A user on the AYN Discord has managed to port Batocera to the Odin 2, enabling support for PS3 games at near-constant 30 FPS speeds.

Batocera is one of the most used operating systems on retro handhelds, known for its ability to simplify and streamline the process of adding ROMs and playing games on various handhelds like the RG35XX SP and the excellent Retroid Pocket 5. However, Batocera simply by nature of being the OS used can slim down device resource use and allow for the most powerful of systems to get some additional performance boosts in games that would otherwise not be payable.

Batocera on Odin 2

That is the case here with the port made by Fantasygm, which was pushed as a pull request on GitHub.

The Odin 2 is one of retro handheld’s most powerful devices conceived yet. Its power, however, is often time-constrained due to it primarily running Android. Android as an OS isn’t to blame, rather the resources being used in the background cause the device to not get its full power in the various emulators being run on the console.

San Andreas PS3 running on Odin 2 at 30FPS

With Batocera, newer emulators like RPCS3 are seeing increased performance due to the Odin 2’s integration of both OpenGL and Vulkan APIs. Due to this, games like the PS3 port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas see performance enhancements that net near constant 30FPS. This is despite the fact that RPCS3 is already managing to make it possible to emulate one of the most difficult consoles.

Shortly after the initial screenshots were shared, Fantasygmm published an “Odin2 Alpha 0.1” image to GitHub. However, we don’t recommend actually trying to install this onto your Odin 2 just yet, unless you plan to provide feedback or assist in development. In the meantime, you can take this for a spin while we wait and see if it ends up being merged into the main Batocera build.

PS3 Emulation is Hard

The PS3 is nearly 20 years old now, but even today, emulating the console is still a feat that has yet to be fully managed. A few years ago, Modern Vintage Gamer covered some of the reasons why PS3 emulation is so difficult and why current consoles, even ones made by Sony like the PS5, still struggle to properly support titles from the system.

Within these same bounds, RPCS3 has seen recent strides in emulation performance that may put an end to the difficult challenges of emulating  PS3 titles. Recently, with the emulator gaining Arm64 support, the developers have consistently been working to ensure that emulation continues to improve. As of today, nearly 70% of all current PS3 titles are in a playable state through RPCS3.

Although the emulator itself can boast high compatibility numbers, part of the performance relies solely on the hardware being used. And now, with Fantasygm having ported Batocera to work on a powerful retro handheld, we may begin to see the difficulty of PS3 emulation slowly disappear.

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