Four Emulators, One Roundup: DroidDeck, ARMSX3, HakuX, and Xendroid Plus

Sometimes there are excuses. Other times, there are more important things to do. In this case, there simply wasn’t enough meat on the bone to warrant a dedicated article for each of the recently updated emulators.

So, rather than stretch four smaller stories into four separate articles, I’m going to consolidate the important stuff from the latest DroidDeck, ARMSX3, HakuX, and Xendroid Plus releases into one convenient roundup.

Won’t this be a lovely way to start your week?

When we last spoke about DroidDeck, the developers had just released version 0.6.7, and now they’re already onto 0.6.9. While the previous update introduced major functionality, this latest release focuses primarily on bug fixes and stability improvements. The clamshell wars are at a standstill, which has given the developers time to improve the dual-screen experience. Application switching, unresponsive screens, and bottom-screen behavior on devices such as the AYN Thor have received attention.

Steam also gets some love, with improvements to menu refresh rates, game imports, and per-game launch options. Lastly, there’s a new, and dare I say overly customizable, performance HUD. In my opinion, it’s a little much, even when minimized.

For years, we were told that Sony couldn’t possibly make PS3 games natively backward compatible because of the console’s architecture. Yet it seems like every week, PS3 emulation on PC reaches new heights. With ARMSX3, we handheld aficionados can get in on the fun, too.

With update 1.6, the developers did us a solid and added a sweet PS3-style home screen and in-game menu using assets from installed PS3 firmware. It makes a huge difference to the experience, mostly because it feels familiar, like being home. While I appreciate the work these modern emulators are doing, their interfaces are starting to look kinda samey. Unsure if this is Claude’s doing. Who can tell? But there is no mistaking the beauty of the XrossMediaBar (XMB). All these years later, much like the Xbox 360 blades, the XMB is still the UI GOAT.

Earlier today, I was troubleshooting one of my favorite PSN games, TerRover, and the new interface made it much easier to zero in on the settings that needed tweaking. Now, we won’t talk about how I almost fried my Odin 3, but hey, it was for science! By the way, the game now runs, although you could probably scramble eggs on the handheld at the same time.

Last week, I published my first article about HakuX. Naturally, in typical fashion, the developers just had to release another update. So let’s highlight some of the key features.

As part of my Odin 3 review, installing Cocoon is still on my to-do list. I’m particularly interested in the Community Edition’s support for multiple game folders and its compatibility with Android frontends. Fingers crossed that HakuX and Cocoon play nice together.

There’s also plenty of work under the hood, from game-specific performance improvements to better shader handling. The Community Edition continues to build on the original Xbox emulation experience, and I’m curious to see how it performs on the Odin 3.

Xendroid Plus is a new one for me. Previously, I’ve been using Xendroid for my Xbox 360 emulation, but now there’s another fork to add to my ever-growing pile of things to try. So yeah, that’s exactly what I did, and naturally, another update came rolling off the GitHub Express.

Xbox Live Arcade was such a seminal moment in gaming, especially with titles like Bastion. This latest release introduces initial support for the kernel functionality required by XNA games. It’s an important early step toward broader compatibility, although there’s still work to be done before we can expect these games to run properly.

Beyond the XNA groundwork, the release includes graphics fixes, CPU improvements, and changes to how the emulator handles game data. It’s a promising update for a fork that’s still relatively new to me.

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