (so that the Wiimotes work without wii light bar) and the Xbox 360 USB dongle, I’m I’m business. As with all retro projects, one thing inevitably leads to the next…
First: that whole “oh no mario kart is 80 bucks” ragebait stuff is cringe. You don’t want to pay that much for videogames? That’s cool, but stop polluting everything with negativity.
Second: take that AI slop somewhere else. I’d have more respect for this post if you did this by yourself. You mention not having the skills? How about investing a bit in yourself, get some skills and do it yourself. Even if done badly - that would have been better than this AI cringe.
The hours of tinkering, troubleshooting, and configuring were mine - not AI. The “Super Pretendo 5” exists because I built it, not because of a mockup Sega attack ad from 1993.
If the fun wrapper offends you, that’s your hang-up, not mine. If your big move is policing how I shared my joy, congrats - you win the 'hall monitor of fake internet points" retroachivement.
Okay man if putting it like that helps you sleep at night, then be my guest.
“Gouch Ready”
I noticed that too 🤣 ChatGPT is an idiot sometimes.
I mean, we all know the Xbox260 only came out in Japan.
A+ for style. C- for content
Made the following along the lines of the old SEGA ads back in the day, then ran it thru ChatGPT for formatting help.
Hope this ok to share; just fun / not trying to AI spam / posting here for enjoyment.
Super Pretendo 5 — Retro Reinvented
Front of Box
Logo: Super Pretendo 5™ Tagline: Don’t spend $80 to play Mario Kart. Do more with less.
Hero art: Rico parachuting in JC2 + Mario Kart Wii chaos.
Badges:
- Xbox 360, PS4 and Wiimote Ready
- Playnite Console UI
- Optimized for Wii / GC / PS2 4.PC Prestige Collection
Back of Box
Headline: Your old games. New life. One tiny box.
Features:
🎮 Console Feel – Couch-ready, controller-first, TV-native.
🧠 Smart Power – i7-4785T + Intel HD 4600 wrung dry for HD.
📦 Backlog Optimized & Upscaled – Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart, Shadow of the Colossus, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2 … and many more
✨ Switch Modes:
-
Crunchy Mode → Wii-like smoothness @ 60 FPS.
-
Cinematic Mode → 1366p sharper fidelity.
🔧 Thrift Engineered – A$200 (~US$130) total build cost → complete console-like system.
≈ 3× cheaper than PS5 / Xbox Series X (~A$800).
The Prestige Collection™
PC Ports Tested & Couch Ready on the Super Pretendo 5
60 FPS Locked
-
Portal 2
-
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
-
Dead Rising 2
-
Assassin’s Creed II
-
Superhot
-
Firewatch
-
Half-Life 2
-
Mass Effect 2
30+ FPS
-
Metal Gear Solid V
-
Grand Theft Auto IV
-
Bayonetta
-
Fallout 4
-
Witcher 2
-
Bioshock Infinite
-
Dishonored
-
Prey
… and many more
Special Note
Just Cause 2 → Crunchy Mode: Locked 60 FPS @ 960×540 (VSync on — 84 FPS with VSync off). Cinematic Mode: ~45 FPS @ 1366×768.
Screenshots Panel
Mario Kart Wii — native vs. 2× IR
Just Cause 2 — 60 FPS wingsuit chaos
Fallout 3 — Remastered & Upscaled, 60 FPS
Fine Print
Super Pretendo 5™ is a DIY build. Capable of playing thousands of retro titles + select modern/indie games from the 2015–2025 era, including Superhot, Firewatch, Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Cult of the Lamb, and more.
Thousands of 6th gen console classics at 2× upscale. Prestige ports tested for couch play.
Comparison Chart
System Cost (AUD)
- Super Pretendo 5 ~A$200
- Xbox 360 (2005) ~A$700
- Nintendo Switch ~A$470
- PS5 / Series X ~A$800
Footer Slogan
“Don’t spend $80 to play Mario Kart again. Do more with less.”
You’re not trying to AI spam; you succeeded Ike a pro.
And I hate it.
Come on, man, this could have been an easy job in GIMP or PhotoShop and it would have looked better too.
Sorry my dude. I don’t have that skillset. Would be handy. Will work on it.
That skill set can also go on a resume and get you paid well. You’ve got this and I genuinely believe in you.
Heh…it’s a little late for a career change…
But I’ll add it to the list :)
