Retro handheld consoles anyone?

[BrotSagtMist]

I am looking in getting one of these china made random name game consoles.
This one or example https://www.amazon.com/Petforu-Powkiddy ... 0B295HJFL/
Looks like quite the powerful hardware for little money.
And i have to ask the obvious question: Has anyone managed to get Löve running on these kind of consoles?
And of course, if you have such device, whats your opinion?
They seem to be made for retro games only, that would be quite the limitation.
Ive seen other devices in this form factor that run debian, but they are like 800 bucks, kinda no go.

[ddabrahim]

I don't think it's worth it. The whole purpose of these devices is that they come pre-loaded with emulators and thousands of retro games you can play. I don't think there are lot of people interested in side loading 3rd party games, most people buy them for nostalgic reasons and specifically for retro games and the emulators.

If you want to target portables your best option is Steam Deck and those Windows/Linux/Android powered portables.
They are expensive but If you publish your game on Steam and Play Store with controller and touch support, most likely it is going to be playable on these Windows/Linux/Android powered portable devices.

[duaner]

My cell phone is plenty portable for me, and didn't cost much. It didn't come with emulators though.

[UnixRoot]

If you want something with good build quality, get an Anbernic Device. My RG351P looks and feels like original Nintendo hardware. But I don't know if it's possible to run homebrew games on it. It uses a Linix based OS with RetroArch.

[pgimeno]

A friend of mine confirms he has run Löve on his Anbernic 353V.

[BrotSagtMist]

I don't think it's worth it. The whole purpose of these devices is that they come pre-loaded with emulators and thousands of retro games you can play. I don't think there are lot of people interested in side loading 3rd party games, most people buy them for nostalgic reasons and specifically for retro games and the emulators.

If you want to target portables your best option is Steam Deck and those Windows/Linux/Android powered portables.
They are expensive but If you publish your game on Steam and Play Store with controller and touch support, most likely it is going to be playable on these Windows/Linux/Android powered portable devices.

I meant to play for me personally. Not thinking about selling stuff.
But what i would like to have is when i am in a discussion about it and say "i made a new game what do you think?" i want to be able to pull some crappy device out of my pocket and actually show it to them.

If you want something with good build quality, get an Anbernic Device.

From what i can tell by browsing several forums and customer reviews that holds true, its said to be of better build quality then the others. But i somehow want a powkiddy anyway because of the stick position.

A friend of mine confirms he has run Löve on his Anbernic 353V.

That sounds good.
It appears there is a custom OS floating around for this one.
Care to ask your friend if he could link any resources on the process? Like where are the tutorials, files and the community for it? I really fail to find anything meaningful.
I did find a guy on patreon who apparently makes the images for said OS but the files are hidden behind a 10 bucks subscription and this cant be it, thats not very open sourcey.
I mean this device apparently boots just from the SD card and there already is a custom image for it, so someone should actually make a "copy this and plug it in and you have löve in your pocket"-file for it and share it here.

[pgimeno]

A friend of mine confirms he has run Löve on his Anbernic 353V.

That sounds good.
It appears there is a custom OS floating around for this one.
Care to ask your friend if he could link any resources on the process? Like where are the tutorials, files and the community for it? I really fail to find anything meaningful.

He ran it both from Linux and from Android. On Android it's pretty much like installing any other Android app. To run it on Linux he needed using a custom OS.

Note, not all Anbernic consoles support Android. The 351P that UnixRoot mentioned doesn't.

[BrotSagtMist]

Android is cancer to avoid at all cost anyway.
I was given a few android devices for free but i fail to use them for anything because i have no freaking idea how to even install something on them.

[milon]

Android is cancer to avoid at all cost anyway.
I was given a few android devices for free but i fail to use them for anything because i have no freaking idea how to even install something on them.

Play Store, F-Droid repo, sideload an APK via ADB, etc...
It's quite easy, and you're an intelligent person. I want to say you're being sarcastic, but that's not your style. So I'm just instead

[BrotSagtMist]

But i am always sarcastic.

For real tho: I have legit no idea how to do anything with android.
Thanks for mentioning F droid, ive been looking for days for a site to get apks and no one i asked understood even the question.