Jean Galea

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Retro Gaming

Hobbies

Retro Gaming

The games I grew up with, running on modern hardware, organized the way a real library should be.

Why Retro

Old Games, Done Properly

New consoles are fine, but I keep coming back to the older stuff. There’s a craft to those games that a lot of modern releases have lost.

These days most of my retro gaming runs through emulation on a handheld, with a proper frontend so it feels like a curated collection rather than a folder full of files.

The Gear

What I Play On

Ayn Odin 2

Android Handheld · Main Machine

Built around a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, so it handles everything from 8-bit systems up through the harder-to-emulate consoles without breaking a sweat. Pocketable, fast, and flexible enough to run whatever frontend and emulators I throw at it. This is my daily driver for retro, made by Ayn.

Under the Hood

My Setup

The part fellow hobbyists actually care about: how the library is built and kept tidy.

  • ES-DE as the frontend, so every system gets scraped box art and sits in its own place
  • Custom collections for favorites and themed sets
  • ROM management kept clean, one folder per system
  • One gotcha worth knowing: custom collections only show up once they’re registered in es_settings.xml

Away from a screen, I’m usually on a padel court or out running an RC rig.

Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete

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