This $50 peripheral lets you plug and play GameBoy cartridges on your Steam Deck

pcgamer.com:

Epilogue, manufacturer of the GameBoy emulation tool GB Operator, has revealed that the peripheral now works on the Steam Deck(opens in new tab). With the Operator, you can effectively play your GameBoy (original through Advance) cartridges directly on your Deck via the dongle.

The GB Operator(opens in new tab) has been available since August of 2021, and was originally designed to work on any PC running Windows, Linux, or MacOS⁠—this specific Steam Deck config naturally has a higher buy-in cost. The Operator builds on the open-source mGBA(opens in new tab) emulator, as opposed to the hardware-level FPGA solution you see in the Analogue Pocket(opens in new tab) or the MiSTer(opens in new tab). 

Emulation is typically held to be the lower-fidelity way to run games sans original hardware, but it is also cheaper and more accessible: The Operator will run you $50 vs. the Analogue's $220, while constructing a MiSTer is a super cool but potentially challenging DIY undertaking. The mGBA software in use by the Operator, for its part, seems to be a highly-regarded emulation tool.

Compared to just installing mGBA on its own, which works great on Steam Deck(opens in new tab), the Operator lets you skip having to dump a ROM from your cart before playing it. Should the novelty of playing games directly off the cart wear off, the Operator does provide a convenient method to flash and dump ROMs. Similarly, the Operator also lets you transfer saves between your computer and the cart.

The Steam Deck's always struck me as more an inheritor to the legacy of the Game Gear or the PSP, you know, the bigger, high-powered, black plastic, rectangular challengers to Nintendo's handheld throne. Still, this feels right somehow, and it doesn't look