ES-DE Android 10 Support

When I emulate, I always use a graphical front end to organize my classic titles in a way that looks awesome and has practical usage. ES-DE, previously named EmulationStation-DE, is my go-to, and for great reason. It is easy to install and use, and with the theme support it has, the possibilities can feel endless for setting up my aesthetic just the way I want. A new update was released earlier today for the front end, giving us some bug fixes, new core support, a new alternative 3DS emulator, and support for Android 10!

The biggest new addition is Android 10 support, which will allow us to install ES-DE on more Android devices in general. I already use ES-DE on my Steam Deck and Windows handhelds, so extending it to Android is a fantastic way to use it. They also removed Yuzu from the Switch system, leaving only Ryujinx as an active Switch emulator supported by the program. However, we do see Panda3DS standalone being added as an alternative emulator for the 3DS, and after looking at it, we see that it shows some intriguing promise.

New support was also added for new RetroArch cores like Snes9x 2005, Beetle SuperGrafx, and Geolith, and new support for the .neo and .chd extensions was added.

There were also some nice little bug fixes, but that's the bulk of the update! It should download automatically once you open the program, and it looks to be a worthwhile update. ES-DE is included in both EmuDeck and RetroDECK, but you can also download it separately.

ES-DE 3.0.1 Update Changelog:

Detailed list of changes

  • Added support for Android 10
  • Removed Yuzu from the switch system
  • Added Panda3DS standalone as an alternative emulator for the n3ds system
  • (Android) Added support for placing the ES-DE and ROMs directories on mounted USB storage (/mnt/media_rw/)
  • (Android) Added support for network mounted storage on the Nvidia Shield Pro (and possibly other devices)
  • Added a more informative error message than "HTTP error code 430" when exceeding the daily ScreenScraper quota
  • Added the Snes9x 2005 Plus RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the satellaview, sfc, snes, snesna and sufami systems
  • Added the Beetle SuperGrafx RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the pcengine, pcenginecd, tg16 and tg-cd systems
  • Added the Geolith RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the arcade, mame and neogeo systems
  • Added the .neo file extension to the arcade, mame and neogeo systems
  • Added the .chd file extension to the sega32x, sega32xjp and sega32xna systems
  • (Android) changed from %ROMPROVIDER% to %ROMSAF% for the C64.emu, PCE.emu (pcenginecd and tg-cd), Play! and Saturn.emu emulators
  • (Android) Changed the required filename for the Fake-08 RetroArch core from libfake08-arm64.so to fake08_libretro_android.so
  • Improved the layout for the miximage generator interface for some unusual display resolutions and aspect ratios
  • (Android) Increased the maximum waiting time for the storage mount retry loop from 3 to 4 seconds
  • Improved resilience to empty gamelist.xml files (they can now be updated instead of generating an error)
  • (Linux and Unix) Made it possible to change the application data directory using the ESDE_APPDATA_DIR environment variable
  • (Android) Removed symlink support
  • Removed the "v" before the version number from the version printout on application startup and from the main menu
  • Updated SDL to 2.30.1 on Android, Windows, macOS and the Linux AppImage builds
  • Eliminated some deprecation warnings when building against FFmpeg 6.1 or higher

Bug fixes

  • (Android) The supergrafx system had the Beetle SuperGrafx and Beetle PCE RetroArch cores mixed up
  • (Windows) The MAME standalone emulator entry for the atari7800 system had the wrong machine type defined
  • The Orphaned data cleanup interface didn't display the complete description text at some unusual display resolutions
  • (linear-es-de) Creating custom collections named "now-playing" or "completed" could lead to them being unthemed

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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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