Last Updated on February 9, 2023 by Detective Dev
It's no secret that myself and a lot of Other people out there are huge fans of The steam deck and you know this is one Of my go-to gaming devices right now but There is one thing that's been bugging Me about it it's just way too easy to Use so I'm gonna ditch the steam deck For the LeapFrog Leapster GS in this Video we're going to be installing Retroarch on this device and if you're Not familiar with it then you probably Don't have kids or you're too old to Have received one of these as a gift From your grandma for either your Birthday or Christmas Oh Foreign Hey what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going To be getting some retro games up and Running on the Leapster GS from LeapFrog Now this was a device that was released At the end of 20 2012 beginning of 2013. My mother-in-law purchased this for my Oldest daughter and she did enjoy I mean She used it for about six months and Then we kind of forgot about it was Sitting up in a toy box but recently it Was brought to my attention that there Is firmware out there that allows us to Install retroarch on this device specs Are very minimal again this was released In 2013 does have a built-in touch Screen and basically this was a handheld
Learning machine for young children it's Got an arm 9 CPU clocked at around 400 Megahertz and I think we have 512 Megabytes of ram here it's a cartridge Based system but I think from their Website you could install a few games Over USB and uh yeah I mean not a super Powerful unit whatsoever there's a Couple games installed here and this is Kind of one of those little pet Simulator games but as you can see I Think the cat's body is missing I'm not Sure if this was intentional or not but Uh yeah I'm ready to get some retro Games up and running on this there's Even a core for PlayStation one and with The firmware we're going to be using It's actually going to overclock the CPU Up to 800 megahertz in this unit now to Install this firmware I'm going to be Using Linux I'll be using my Ubuntu Laptop but you can do this with Windows Also And I'm going to tell you right now Using the windows method may be easier For a lot of people out there I'll leave Some links in the description but one of The best resources to get this installed On your Leapster is this YouTube channel Right here Retro leap for Leapfrog leapsters he's Come up with a bunch of different Scripts that allow you to do this in Windows 10 at least I haven't tried it
In Windows 11 or 10. I just did it with Linux but if you don't have access to a Linux machine and you just want to try It with Windows definitely follow his Tutorials once you get the hang of it It's actually pretty easy to install Retro leap on these Leapster devices but The hardest part for me was finding a Micro USB cable these have basically Gone extinct in my house we've got USBC And some micro USB still left over but Mini USB was really hard to track down If you're using a Linux first thing you Want to do is head over to the Retro Leap GitHub page link for this is in the Description all the commands you need to Run in Linux to get this up and running Are listed right here on the front page From terminal first thing I wanted to do Was clone the SSH flash application that They have this is going to put it right In our home directory so now we've got a New folder called SSH flash next thing We want to do is download the Retro leap File so there's two ways to go in about This you can get the the stock retro Leap files if you want to directly from The GitHub or if you want the overclock Version which actually does perform Better and has more cores installed You're going to go with the overclocked Version retro leap OC this is going to Bring the CPU speed up to a blazing 800 Megahertz instead of around like 400
Maybe 450 not exactly sure So we're going to download this Source.zip we'll need to extract it and Place those files we just extracted Inner SSH flash folder that we Downloaded through terminal so I'm going To go ahead and extract this And this is the one that does come Pre-loaded with a better Game Boy Advance emulator and PlayStation one so Just place it right there I'm almost Ready to flash but I do need to enable USB mode on the Leapster GS so this is Kind of a USB host mode and in order to Do this we're going to plug it in and We're going to hold the hint button l r And press the power one time this is Going to put us into kind of host mode So now we're connected to the Linux PC And we can actually flash this using SSH Flash and retro leap so we're just going To run the SSH flash.sh It's going to give us a couple choices Here I want to choose number three Because I'm using the Leapster GS Couple options but uh you know with that Overclock firmware this only works with The Leapster GS so I'm just going to go With number three press enter and since I didn't run this is root it's actually Going to ask me for my Linux PC's Password I'll go ahead and put that in And it's going to start the flashing Process which can take about three
Minutes Once the flash is finished it'll Automatically reboot the system and We're now running retro Arch on the Leapster GS And in order to get your ROMs Transferred over you're going to use Something like win SCP you can just Transfer it directly over the data cable But it's going to be connected to the PC As kind of a network device now from Here we've got some cores that we can Choose from and uh given the speed of The CPU even though we're overclocked PlayStation 1 is still going to be slow But we've got NES SNES Game Boy Game Boy Advance there's Atari 800 and a bunch of Other cores if you use the overclock Firmware I haven't tested a ton of Emulators on this just yet but I did Want to show a few of my favorites Running And I've already got a few games Installed so let's go ahead and start up A Game Boy Advance game it's going to Load right into it and as you can see I Mean the Leapster GS itself has that Kind of older Game Boy Advance aesthetic So the button layout is perfect for These type of games All right here it is I did uh enable the FPS overlays so we can see that the game Is running at 60 FPS but it seems that The screen itself might only be running
At 30 Hertz and this would you know make Sense with a lower end device like this And of course you don't run out and buy One of these specifically to install Retro leap on or for retro emulation This was just something I had laid Around and it was brought to my Attention that we can actually install Retroarch on this device so I figured I'd go ahead and do it We can get right back into the Retro Arch menu I'm going to go ahead and Close this game and we'll do one more GBA Game and then we'll test out a few More emulators I completely understand that it doesn't Take a lot to run these lower end Emulators like Game Boy SNES NES and Even Game Boy Advance but it's still Pretty impressive seeing it running on This you know learning device here [Music] Next up we've got some NES one of my Favorite games Adventure Island and Performance here really isn't that bad I Mean we've got the same layout as a Game Boy Advance obviously this d-pad isn't Going to be as good but uh I might be Able to make it through this first stage [Music] [Music] Nope Altered Beast Sega Genesis and there are Volume buttons on the bottom of this
Unit that's going to be your start and Select but all these buttons have been Mapped at least with the overclock Firmware that I'm using here and even if You needed a couple extra buttons as you Can see like the Genesis had a three Button layout we've got this button Right by the hint up top it's going to Be my punch button And finally PlayStation 1 which as you Can see isn't running at full speed even With a really easy to emulate game and I Went with this because it's a very low ROM size and we don't have much storage To work with on the Leapster GS I think It's 500 megabytes So yeah it's definitely possible to Install retroarch on one of these Leapster gs's they also make a tablet Version and uh retro leap is compatible With that is it worth doing I mean if You've got one laying around that's not Being used for anything else it's a cool Little project I mean it takes a little Bit of time it's kind of fun to do Is it a steam deck killer of course it's Not I mean would I ever replace my steam Deck with the Leapster GS no way I mean I could never do that but if you've got One of these it's not being used for Anything else then yeah you can install Retro leap on it all links for Everything I mentioned in the video are In the description and if you've got any
Questions let me know down below but That's it for this one like always Thanks for watching
