Good old fashioned RPGs and tower defense reign supreme on long hauls. Not sure if they’re on steam, but for TD the kingdom rush games are excellent. For RPG, bravely default 2 is a personal favorite. If you don’t mind a game leaning difficult.
Edit: oh, and Balatro! Balatro and kingdom rush 5 got me through two 11 hour flights when I traveled overseas.
Don’t sleep on MAME. D&D: Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara are great action beat-em-ups with magic. The 90s era JRPGs on SNES are great: Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Chronotrigger, FF3|6 and FF2|4, of course Earthbound (S-tier game, imo). Other good SNES classics: Actraiser (I liked 1 better than 2), Ogre Battle, Zelda: Link to the Past. The steam deck should have a shitload of space, so go find some NES/SNES/Genesis torrents and all of it will fit and then you’ll have so much to sift through.
I mean, you could always just download a full set of nes and snes roms and go to town on anything that interests you.
For non emulation games, and especially if recharging power is available - factorio is surprisingly good at running on low end hardware and if that’s your type of game, you can play for a very very long time.
I find roguelikes to also be good for trips - not necessarily in one super long session due to frustration-but good from a “play for a while, put it down, pick it up and play some more”. If you like playing cards definitely check out balatro. Also vampire survivors can play forever on a battery charge and is surprisingly addictive.
Have you tried gaming on a plane before? I can’t do it. It’s more bearable than gaming in the car, but gaming in any moving vehicle messes with my head. So I’d go with an audiobook.
That said… old school RPG but plenty of people have suggested them.
Dunno on length, but here’s the emulatable (or similar) I recommend, with what appears after the semicolons within the parenthesis (when available) being where you can get them digitally that I know:
The MacVenture series (Apple IIGS / Macintosh Classic; Steam & Humble Widgets)
Nix: The Paradox Relic (NES; Itchio)
Augury Red Code (GB; Itchio)
Castlevania: SotN (PS1; PS Vita’s PSN)
Final Fantasy VI (all versions are mostly the same)
Final Fantasy II and Crisis Core (PSP)
Anodyne (Adobe Flash; iirc all PC versions still have the Flash version)
Metal Slug 1 to 4 and X, Sonic 1 to 3 (any versions you can emulate)
Bravely Default and Bravely Second (3DS)
Böbl (NES; Itchio)
Celeste Classic and Celeste Classic 2 (PICO-8; Lexaloffle forums)
Dissidia 012 (PSP)
Ever Oasis (3DS)
Final Fantasy VII (PS1; PS Vita’s PSN)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings (NDS)
God Hand (PS2; PS3’s PSN)
God of War 1 and 2 (PS2)
God of War Chain of Olympus (PSP)
Godzilla Unleashed (PS2)
Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Burning Earth and Into the Inferno (PS2)
Devil May Cry 1 and 3 (PS2)
Disney’s Bolt (PS2)
Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (PS2)
GrimGrimoire (PS2)
Gunbird & Gunbird 2 (any versions you can emulate)
Ico & Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
MegaRace (MS-DOS; GOG, Steam and Zoom Platform)
Micro Mages (NES; Itchio and Steam)
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 1 to 5 (PS2)
Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island (PS2)
Odin Sphere (PS2)
Okami (PS2)
Parasite Eve (PS1)
Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Phoenotopia (Adobe Flash)
Kunio-Tachi no Banka (SNES; through River City Girls 0 on Steam)
Shantae franchise (first on GBC/GBA, second on NDS, third on 3DS)
Solatorobo (NDS)
Slipways Classic (PICO-8; Itchio)
Tanglewood (Mega Drive/Genesis; GOG, Itchio and Steam)
The Fairly OddParents! Shadow Showdown (PS2)
The King of Fighters 2002 (Neo Geo; most PC versions)
The Simpsons Game (PS2)
The Simpsons Hit & Run (PS2)
VVVVVV (engine open source so several ports exist)
War of the Monsters (PS2)
Wishing Sarah (GB; Itchio and Steam)
Wonder Boy in Monster World (Mega Drive/Genesis)
コテDEメクール (PC-98; Project EGG)
Naruto Uzumaki Chronicles 1 and 2 (PS2)
Dust Bunny (PICO-8; Itchio)
Honestly? Pretty much anything from the N64 era or earlier. Anything from before the PS1 will run great at the lowest power settings, and will stretch your battery life out for like 8-10 hours. Maybe not a huge concern if you have access to an outlet to charge, but I’m assuming you’ll be on your own for the whole flight.
Arcade games are good for maybe an hour at a time, but quickly become too repetitive for me. Don’t sleep on the old RPGs and adventure games, as those will be fairly good at stretching gameplay into dozens of hours; Chrono Trigger is easily a ~25 hour game for the casual first-time player, and will be consistently entertaining for most of that time. Super Metroid will take at least a few hours to beat, especially if you’re not a repeat player who already knows where to go.
If you have access to a charger, then your potential library will expand massively as you can loosen your power restrictions. The PS1 was the golden era of JRPGs, for instance. FF7 is a classic for a reason. Legend of Dragoon is stellar and will easily last 40-60 hours of gameplay. Legend of Legaia had a small release and was completely overshadowed by the bigger players, but has a cult classic following these days.
you can easily get the entire SNES and Genesis library roms which alone will give you enough. Those alone will give you some awesome RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Secrets of, Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, etc.
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Good old fashioned RPGs and tower defense reign supreme on long hauls. Not sure if they’re on steam, but for TD the kingdom rush games are excellent. For RPG, bravely default 2 is a personal favorite. If you don’t mind a game leaning difficult.
Edit: oh, and Balatro! Balatro and kingdom rush 5 got me through two 11 hour flights when I traveled overseas.
My suggestions:
Between those you should be able to squeeze some hours out of it
Battletoads
Don’t sleep on MAME. D&D: Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara are great action beat-em-ups with magic. The 90s era JRPGs on SNES are great: Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Chronotrigger, FF3|6 and FF2|4, of course Earthbound (S-tier game, imo). Other good SNES classics: Actraiser (I liked 1 better than 2), Ogre Battle, Zelda: Link to the Past. The steam deck should have a shitload of space, so go find some NES/SNES/Genesis torrents and all of it will fit and then you’ll have so much to sift through.
FF6, bubble bobble for the Nes, Master Blaster
JUST emulation? Why? Battery life?
I mean, you could always just download a full set of nes and snes roms and go to town on anything that interests you.
For non emulation games, and especially if recharging power is available - factorio is surprisingly good at running on low end hardware and if that’s your type of game, you can play for a very very long time.
I find roguelikes to also be good for trips - not necessarily in one super long session due to frustration-but good from a “play for a while, put it down, pick it up and play some more”. If you like playing cards definitely check out balatro. Also vampire survivors can play forever on a battery charge and is surprisingly addictive.
Have you tried gaming on a plane before? I can’t do it. It’s more bearable than gaming in the car, but gaming in any moving vehicle messes with my head. So I’d go with an audiobook.
That said… old school RPG but plenty of people have suggested them.
Earth: What did you say?
Point taken — and yet, motion sickness is a real thing.
Yeah, it’s why I asked lol
For flights the best a big count down clock on the screen, then entertaining the faces of the other passengers.
Dunno on length, but here’s the emulatable (or similar) I recommend, with what appears after the semicolons within the parenthesis (when available) being where you can get them digitally that I know:
The MacVenture series (Apple IIGS / Macintosh Classic; Steam & Humble Widgets)
Nix: The Paradox Relic (NES; Itchio)
Augury Red Code (GB; Itchio)
Castlevania: SotN (PS1; PS Vita’s PSN)
Final Fantasy VI (all versions are mostly the same)
Final Fantasy II and Crisis Core (PSP)
Anodyne (Adobe Flash; iirc all PC versions still have the Flash version)
Metal Slug 1 to 4 and X, Sonic 1 to 3 (any versions you can emulate)
Bravely Default and Bravely Second (3DS)
Böbl (NES; Itchio)
Celeste Classic and Celeste Classic 2 (PICO-8; Lexaloffle forums)
Dissidia 012 (PSP)
Ever Oasis (3DS)
Final Fantasy VII (PS1; PS Vita’s PSN)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings (NDS)
God Hand (PS2; PS3’s PSN)
God of War 1 and 2 (PS2)
God of War Chain of Olympus (PSP)
Godzilla Unleashed (PS2)
Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Burning Earth and Into the Inferno (PS2)
Devil May Cry 1 and 3 (PS2)
Disney’s Bolt (PS2)
Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (PS2)
GrimGrimoire (PS2)
Gunbird & Gunbird 2 (any versions you can emulate)
Ico & Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
MegaRace (MS-DOS; GOG, Steam and Zoom Platform)
Micro Mages (NES; Itchio and Steam)
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 1 to 5 (PS2)
Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island (PS2)
Odin Sphere (PS2)
Okami (PS2)
Parasite Eve (PS1)
Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Phoenotopia (Adobe Flash)
Kunio-Tachi no Banka (SNES; through River City Girls 0 on Steam)
Shantae franchise (first on GBC/GBA, second on NDS, third on 3DS)
Solatorobo (NDS)
Slipways Classic (PICO-8; Itchio)
Tanglewood (Mega Drive/Genesis; GOG, Itchio and Steam)
The Fairly OddParents! Shadow Showdown (PS2)
The King of Fighters 2002 (Neo Geo; most PC versions)
The Simpsons Game (PS2)
The Simpsons Hit & Run (PS2)
VVVVVV (engine open source so several ports exist)
War of the Monsters (PS2)
Wishing Sarah (GB; Itchio and Steam)
Wonder Boy in Monster World (Mega Drive/Genesis)
コテDEメクール (PC-98; Project EGG)
Naruto Uzumaki Chronicles 1 and 2 (PS2)
Dust Bunny (PICO-8; Itchio)
Earthbound
Secret of Mana
Honestly? Pretty much anything from the N64 era or earlier. Anything from before the PS1 will run great at the lowest power settings, and will stretch your battery life out for like 8-10 hours. Maybe not a huge concern if you have access to an outlet to charge, but I’m assuming you’ll be on your own for the whole flight.
Arcade games are good for maybe an hour at a time, but quickly become too repetitive for me. Don’t sleep on the old RPGs and adventure games, as those will be fairly good at stretching gameplay into dozens of hours; Chrono Trigger is easily a ~25 hour game for the casual first-time player, and will be consistently entertaining for most of that time. Super Metroid will take at least a few hours to beat, especially if you’re not a repeat player who already knows where to go.
If you have access to a charger, then your potential library will expand massively as you can loosen your power restrictions. The PS1 was the golden era of JRPGs, for instance. FF7 is a classic for a reason. Legend of Dragoon is stellar and will easily last 40-60 hours of gameplay. Legend of Legaia had a small release and was completely overshadowed by the bigger players, but has a cult classic following these days.
you can easily get the entire SNES and Genesis library roms which alone will give you enough. Those alone will give you some awesome RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Secrets of, Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, etc.
Silent Hill 2
shadow run genesis. leveling can get a bit tedius though so good to have something to alternate with.
Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1 alone can carry you back and forth, if you end up liking the game.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night is also one of the best choices for the console.
FFT was a maybe for the list along with Fire Emblem 6 & 7 so it may get promoted up
Earthbound! Its like being on a roadtrip while you’re on a roadtrip