Retro Handheld Troubleshooting: Common Problems & Fixes

Having trouble with your retro handheld? You’re not alone. From games refusing to appear to emulators crashing, missing saves and controls that don’t work, there are a handful of problems that come up again and again.

This page covers the most common issues and points you toward the specific fixes and guides you need.

Games aren’t showing up in the emulator/frontend

1. Did you tell the emulator/frontend where your games are located?
   • Every emulator and frontend has a way for you to tell them where your games are, and in some cases, like with ES-DE, they have specific spots you need to put your games in.
2. Are you using the right file type for the system?
   • Disc-based systems generally work best with their expected disc-image formats like .cue/.bin, .chd, .iso. Don’t assume every emulator/frontend supports compressed .zip or .7z.
3. Is the ROM itself working?
   • If possible, test another known-good copy of the game. A corrupted or improperly dumped ROM can prevent a game from launching.

Games show up, but won’t launch

1. Is it a system that requires a BIOS file? (ex. PS1)
   • Disc-based systems, and some other systems require BIOS files for them to work in emulators, start here.
2. Try launching the game from the emulator directly without a frontend.
   • This helps narrow it down to, does the game actually work? Or is it just the frontend that isn’t connecting to it?
3. If it’s from a frontend, do you have the RetroArch core or emulator installed?
   • Every frontend basically says, hey there’s this game, use this to play it. If you don’t have the thing to play it set in the frontend, then it can’t play it.
4. Did the ROM download properly?
   • Things corrupt, it happens.

Black screen when launching a game

1. Is the game actually running?
   • Turn up the audio, can you hear the game? If so, likely a rendering issue. You can try the Vulkan/OpenGL swap.
2. Try switching between Vulkan and OpenGL.
   • Sometimes it’s as easy as this. This is especially true with Snapdragon 8 Elite devices in RetroArch for example – lots of cores won’t work unless you’ve set RetroArch to Vulkan.
3. Is it a system that requires a BIOS file? (ex. PS1)
   • Disc-based systems, and some other systems require BIOS files for them to work in emulators, start here.

My games are stuttering or slow

1. How old is your device? Is it powerful enough to emulate the system?
   • Be honest here – if you’re using an underpowered device to try and play a PC game, you’ll have a bad time.
2. Try switching between Vulkan and OpenGL.
   • It can help a lot.
3. Try lowering the upscaling.
   • Sometimes you may not know you’ve set this way too high.
4. If it’s a Snapdragon device, have you tried a different custom driver?
   • Emulators that support custom drivers can see significant changes in performance and compatibility between drivers.

My controls don’t work

1. Did you map the controls in the emulator?
   • Seriously, this is the big one. If it’s not working, check that you mapped the controls.
2. Is the emulator actually seeing the controller?
   • When you try to map the controls, does it see the controller?

My save disappeared

1. First, check to see if the save is actually still in your storage.
   • Find where your emulator saves to, and check.
2. Are you using a branded SD card and your own ROMs?
   • You are doing this right? Because most of these devices come with junk SD cards and junk ROMs.
3. Are you exiting games properly?
   • Most emulators need a moment to properly write saves to storage. Force-closing an emulator, shutting down the device, or losing power while gaming can result in a lost or corrupted save.

Pokemon won’t save

1. You’re probably using the ROM that came with the device.
   • The ROMs bundled with cheap handhelds are notorious for problems, including Pokémon save issues. Replace the bundled ROM with a known-good copy and test again.

My save won’t work after moving it to another device

Make sure we are talking about in-game saves and not save states, as they’re very different things. It’s much harder to move a save state across devices and operating systems than it is saves.

The best and easiest way to move a save is these steps:

• On the new device, open the game and make a new save
• Find where that save file was generated
• Rename your old save to match the newly generated save file
• Overwrite the new save file with your existing save
• Boot up the game and it should be recognized

Important: don’t load into a save state. Boot directly into the game for this to work.

My handheld won’t boot

1. Is it charged? No, but seriously, is it?
   • Try charging it with a USB-A to USB-C cable connected to a PC or other low-power USB port and leave it for several hours. Some Retroid devices that appear completely dead can recover this way.
2. Does it boot at all? Even to a logo?
   • If it’s a Linux device and it suddenly stopped booting, a corrupted or failing SD card is one of the first things I’d investigate.
3. Did you recently change anything?
   • If you just changed a theme, install an update, or did something differently – start there.
4. Does it boot and then crash?
   • Same as the above.

Wi-Fi isn’t working

1. Check your password. Yes, check it.
2. Have you tried a 2.4ghz SSID?
   • A lot of the budget Linux devices cannot see a 5ghz SSID or work with them if you have a combo 2.4ghz/5ghz SSID. Create a 2.4ghz only SSID and connect to that.
3. Is the Wi-Fi even on?

Still can’t fix it?

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When asking for help, include the handheld, operating system/custom firmware, emulator, game, and exactly what happens when you try to launch it.