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While the PS Vita seemed to fall by the wayside, over lack of long-term support from Sony, the handheld console has for many retained a certain charm. Fans cite its elegant design and versatility, while it had some great games too. Classics such as Gravity Rush, Persona 4 Golden, Tearaway, Hotline Miami, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, among others call the PS Vita home. But now, you can take some of these PS Vita exclusives on the go with you even if you don't have the Sony handheld.
YouTuber ETA Prime is known for his tutorials on retro emulation, among other computer and gaming related content, and one of his most recent uploads guides people through emulating PS Vita games on a Steam Deck.
ETA Prime is running Vita3K, which is described as "the world's first functional PlayStation Vita emulator," on the.Steam Deck. This emulator is currently available in Linux and Windows versions, and has pretty good performance. The emulator is still in a relatively early stage, but there are a growing number of playable emulated games.
The YouTuber decided to go with the Steam Deck first to try out Vita3K since it's also a handheld, and it also happens to be far more powerful than the PS Vita. But how well does it work? Sideloading the Vita emulator, ETA Prime runs the PS Vita OS on the Steam Deck and tries out games like Super Meat Boy! (the PS Vita version), the Ubisoft racer Asphalt Injection, Street Fighter X Tekken, among others, which are all on the "playable list" for the emulator.
ETA Prime says there may be a problem with the AMD GPU that the Steam Deck uses in running PS Vita software, as he mentions that many PS Vita emulated titles run better on the Intel-equipped Windows computers he has also tried. The video goes into detail about performance and how some tweaks to settings affects games.
For those interested, it's well worth checking out the video, which is shown above. ETA Prime also has a video on running the PS Vita emulator on PCs and laptops, which you can find here.