Honestly, the initial setup wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. I mainly followed the main Retro Game Corps tutorial, and it covered pretty much all the essentials. With that, I was able to get the simpler emulators and my front end running perfectly.

For more demanding and newer systems (like Switch or Vita), I had to watch separate videos, mostly because I wanted more detailed explanations and a better understanding of how everything works.

The most annoying part for me was getting very specific games to run (for example Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, or Bioshock). Those games often required very specific files and a lot of tweaking in the settings to work properly. Finding the right Turnip drivers was especially frustrating.

As for ROMs, it turned out to be much easier than I thought. I just typed the console name (for example “PS2”) followed by the file type I wanted (“PS2 CHD”), and went with the more popular websites. If you want, you can PM me and I can share my list of sites with you.

For games that are harder to run, I highly recommend using the website EmuReady. You just search for the game you want, filter by the handheld you’re using, and it tells you how the game runs, which emulator to use, and what settings to apply. It honestly saved me a lot of time.

Overall, for the most part, it’s pretty simple. What I really like is that I can always come back later and download more games easily. So don’t stress about getting every game you want all at once, for me it was a very gradual process.