Are These $40 Batocera Drives Worth Buying? - 43,000 ROMs / Plug & Play 🏴‍☠️ 

I remember spending 2 days downloading 1 rom on dialup....

With every emulation device I always find myself spending more time curating than playing the actual games. Deleting games I don't want and adding games that are missing. Editing cover art, etc... very time consuming.

PS3 is also a retro system now. It's 15 years old. Just like 1988's Genesis was already retro in 2003.

I LOVE how you actually show how to customize some settings.

Including just 1 rom per system is a positive. It means you don't have to worry about finding/ setting up a bios, configuring the emulator, etc. Basically, all you have to do is find your own rom and drop it into the roms folder.

The free storage problem is just batocera. It's boot file is technically a seperate partition but its only like 1.5gb. I had to do some tedious extending of a spacing partition to then be able to extend the boot one. Even then, just download the update files and drop them in. Much faster than the OS function

Wow. You're just so damned thorough. What an incredible video/review. Instant SUBSCRIBE.

I usually like the system padding as it gives you a known space where you can add more games. But that's pretty redundant when the drive is completely full

Bactocera is amazing I’ve turned so many old pcs into amazing gaming systems

I would be concerned about malware, trojan and viruses on these things. Did you do any security checks?

I spent a week getting all the games I wanted from SNES to PS2 and with 250gb I got all the games I wanted.

Imagine going 20-30 years back with steam deck and showing it to your friends, and when they ask "what games you have there" you just answer "every-freaking-single one of them"

hey Taki, is Batocera on deck better then just trying to run Emu-Deck? i've had a few issues with Emu-Deck but it does run no issue. i know we lose some OS features but are there any other issues we'd run into running batocera on deck? does it run better? is it better performance? is there any sort of FPS increases in say PS3?

I am sorry for the off topic, but what kind of screen are you using? Looking for some decent panel.

People love these themes... I've never set one up, but can you not create subfolders? Like on my Everdrives, I'll create folders based on the games' titles. A-D, E-H, I-L, etc. Makes it easier to find things. Is that an option in Emulation Station or whatever this is?

The handhelds you show off are so cool! I wish I was rich enough to own a PC handheld. 😅

My mate got the 512GB version (around $60) for his Steam Deck. He ignored all the rubbish and put the good stuff directly on his Deck and runs it through Emudeck.

id like to see a video on how to make a usb drive like this, im sure i could figure it oput but i have a steam deck and LOVE retro games, and having a guide to do this would make life a LOT easier

the GPD mini looks awesome but starting at around $1000 AUD is insane

I paid a little more than that for a Batocera SD Card for my Steam Deck - with a nicely curated lineup. I was happy with the purchase as I do not have the inclination to do all that work myself and do not have great home internet living in a cabin in the mountains (have 4G based internet). It was a pain in the butt to make my SD Card for my MODE modified Dreamcast, so the drive I bought was well worth it for me.

One system puzzled me when I saw it, Sufami Turbo had 13 games released in total, in your list it shows 1964 games, so I wonder what actually IS there. Did they scrape Super Famicom as Sufami Turbo perhaps or is there also a seperate Super Famicom platform section?

Ok that's cool and all. But where did you get the Gundam skin/shell/case for the steam deck?

Great video! Does this work on Retroid or Anbernic products?

Thanks to batocera and steam deck, a million more people are getting involved in emulating. And this is what I’m waiting for. I just don’t have the time to go through it all and I’m hoping that eventually there will lots of fully loaded batocera SD cards to just plug into my deck and enjoy.

Nice vid! Would it work with the XU10 hand held?

Thanks to batocera and steam deck a million more people are getting involved in emulating. And this is what I’m waiting for. I just don’t have the time to go through it all and I’m hoping that eventually there will lots of fully loaded batocera SD cards to just plug into my deck and enjoy.

OMG TAKI I LOVE YOU! that sega game you played "Double clutch" i been looking for the name of that game for AGEs i played it when i was a kid but never knew its name.... and now ill have it, thank you

When you get more excited; over that 1 ROM or a few, than over the thousands you've either seen or heard of before This is why Storage Space is my #1 concern on a Device - to have the room for all the ROMs you care to load up, then curating them; pruning the ones you don't want, leaving the onesyou do want, making x amount of assorted folders, getting everything labeled & organized... It's a labor of love, but it feels awesome knowing you have your hoard of ROMs, all nice & neatly arranged, everything where you can find it, then play it I've been spending more time just picking a game I remember, going into the Title Screen - then letting the Music play... pure nostalgic bliss. I can still hear Batman NES, or Battletoads, etc

Reminds me of the Minds blown, when we had 10-20Game Cartridges for the GameBoy back then 😆

Instead of deleting games, could you copy everything into a bigger sdcard and then upgrade to have more space?

What's the last mini laptop style computer you were demoing? That thing looks amazing.

And ive had the same rom collection since i was 8, growing the list as i got older. Now i mostly download roms of found unreleased titles.

Maybe a dumb question, but could you just move the files from a product like this onto a new (bigger) drive? Would you still be able to boot the same? If that were the case you could update as needed and add new or missing roms to the library

hey @TakiUdon , could you tell me why Batocera will not work on my nVidia Shield?

What would be the best collection to buy then please? This one seems to have lackluster selection of Ps1 etc. Thanks!

If you're gonna pirate, at least don't pay people for it...

Who wouldn't mind stuffing a USB stick, from who knows where, into their own computer?

My biggest fear for something like this would be embedded malware like all the android tv boxes have. Did you do any testing to ensure that wasn't present here?

cannot wait for my gpd mini :D

great breakdown! upgrading from batocera 35 to 37 is a royal pain in the butt.

many nregative reviews on that amazon listing. Also the listing was taken down

I would be interested in a convenience product like this full of roms…. If they were later-gen roms. I have a library of nes, snes, gb, gbc, gba, roms… I’m having trouble downloading larger roms for ps2, Xbox, n64, Wii, and stuff like that. Also I’m having trouble figuring out how to do multi disc games. Is there a product with that sort of thing sorted out for a novice like me?

regarding the storage issue, cant you just clone the USB to a 256GB usb drive and boot from it and do the update like that ?

you can change the color palete by pressing L and R shoulder buttons while in the game :)

I love my RetroFE build!!!! I slopped mine onto a 2TB external seagate drive bruh

Are there good ROM sets and bad ROM sets? How’s the input lag? My experience with microSD game systems is that the card gets SUPER HOT and I had one fail after a month of playing it because it overheated the card.

Do you think it would be worth getting and adding your own stuff? Or is it better to just set up your own drive?

Hey could you share which portable monitor were you using on the beginning of the video? If there's a review video you can also add here. Thanks

Would love to hear your opinion on Coin-Ops

Where'd you get that switch keychain? It's so cute! I need one lol

Wonder if you can clone it to a bigger usb drive?

Ah, the modern rendition of 99999 in 1 cartridges.

What version of Batocera is best to use after a dual-core AMD processor and an old ATI AMD graphics card?

Do you happen to have a video on how to make a USB like this?

Does it have to run through BIOS or can you use Windows?

Could you copy the image to a larger drive to expand sets without bothering the settings?

I wouldn't mind one of these all pre-set up with just Arcade games like some of the Pi builds you can find.

Can you extract the ROMS to use them with other emulators?

Can you copy the sd card to another one? Or to a computer and jus run it all off a folder on a HDD??

May i ask what the device in the left corner is at the start of the video?

Can you copy the 128gb usb key to a bigger one, so to have more space available?

I have no PC knowledge but would love to get a light gun set up SINDEN or GUN4IR but it don't understand most videos on the subject many people say you can set up a mini PC to do this but I don't understand what I would need to buy and what to do with it if I did try to, do you have any helpful videos or info for a rank novice?

Ok so I'm gonna get straight to the point in currently using batocera V38 and loving it but for some reason windows games at least those that work I can't seem to get a fps counter going and also temps ,when I turn on DXVK hud and DXvk feature on I get a black screen , using a HP office PC as batocera console Specs Cpu-I5 -4570 GPU - Intel HD 4600 graphics (onboard graphics) Ram-8gb DDR3 1600mhz Storage - 500gb HDD Plz any advice would help

Do you have a link to the Steamdeck skin in the video?

Hi great video i just purchased this usb drive from aliexpress and i wanna run i t on a steam deck but i've notice that you didn't connected straight to SD so do i need a dock to let it play cuz on the website they give usb c to usb adapter and i just wish it would be possible just to connect it straight into the deck

What's wrong with the drive? You couldn't download the ps3 catalog but there was only one game? The USB says 126gb? Is that true or like how many of the card does It actually take?

I get the reason these exist (some people just don't want to deal with finding their own ROMs and putting them on a front end). But I do think it's worth it for most people to just find some tutorial videos and put together their own ROM sets and even a front end if they want... most of the thousands of games on these micro SD cards people sell are games 99% of people will never play... better off learning how to do it yourself.

On the powerful handheld could you run xbox gta san andreas, or burnout 3 ?

Cool, I ended up spending days working on downloads Etc realizing that I couldn't use them in the format I downloaded them in

Aside from the fact that I wouldn't trust some random flash drive from countries where copyright is more of a suggestion than a law without wiping it first (thus rendering it pointless) this is just not something I would need. But I guess there is a place for something like that, it is crazy how much technology there is in the world and there are certainly places where connectivity and tech literacy is low enough for this to be a good option. That aside, I do like the fact that you acknowledge the existence of these things, many people talking about retrogaming like to pretend stuff like this doesn't exist and everyone is just playing their legal roms. And while people do probably have to say that for legal reasons, this is still something that should be shown and discussed.

I'd like to see something like this on an SD card that is fully scraped and filled with artwork, and made to perfectly support the steam deck, so UI scaling really nicely, and settings completely optimized to run as maximum as possible on the Steam Deck. Also would like to see a 512GB card and more PS2 era games available.

What charger are you using on the steam deck ?

Is there a better version of this product? (By "better" I mean with a better game library, etc.) Also, when buying something like this, wouldn't malware, etc. be a concern?

Question: Would it be possible to transfer the data on that drive to a spare 512gb thumb drive in order to have more space for larger games?

Taki, what monitor is that

So many great games, I hate feeling like I’ve ripped someone off but if I cant buy it I’m getting it one way or the other..

Taki how I back up or clone micro sd cart I just purchased?

I don't want to play 43,000 games. That's why I've taken the time to curate the games for each system that I'll actually play. No need to scroll through thousands of crappy games, terrible room hacks and duplicates

can we just move the roms from the drive and just run this through retro-arch on a modded switch lite?

At $40 how much space is on the drive?

Did you uh...did you security check that thing before sticking it in a computer?

Is there a way to have this type of UI software and do it yourself. What would the program be called?

One thing to note is that the Batocera team will NOT support pre-made distributed images/drives as resale of these is not allowed in their policy.

Can confirm this works on an older Chromebook as well. Acer Spin 11 inch. No lagging or hiccups.

That Gundam Skin is awesome

Wow, I'm into retro handhelds and didn't even know these existed.

1 game for gamecube is a crime

Everyone... Please make sure you remove or disable your internal drive before booting these flash drives on your computer. A malicious virus or program can access your misconfigured internal drive and maybe steal your files and photos. Same thing if you have other USB devices or backup drives plugged in during your gameplay. Even if you don't connect to the internet, a virus can compromise your internal drive and when you go back to your windows, boom!

Can you make a tutorial on how to make our own usb retro emulation drives? I have a 1TB usb drive! Thanks!

The benefit is they've loaded every bios on these, all a new usee do is have to load the roms they want in and it's playable without work arounds. The best thing to do is delete thw bloat on the system and load on what you want.

You shouodnd3finitly review some other ones that might be better quality without all the system padding and such. I'd love to see some others on possibly bigger drives that might actually have room for a good ps3 library and such

5:26 I cannot find this colorization option as you go through the menu so fast...

dude when we will se am indepth review of the ayaneo kun?

Would this work with an nvidia shield pro android box?

Would this likely also work on a Raspberry Pi 4?

11:15 does anybody happen to know what top-down racing game this is?

I wonder if this will work with my arcade1up countercade...

I'm kinda impressed by how polished this looks. I half expected it to be a straight up scam.

what is the monitor you are using?

What screen is that? Its beautiful