[PrimeHack Install Guide
Sofie Kovalcheck
PrimeHack is a fairly straight-forward emulator to set up. Place your Metroid Prime Trilogy ROM in Emulation/roms/primehack. No additional setup is required. Read the Configuration section to learn more about PrimeHack and its folder locations. Note: Controller configurations are not set up for the Metroid Prime games on the Gamecube.
These file locations apply regardless of where you chose to install EmuDeck (to your internal SSD, to your SD Card, or elsewhere). Some emulator configuration files will be located on the internal SSD as listed below.
Paths beginning with Emulation/.. correspond to your EmuDeck install location. If you installed on an SD Card, your path may be /run/media/mmcblk0p1/Emulation/roms/... If you installed on your internal SSD, your path may be /home/deck/Emulation/roms/..
Important Note: PrimeHack does not have a way of opening the menu if you are launching the game directly. It is recommended that you change any settings in the PrimeHack UI itself before launching a game.
If you do not have access to a mouse and keyboard for the below section, use L2 to right click and R2 to left click. Alternatively, remote into your Steam Deck using one of the methods found in the FAQ, How do I remotely control my Steam Deck?.
If the above steps did not work and you are getting an error message along the lines of Flatpak not installed, your Flatpak is likely installed at the system level instead. Select one of the below solutions:
Solution 2: Add sudo in front of the commands written in Step 2 and Step 5. In Step 2, write sudo flatpak remote-info --log flathub io.github.shiiion.primehack and in Step 5, write sudo flatpak update --commit=put_commit_code_here io.github.shiiion.primehack.
So what is EmuDeck? EmuDeck is a tool (more precisely, a script) that you can download/install which greatly simplifies the installation of 160 emulators and supporting utilities to your Steam Deck. It also pre-configures all the controls, aspect ratio settings, etc. so really there is very little configuration required on your part to get up and running. That said, many will prefer to have step-by-step instructions, additional tips, assistance with a few stubborn features and commentary.
You can install Windows 10/11 to a microSD with full driver support easily using this guide. It will step you through creating a Windows ISO file, Creating the Windows MicroSD image, copying/installing the drivers, tips and more.
The Steam ROM Manager is a tool that is installed by the main EmuDeck installer. Steam ROM Manager allows you to easily Generate a list of games that then becomes available in the Steam Collections tab. It is also used for downloading and managing the artwork associated with each game. Below are the steps on how to use the Steam ROM Manager to perform these actions:
There are two different types of artwork types that you will want to have assigned within Steam Rom Manager. They may be found by clicking the drop-down in the upper right and they are Banners and Posters.
After EmuDeck has been installed, you will also find that Emulation Station was also installed. Many users are familiar with Emulation Station as it is used by many popular distributions on various devices such as RetroPie, Batocera and many other builds. For that reason, it makes sense to include it on the Steam Deck. Having it provides an alternative way of accessing all your games within a single interface. Which one you prefer to use is totally up to you.
The Steam Deck is an insane device. Not just because of its ability to play tons of PC games, but it is also a desktop computer! Thanks to that, it opens up the possibilities of putting in other launchers, browsers, programs, and emulators. Emulators allow you to play games that have come out years and years ago on older consoles (NES, SNES, GBA, PS1, PS2, etc.). This is incredibly important today for preservation of some of the classics that will never be re-released or remade in their fantastic state. So with that, here is one of the easiest ways to set emulation up on your Deck.
While you could download all the emulators and Retroarch by hand, there is a simpler and much easier way! EmuDeck is a script that will automatically download every emulator and configure them specifically for the Steam Deck hardware and gamepad. The best part is, it is super easy as well.
Head over to the EmuDeck website and scroll down until you see the "Download App" button and click it. Once that is finished downloading, move EmuDeck onto your Desktop. (Yes, there is a guide to installing it right above which you can follow as well).
Then you can select "Easy Mode", which will just install and take care of everything, or "Custom Mode", which gives more specific controls over what is installed, including options like RetroAchievements. We will go with Easy Mode since this is a fresh install, though you can try out expert if you want to!
Then, it will ask where you want everything to be installed. This is completely up to you, whether you want it on the Deck's internal storage or the SD card. I put mine on the SD card personally, but it is up to you. After that is clicked, it will install the emulators, as well as EmulationStation-DE and Steam Rom Manager.
After it is done, it will bring up a window saying "Yuzu is not configured", just hit ok and ignore it. This message is talking about needing keys for the Yuzu/Switch emulator, which is not something we can provide or point in the direction to. Then, it will give you a little prompt showing where to put your games and bios, as well as giving a prompt to open Steam Rom Manager. We will circle back to it, so just hit "Exit" for now.
Now that EmuDeck has installed, everything will be mitigated into a single EmuDeck application on your Desktop. You can now access everything from there. When you double click it, it will check for an update and then bring you to this new screen.
Here is where you will go to see the changelog, update your installation, and update/access any tools EmuDeck has. Let's start with doing a custom update. Here, you will be able to "reinstall" your EmuDeck but be able to customize the installation with new settings, adding in RetroAchievements, and more.
PowerTools - A plugin that will allow you finely tweak your CPU and GPU to get better performance on some emulators.
GyroDSU - A tool used to enable gyroscope for Cemu/Wii U Emulation
EmuDeck Compressor - A tool used to compress Gamecube/Wii and PS1 games to save space
Update Emulators & Tools - This is used to update emulators and tools you are using
Quick Settings - This allows you to quickly change aspect ratios and enable bezels on emulators
Check Bios - A checker to make sure certain Bios files that are needed are present on your system in the right location
SaveBackup - A beta feature to allow you to backup your saves. Does not support device syncing yet.
SteamRomManager - The tool to add games directly to Steam. More on that below.
BIOS files are proprietary files that are needed to run games on certain emulators. These files belong to their respective owners and aren't included when downloading the emulator. SDHQ can't provide the location to these BIOS files and we encourage you to dump them from their respective consoles that you own. When you have your files, you will put them in their respective folder inside the BIOS folder and into their corresponding folder depending on the system.
A ROM file is a game that is put into files usable by either a hacked console or an emulator. Just like the BIOS, we can't provide any links or locations to these ROM files, but the process of adding them is relatively the same. Once found, you will put them in the "roms" folder and under their respective folders in there. For example, GBA = Game Boy Advance, GC = GameCube, PSX = PlayStation 1, and so on. The only exception to this is the Wii U games. In the "wiiu" folder, there will be another "roms" folder, which you will put them in there.
Now that you have all the files, now you will need to be able to play them in Game Mode! This can be done with two different tools provided by EmuDeck. EmulationStation-DE is a graphical frontend that allows you to play your games from inside a singular program. You would only have to add this program and then run it. This will launch and you can see all of your emulation games listed there for you. Steam Rom Manager, on the other hand, adds the emulated games as individual selections in your game mode library. Launching it from there will automatically launch the game. There are pros and cons to each of these methods, so it will be up to you which to use. We will cover both and they can both be found in the "tools" folder.
EmulationStation-DE is a program that serves as a frontend for emulating games. This means you will only have to open 1 program and access to every game will be in there. Personally, I prefer this method as I like to keep everything tidy and in one place.
First we just have to add the program to Steam itself to be able to play in Game Mode. For this, all you need to do is go to Steam and in the bottom left corner, click "Add a Game" and then "Add a Non-Steam Game". From there, navigate to your "tools" folder where EmuDeck installed everything and add the "EmulationStation-DE.appimage" file. Now you will have access in Game Mode, so lets hop on over there and check out the program itself.
If this is your first time using this, you can just scrape all games and make sure that all the systems you want are selected underneath (there is a select all button). After that, go to content settings. This is really important as you will be able to select what content you want showing on each game. These can add up overtime and pollute your storage space, so be careful downloading all of these, especially videos.
795a8134c1