Turns out that for a few use cases, the Steam Deck might actually be the best handheld out there to play Nintendo games. A Steam Deck owner on Twitter has shown how the Deck controls are ideally suited to support the Metroid Prime Trilogy.
As they pointed out this is the advantage of running such games on the Deck (direct quote):
- Gyro controls when removing your finger from the analog stick
- Trackpads for visor and beam menus
- Saving and loading states with L4 (normal/long press)
- 2x Resolution, super crisp image
- Around 4 hours battery life
You can see in the first part of the video specific folders for different emulated systems – I am assuming that this user is using either Steam ROM Manager or the set of tools called as RetroDeck to create such entried in the SteamOS interface.

If you are interested in emulation, you should check such tools out. We did a video about Steam ROM Manager well before the Deck was released – most of the information on how to use it has not changed, so this might be helpful:
As usual, we don’t condone piracy, but emulation of roms that you own (ripped from their original medium) is considered legal in most countries.
You might want to check out the following articles too!
BoilingSteam lets you access our content for free, but writing articles is a constant investment. We don't use ads or sponsporship, help us make our activities sustainable by donating via Patreon or LiberaPay if you prefer it anonymous. You can follow what we do via our newsletter, our RSS feed, our Mastodon profile or our Twitter feed. We also have Peertube, Youtube and LBRY channels. If you'd like to chat, you can also find us on #boilingsteam:matrix.org. (what is Matrix?)
I’d love to see a tutorial on how to set up correct controls for the Flatpak version of Primehack on Steam Deck. I haven’t had any luck so far.
I haven’t been able to get the controlls working in Primehack either. Even though I’m using EmuDeck there seems to be some configuration missing.
same here, i have searched alot of places how to config this thing its driving me mad