About a month or so ago I started playing Shenmue, which seems pretty neat, but it really just made me want to play Gothic again. Given that I'm having some troubles with my previous Gothic setup on my Steam Deck, I elected to just play Elex instead, which I put about ten hours into.
I really enjoy it, the world feels fleshed out and well thought out, the NPC's are generally interesting and don't necessarily feel like cardboard cutouts and it's probably one of the better Piranha Bytes since Gothic 2.
That said, I got an itch to play KOTOR 2. It's been on my list for ages to actually go back to after first trying it something like 12+ years ago. But I finally found the format I want to play it on, which is my Android based handheld, as I can still heavily mod it there, but have the game in my pocket for whenever I'm ready to pull it out and give it a go. I'm still in the first area you start in, having only put in maybe 2 hours or so, but I'm enjoying myself and it's such a nice, chill experience. It's really working for me in the evenings over Elex because I don't have to put a ton of effort into combat or anything, since it's all essentially turn-based and fairly simple.
I've also been putting a lot of time into configuring a new setup for my Cocktail Arcade table, which has been a lot more effort than I anticipated, but has also been a lot of fun and been a test of my Linux skills, which I don't mind. My Cocktail has some cheap 40-in-1 JAMMA board in it that is going out--again--so I've resolved to replace that with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ I've had sitting in a drawer for ages now. I've probably put something like 15-20 hours into it so far, just learning, getting things configured and futzing about with it. I've finally got it in a state that I would call usable, but not perfect. I'm debating if I want to put some more time into it and see if I can configure it to be a little more "Pretty."
I also need to add some more games to it and get them configured. One thing I am excited about is that I was able to get "split screen" working for regular console games. I'm going to just keep it as NES in addition to Arcade stuff for now, as that way I don't have to build a new control deck for more buttons, as my current one only houses 2 in addition to the joystick.
One thing that is weird about this setup (Retropie and Attract Mode) is that it seems like no one uses this anymore. Most of the information I find when I'm looking for stuff is dated between 2016-2020, not many people asking around these days and I'm not exactly sure why. Kind of thinking that maybe there's something better, but I haven't been able to find it for my needs; I do kind of think not many people are doing Cocktails, but it's what I have to work with, so...
Here's the basic interface as of now:
Looks decent enough, but I may try to see if I can get Logo-Art instead of just text for the game names. Unsure of how to do that yet though.
Split screen NES for two players: