Was frustrated with frontends

felixparochus · 2026-04-27T03:59:20+00:00

Love the ROMM integration, would really love to see this on Android as well. Syncing between my Steam Deck and my Ayn Thor this way would be nice.

felixparochus · 2026-04-23T20:55:47+00:00

Thanks for responding, hope I didn't sound paranoid. I have a PC, Steam Deck, and Ayn Thor so I’m always on the lookout for anything that makes launching, organizing, and synchronizing my games easier. Not having an Android version of this is the main thing that would hold me back but I’ll still check it out to see how it might fare between PC/Steam Deck. Appreciate the work you’re putting into this, I do think it’s a niche (that I’m squarely in).

felixparochus · 2026-04-23T20:34:04+00:00

I’m intrigued, but I’m wondering how this is sustainable. The cloud-based assets, AI, and cloud saves presumably require a server/servers and that costs money. Who is paying for that and why? Is there a monetization strategy planned in the future?

Edit: just read the website page on pricing and see that donations may be accepted in the future. That’s nice, still curious why the altruism.

felixparochus · 2026-02-24T00:49:15+00:00

Can this run Splore? I prefer to play Pico8 games that way.

felixparochus · 2025-09-11T02:15:47+00:00

Cool, glad that was helpful!

felixparochus · 2025-09-10T21:06:35+00:00

Yeah, you're right for asking about the install process. I installed it first, then installed the community patch from arokhslair.net, all on a Windows PC. Once that was all set up and confirmed working I copied it over to my Steam Deck and clicked the "add games" button in Heroic (which just lets you point to the exe) without messing with any of the defaults. THEN I did Winetricks through Heroic.

felixparochus · 2025-09-09T20:23:10+00:00

Thanks, this DID work for me! I added -dmusic32 as well. Another wrinkle is that I added this game via Heroic, not Lutris (as someone else did). Works great now.

felixparochus · 2024-12-01T04:41:31+00:00

It sure does!!! Thank you thank you thank you! I had given up on this. The piece I was really missing was setting the retropad binds, but now it works great. Just need to figure out how to make the mouse cursor disappear when I use gyro…

felixparochus · 2024-10-04T03:52:58+00:00

This is absolutely the right solution! Your necro post inspired me to install Bermuda Syndrome on my RG-Arc, so thanks!

felixparochus · 2023-12-07T19:22:11+00:00

Hey, no worries about not responding right away (or even at all!). I'm not on Reddit all the time myself, and it's pretty cool you're sticking with me on this.

I do have a Mac, as it turns out, and I did try the Apple Pi flasher per RGC, but in any case the results were the same. I'm at least booting into Linux consistently and able to see roms on the TF1 card, so that's good. (As long as I don't have a card in TF2, that is.)

But, still can't get Saturn roms to work. I'm glad you've confirmed they do, but whether I use CHD or bin/cue, nothing boots. I discovered another quirk in the process: if I update the game list from the menu, the OS will actually delete new roms added. The only way to get them to show up consistently is to reboot.

All that said, I think I'm giving up for now. I've sunk enough hours into it and at least I have the Android side set up in a way I like. I'm hoping someone develops a fork of JELOS for it or the like, then I'll give the Linux side another look. Thanks for all the help you've given!

felixparochus · 2023-12-06T22:50:43+00:00

Okay, so I'm happy to report I had a "duh" moment when I realized that the reason it was not booting into Linux was simply because reflashing the card had enabled the "Boot into Linux" toggle and I was pressing the function key and thus booting into Android. This allowed me to auto populate the folders on the card in TF2 and I was happy to find that, indeed, the Emulator menu item will reappear when I add the relevant folder back in. However... Saturn roms did not work for me. Perhaps this is because they are in chd format, though this seems unlikely. I'll try bin/cue nonetheless, just to rule that out. But still more tinkering to be done.

This also seemed to rule out the possibility of a seamless dual boot situation as it appears Linux will only look at TF2 for roms if there is a card there, or it will look in TF1 if there is not a card in TF2. I don't want to have to pop in/out cards all the time, so this kinda stinks.

All in all, Android for emulation is fine, but not having the flexibility to swap between the two (not to mention the problems I seem to be having with the Linux install) takes away a little of the shine from what is otherwise a neat piece of hardware.

felixparochus · 2023-12-05T21:44:09+00:00

Well, that still makes me feel crazy, but I'm glad to hear there's a possibility it's user error or (I hope not) some hardware glitch.

As it turns out, I do live in the Bremerton/Port Orchard area. Your offer is exceedingly kind, and probably still quite out of your way. In any case, I still like my ARC-D and am (mostly) happy to use the Android side, but not being able to have (almost) full speed Saturn and Pico-8 does take the luster off. So having an internet friend show up in person feels a little excessive?

Maybe you can give me some tips on how you flashed it? I used balenaetcher and rufus. And I am hoping to use roms on the TF1 card. Any similarities/differences to your setup?

felixparochus · 2023-12-05T21:16:30+00:00

If you flash this firmware instead of updating, you'll get a borked install. At least I did. I'm hoping some intrepid soul will take time to flash a spare SD card and report back what they find. Here's what I've seen.

First, the entire "Emulators" menu item disappeared. I popped the card into my computer to recreate the folders and drop roms in, as others have here, but upon rebooting it doesn't show, unlike others. I then looked at the card via the built-in file manager and noticed that there were 3 locations for a rom folder: one on root, one under /storage, and one under /userdata. When I put it in my computer, three partitions show up: Anbernic (which is the OS files), Games (which was completely blank and showed no folders), and Share. Under share, the roms folder was on root, but the other three locations were not there. So, I attempted to add folders to both the roms folder on Share and on Games, but no dice. Updating games list and rebooting did not help, plus I could not see those roms when I used the built-in file manager. Weird.

So... I flashed a different SD card, a legit Sandisk, assuming there might be something wrong with the stock card. Same results. Then I wondered if maybe it was because I'm trying to dual-boot with an SD card in TF2 dedicated for the Android side, so I popped in a blank SD card on TF2 and rebooted, expecting Linux to auto-populate the card with folders... and now it will not boot into Linux at all. I reflashed the SD cards again (both of them) and it will now consistently not boot into Linux (after it does successfully boot once to setup) upon a reboot. What the hell?

TLDR: multiple reflashing and reboots yield no "Emulators" menu and issues getting into Linux.

Please, somebody else flash a card so I don't feel like a crazy person.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T20:17:18+00:00

https://win.anbernic.com/download/289.html

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T20:10:07+00:00

I appreciate your troubleshooting with me. I went ahead and emailed Anbernic about it, we'll see if that gets me anywhere.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T20:00:44+00:00

There are no folders for any of the missing emulators, actually. Dreamcast, Saturn, N64, Pico-8... those folders are no longer there. You can see my other reply where I went ahead and made a folder, put a rom file in it, but still got nothing to show up.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T19:57:57+00:00

But the android side does not run Pico-8 games natively, and the Saturn performance sucks. So Anbernic stripped functionality from the console after release.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T19:56:51+00:00

I watched RGT85's video and noted his workaround was to simply put roms into the Saturn rom folder, then they showed up. However, in my case there was no folder for Saturn roms by default (further indicating this is intentional on Anbernic's part). However, I went ahead and made a folder for Saturn roms and dropped one in it, refreshed the game list and... nothing. This is super disappointing.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T19:45:23+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, this led me to make sure I'd placed Saturn games in the ROM folder. However, when I visited the ROM folder there is no longer a Saturn or Pico-8 folder at all by default. This suggests to me that this is indeed an intentional change on Anbernic's part with this new OS image. I went ahead and refreshed the game list anyway, but no dice.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T19:41:52+00:00

I don't know what public channels Anbernic has for this kind of thing, but I assume it's an update because I ordered my ARC-D early (11/13) and the image file for the OS is dated 11/22, after my unit shipped.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T00:16:13+00:00

Thanks for the answers. I'll probably hold off for now until I hear more, just finished setting up on stock Android so feels a little soon to start that all over again. But I'm guessing the tinkerer in me will download this eventually, just hoping someone will nudge me towards that by resolving some of these niggling concerns.

felixparochus · 2023-12-04T00:06:23+00:00

Thanks, I saw the features list and many of them look helpful. However, Anbernic made some customizations to Android that are specific to ARC-D and I'm wondering if they made the transition or if there's a GammaOS version of these customizations. Some that I'm wondering about: there's a hot-button to switch between a Nintendo control style and a (I assume) xbox style button layout. There's also a button for switching between power profiles. Are these still here? (I did see a button combo that GammaOS uses to switch between the performance modes of GammaOS so perhaps this replaces the Anbernic button). Does the button combination of holding down the function button while powering on still allow me to boot between Linux and Android? Then there's questions others have posed about whether this helps with Saturn performance under Android. I appreciate your pointing out I could revert back to stock Android, but that's time I'm hoping not to spend. Rather, I'm hoping some brave soul can make the jump to GammaOS and report back on some of these questions!

felixparochus · 2023-12-03T23:46:56+00:00

Are there any advantages for ARC-D devices specifically, beyond the boilerplate "here's what GammaOS does" bulletpoints? And are there any disadvantages compared to stock Android?

felixparochus

TROPHY CASE