The Steam Deck is a fairly powerful device to emulate some of the classics. And, the Steam ROM Manager (SRM) is one of the best solutions to add all of your emulated titles, manage them, and even view some high-quality artwork from your Deck. SRM allows you to add non-Steam games and even files that contain notes per se. It is an extremely flexible tool. But, some better options are available, like EmuDeck.com, a service that automates a lot of steps that you would have to spend your sweet time using SRM.
Steam Deck – How to Use Steam ROM Manager?
To begin with, you would need a Windows, Mac, or a Linux computer. This computer should have all the emulated titles that were previously added to Steam. Next, follow these steps:
- Follow this guide from Gaming on Linux to move all files from your PC to the Steam Deck. The Warpinator app used in this video speeds up the transfer process by a huge margin if you already have the emulated games you would want to play installed in another computer.
- However, if you do not have the games installed on this computer, you would want to download the Discovery app on your Steam Deck. From Discovery, you can download and install all of your emulators. You can also use RetroArch for some retro games.
- Now, it is time to download Steam ROM Manager (SRM). You can get the download links from the official Github post: https://github.com/SteamGridDB/steam-rom-manager/releases
Remember to download the file named “Steam-ROM-Manager-2.3.29.AppImage”. Do not download the one with an “i386” moniker at the end of it. This version is meant for x86 (32-bit) systems. The Steam Deck, being a 64-bit system, does not support it. - After downloading SRM, open up your file browser. Locate the downloaded file, click on it, and hit “Execute” on the pop-up window.
How to Add External Games to Steam Deck with Steam ROM Manager?
Steam ROM Manager is installed on your Steam Deck now. Let us see how to use SRM to add your games. Follow these steps:
- Click on “Parsers”. You can find this on the left of the screen. A new Parser is needed for each game system, i.e. NES, Gamecube, etc.
- Now, select your game system. If you are using RetroArch, select the respective core. If you haven’t downloaded the correct core, download the most popular one through RetroArch before proceeding. The most popular RetroArch cores can be found through a quick Google search.
- The system will assign a default Steam Category. You can add more categories, or completely change the default category. You can also use the Steam UI to change the categories later.
- Next, you will have to locate the executable file’s location. If you have added games through Discover, put /usr/bin/flatpak. If you have non-native executables, but the file’s exact path.
- Keep all the default arguments. If you are on a non-native emulator, add “Z:” before the “/home..” part in the command line for every game you install. You also need to add the following Command Line Arguments as per the non-native Linux emulator to the beginning of the command line:
- Yuzu: run org.yuze_emu.yuzu
- RetroArch: run org.libretro.RetroArch
- Dolphin: run DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu
- Put the path to the ROM files for a particular emulator in the ROMs Directory.
- Put /home/deck/.steam/steam in the Steam Directory.
- Put your Steam login name in the User Accounts. If you leave this empty, your emulated games’ library will be available to all Steam accounts on your Steam Deck.
- Hit save after you are done.
- Repeat steps 1 to 9 until you are done with all of your game systems. The process is a bit difficult. In case you mess it up, hit Preview, then click on Parsers. This will help you start the process over.
After you are done with the process, click on preview again. - Exit Steam to allow SRM to add all of your titles as non-Steam games. Right-click on the Steam miniature from the tray, and hit Exit Steam.
- Now, from SRM, click on Generate App List.
- Choose between the images to customize the look of your library. After you are done choosing, click Save app list. Give it some time to work, it will show a done prompt when done.
Emulated titles library on Steam Deck (image via Reddit user u/Broflake-Melter)
That is all you need to add your emulated games library on Steam Deck using SRM. The process is a bit intimidating. Services like EmuDeck.com simplify a lot of the steps you need to do manually with SRM. We highly recommend you give EmuDeck a shot.
