I Spent Days Setting up This Retroid, and All I Got Was This Gex Skeet

I recently bought a Retroid Pocket 5. I already own an Analogue Pocket… and a Steam Deck. It’s not like I’m short on devices for emulating old games.

I do not have good impulse control.

My collection of unopened amiibo that scatter my shelves acts as something of a taunting reminder of this deep character flaw. A lot of this probably comes down from the pandemic coinciding with the first time in my life when I had my own disposable income and the fact that, outside of games, I don’t have many hobbies or pastimes that involve spending money.

I don’t drink, and the pandemic means most of the friends I met during my college years were industry folks I met online who live in other countries, so I’m not going out all that often. I like watching rugby, but I’m not attending many matches - have you seen how queer I look? And I’m never going to own a house - I’m a Gen Z-er working in games media, I may as well spend all my money on avocado toast, as the old joke goes.

And what’s more. I can justify it. I’m in the industry. If I spend this $250 on another handheld device, that gives me a new thing to talk about on a podcast, a new thing to joke about on social media, fuel for the content machine. And so, a few weeks back, after getting paid for a few freelance reviews, I decided to treat myself to yet another way to play games from before I was born. But here’s the thing, I am really worried that is where the story ends.

I spent about three nights over the last week, following guides, learning how to scrape databases, transferring files, unzipping files, whittling down a collection and configuring settings. I did the thing. And then I was done. I had my Retroid set up and ready to go. However, at some point during all that, I got an email, a freelance commission to review a 50-70 hour game, which is out in about a week. I also got invited to a closed alpha for another game. Both of these things are games I, in my brain, need to play.

The review is obvious, it's a paying gig, I need the work, and I can’t write a word of the review until I see credits, but the alpha? It’s under NDA, I can’t even say what the game is, and it will likely get an open beta at some point soon, too. No one is even paying me as a result of having played this game. But, as a games journalist, as a diligent industry member, in my head, I feel the need to be aware of the state of this game right now. To spend my Friday night playing something I can’t talk about and to have a hot take prepared, ready to shoot out into the endless void at any given point.

The way you interact with games changes a lot when it's your job, but I'm not complaining. I love my job, and I know that getting sent games for review is a privilege that others would love to have, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that there is a part of me that just wants to spend this weekend messing around with PS1 games and not playing [REDACTED]. I put all this work into setting up my Retroid, but now it has to go on the back burner. I have to play this other thing, and I am finding it hard not to hold that against it as a slight unto me. I am reviewing this game, trying to evaluate its quality as a product and artistic endeavour, and I can’t stop thinking to myself, “Ok, but what if I was playing Lumines right now?”

The worst part is, I am feeding into this loop by writing this. Now that I have turned my Retroid set up into content, now that people can see I put the work in and got it running, my brain can tuck it away as a successful work project. I justified this purchase as being valuable to my work in some way, and now I have made it a part of my work. Job done.

I spent days setting up this thing, learning new skills and fighting with BIOS files, and what’s my reward? Well, I played Gex 3D for 15 minutes at 1080p, and I’m grumpy I can’t play more, so that was a good day at the office.

This is a weird job.