It's been a long time coming, but popular all-in-one emulator frontend RetroArch has made its debut on Steam. While RetroArch has already been available on PC for years, this brings the program to a new audience of Steam users, which may be of interest to those getting their Steam Deck systems later this year. This version of RetroArch is almost exactly the same as the one available on Libretro's website, with one caveat: it lacks the option to download new cores. Fortunately, there are a handful of cores available as free "DLC", including mGBA, Genesis Plus GX, PCSX ReARMed, and more, with the full list shown below.

• Mupen64 Plus Next
• Kronos
• PCSX ReARMed
• Stella
• SameBoy
• mGBA
• Mesen
• Mesen S
• Genesis Plus GX
• Final Burn Neo

If you're not satisfied with that, then you'll be able to grab any desired emulator cores from a regular install of RetroArch and manually drag them into the Steam version's folder. As this is a Steam "game", it also officially supports Steam's Remote Play and Cloud Save functions.

Source
Steam RetroArch Store Page

 

[phalk]

Uh, I don't think you should call RetroArch just an emulator frontend. It's much more than that.

 

[gnmmarechal]

Uh, I don't think you should call RetroArch just an emulator frontend. It's much more than that.

I mean...

 

[K3Nv2]

Feels sort of surreal that it's on Steam..

Not really if we're being honest, SteamDeck is around the corner and I'm sure devs would rather people just download it from the Steam store for those who don't really have the know how to boot into windows and this way they can brag it's an overlord way of playing SMB3 via portability.

 

[shadow1w2]

Glad we can still add cores manually for use in remote play.
I really hope we see some classic games get straight up rom drops as DLC or compatible with Retroarch.
Kinda like how DOSbox is used with old DOS games but I wouldn't mind installing Retroarch for it.

 

[LightBeam]

I don't really see the point if you already have it on Windows but that's still cool

 

[mive]

this is really sad

 

[lordelan]

If you're not satisfied with that, then you'll be able to grab any desired emulator cores from a regular install of RetroArch and manually drag them into the Steam version's folder. As this is a Steam "game", it also officially supports Steam's Remote Play and Cloud Save functions.

This is the decisive paragraph here for me and the reason I was really looking forward for the public release.
While it has the benefits of Cloud Save and Remote Play which can be used with non-steam games too but always works a little better with dedicated Steam releases, the only downside is, that a few legal and licencing issues are pretending them from putting all the cores in there which luckily enough can be worked around by manually placing them in the folder.
That's a little step I'll gladly take to have this in Steam since I'm one of those ppl who prefer to have as many things as possible directly in Steam, especially when it comes to the Steam Deck which is my biggest hype train destination currently.

STEAM CLOUD SAVE IS BIG. How does it work? Does it upload every game save to steam?

Pretty much, yes. All game saves and save states are saved in their respective folders and they are all effected by Steam Cloud Save so everytime something's happening inside those folders, it will be synced to Steam which is pretty neat.

 

[elk1007]

This is pretty cool.
Any idea if it faces legal issues?

 

[ZeroFX]

nice job libretro.

Steam equals windows?

Steam = SteamOS which is a platform... and will solidify even more as a platform with steam deck, and also there's retroarch for windows fyi.

So nothing wrong with the statement per se...

 

[Flame]

nice job libretro.


Steam = SteamOS which is a platform... and will solidify even more as a platform with steam deck, and also there's retroarch for windows fyi.

So nothing wrong with the statement per se...

you have a point. i was thinking of steam on windows only. getting old.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I have snapshot version for a while now. I'm not a huge retroarch user so I did not gave it enough time, but the use I saw there was to upload roms and savegames to the cloud, so I could use those files on any PC I have. I did not managed to make it work.

 

[eriol33]

this can be a win win solution for publishers and customers actually, imagine if they integrate old games as ROM+retroarch emulator. no more need to tune settings individually and everyone can play old games legally. Except nintendo I guess.

 

[Pacheko17]

In my opinion Steam is like another platform. You have been able to download it on Windows, but not really officially. Now that it’s on Steam, it’s now official.

What the...

 

[TonyMax]

Will be interesting to see how retroarch / steam progresses.

 

[ganons]

I don't really see the point if you already have it on Windows but that's still cool

As elan said below, seems convenient for playing on different devices.

Pretty much, yes. All game saves and save states are saved in their respective folders and they are all effected by Steam Cloud Save so everytime something's happening inside those folders, it will be synced to Steam which is pretty neat.

 

[Bagel Le Stinky]

Lol I noticed this yesterday which is weird because I didn't see this and I don't go on steam very often

 

[AbT19]

Not really if we're being honest, SteamDeck is around the corner and I'm sure devs would rather people just download it from the Steam store for those who don't really have the know how to boot into windows and this way they can brag it's an overlord way of playing SMB3 via portability.

Isn't that asking for problems? Particularly that we don't know how Proton will work with RetroArch and its accompanying cores (assuming that the average gamer on Deck is using SteamOS 3.0).

 

[K3Nv2]

Isn't that asking for problems? Particularly that we don't know how Proton will work with RetroArch and its accompanying cores (assuming that the average gamer on Deck is using SteamOS 3.0).

Should be fine if their is a problem the devs will look into it people are freaking about the entire Proton thing too much I highly doubt Steam wants to see this product fail because you can't run smb3.

 

[mive]

Isn't that asking for problems? Particularly that we don't know how Proton will work with RetroArch and its accompanying cores (assuming that the average gamer on Deck is using SteamOS 3.0).

you dont need anything proton related, as native linux binaries exist (mac probably too, but not sure about that)

 

[MORSHU8KRTXON]

It will be easy to download RetroArch on the Steam Deck