Usually people take something like EmulationStation and adapt it to a specific device, trying to carry over a user experience that already exists. Batocera and similar projects were originally built around gaming systems, and only later did people start porting them to different devices.

What I want to make is firmware that feels like an original system, designed from the start for this particular device, with its hardware, form factor and screen geometry in mind. I don't want to model it on the Nintendo DS or other clamshells. I want to do everything the way I think it should be done.

The firmware will have several sections.

This part is pretty simple: the whole library should run at 2x resolution and 60 fps. That's really all it needs.

I also want to build all the game covers right into the firmware. As far as I understand, this shouldn't be a legal problem, since the games themselves won't be distributed. The idea is that you download a ROM set, say the popular No-Intro one, and just drop the files onto the device. The firmware recognizes the games on its own, and you get a ready-made DS library with all the covers.

I've already made two dual-screen ports, and I have plenty of other interesting stuff planned for this section.

I've also noticed that someone is working on running recompiled 3DS games. Basically, the game code is decompiled or recompiled so it runs natively instead of through an emulator. As far as I can tell, that's for Android, and I don't know if there's anything like it for Linux. Either way, I'd love to get this working too. I think it would be really cool.

I'm also thinking about adding a separate music player section. It turns out the device sounds really good through headphones. Looks like the manufacturer used pretty high-quality audio components, which I honestly didn't expect. So I want to try turning it into a proper music player as well. I'm not sure how much demand there'll be for it, but I'm doing it for myself first anyway.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, definitely let me know in the comments. I'll try to implement anything interesting whenever I can.