ROG Ally Emulation – Xbox 360 / PS3 / Switch / Wii

Andrew McDonald | 18th August 2023 | Systems | No Comments

The thing I’ve used my Steam Deck for more than anything thus far has been emulation. Being able to play basically any game from any console, especially on a handheld system, is just the best. The ROG Ally with it’s extra horsepower and Windows installed by default should mean it’s actually a better playing experience for those games that require a little more power, or in the Xbox 360 emulator’s case, requires Windows. In this video I want to walk you through the setup process, then give a handful of games a shot.

Setup

Getting the various emulators set up is a bit more of a process than on the Deck as EmuDeck, the brilliant one click setup tool, isn’t yet publicly available for Windows. Still, all the emulators you’d expect work on Windows, and one, Xenia, the Xbox 360 emulator will only work on Windows. The majority of the setup process for all of them really just involves going to their respective GitHub pages and downloading the most recent release, extracting the files then copying your ROMs and getting going. There are a few specific steps you’ll need to do for some of them, so let me show you them.

For Yuzu, the Switch emulator, much like any other system you’ll need the encryption keys and firmware. You’ll need to copy those to the yuzu folder in AppData/Roaming/yuzu/keys, and the firmware to yuzu/nand/system/Contents/registered. Then you can copy your ROMs to a folder – mine is just in my documents – and add that folder to yuzu. You should then be able to fire up a game just fine.

For the PS3 emulator, RPCS3, after extracting the emulator files, you’ll also need to download the PlayStation system software – all of this will be linked in the description – then hit File and Install Firmware. Then you can add your games. Now PS3 games can be encrypted and you’ll need to follow the decryption guide on RPCS3’s site to decrypt them, but in short you’ll need to find the title ID of the game you want. In my case I’ve got Need For Speed Most Wanted here. You’ll need to look through the ird database for the game name, and depending on the region you’ll want to download the relevant IRD file – in my case that would be BLES01660. You can then use the ISO tools program to decrypt it, and finally copy that decrypted ISO to the games folder in RPCS3’s root directory, wherever you extracted that to.

For Xenia, while there aren’t any decryption steps you need to worry about, I’d recommend using Xenia canary, the beta version, and you’ll want to download the xenia canary patches and place that in the xenia folder. Again you’ll need some Xbox 360 ROMs, and you’ll also want to open the config file and change a couple things. Use CTRL + F to find the word “license” and change license_mask = 0 to equals 1, so any xbox arcade games will play the full game and not just trial mode. You’ll also want to find the word “mount” and make sure that “mount_cache” is set to true. It was by default for me but it’s worth checking. Lastly, you’ll also want to search for the word “patches” to check “apply_patches” is set to true. I’m also going to link to a fantastic video by The Retro Tech Dad which includes a load of extra information and config tweaks for various games you might be interested in.

Lastly, Dolphin, the Wii emulator, is possibly the easiest setup, save for one thing – the controller config. By default Dolphin will not recognise the Ally’s controller inputs. I found the best route was to add Dolphin to the Armory Crate list, select the controller template, then launch Dolphin. You can then click on each input, then press the corresponding input on the Ally, including mapping every single joystick axis separately. This is tedious, but you should only have to do it once so it isn’t too bad. Otherwise you are pretty much ready to go. I did enable borderless fullscreen in the graphics configuration, along with setting the internal resolution to 3x native for a better look, but those things are more up to your preferences anyway.

So that’s them all set up, let’s give them a try, starting with yuzu!

Switch

My favourite games growing up were all Pokemon games, so I thought I’d give Pokemon Shield a shot. I’ve already played through Sword on my Deck, so obviously the experience of playing Shield is pretty similar. As for performance, Pokemon is locked to 30 FPS so it’s exactly what you’d expect. It also plays fine on the Deck, so it’s going to be perfectly fine here too.

I also wanted to fire up some Mario Kart 8 – I’ve had a few hiccups on the Deck especially when playing multiplayer, and I’ve needed to disable SMT to get a smooth experience. I’m hoping that the more powerful Ally can push past that with ease!

Wii

While I could play Mario Kart Wii, and I probably will after this, I wanted to start with what is actually a GameCube game. That would be Simpsons Hit and Run! It runs really well as you might expect. It’s 4:3 which really shows its age, but it still plays well.

Of course Mario Kart Wii works great too. This one is a great party game. Plug the Ally into a dock and connect some controllers and you have a blast-from-the-past experience to enjoy with your friends and family. It’s fantastic.

Xbox 360

Xbox 360 titles are a little more of a mixed bag. The Retro Tech Dad video shows a number of titles working well, although from my much more limited experience it wasn’t quite as rosy. While plugged in Skate 3 will run at around 30 FPS, although the controller input latency made it functionally unplayable.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts does seem to work fine in the linked video, but for me it just won’t play ball. I’ve tried both USA and EU region ISOs, of course using the most recent patch of Xenia canary, and have the full patches list, but it isn’t anywhere near smooth, nor bug free. I can’t say this is an enjoyable experience, especially with the flickering noise everywhere.

PS3

PS3 is equally mixed. While I’m sure there are games that will play just fine, Need For Speed Most Wanted suffers pretty badly. Both games I tried take quite a while to compile and run, even if you pre-compute shaders. NFS stutters and lags a fair bit and isn’t exactly a playable experience.

Skate 3 on the other hand actually runs pretty well. It’s locked at 60FPS for me, and while it does have a few hiccups occasionally, it’s still plenty smooth enough to play!

https://rpcs3.net/quickstart

https://ps3.aldostools.org/ird.html