Not an expert, but here are some good ones:

Earthbound (SNES) - Kids-on-bikes fight aliens and meet cryptids in a quest to stop a cosmic horror in a JRPG set in suburban America. It’s weird, wonderful, musical, and sometimes startlingly heartfelt. Not too grindy as JRPGs go, but keep the 2x fast,forward button handy anyway.

Chrono Trigger (SNES) - Another must-play. It’s a time-travelling fantasy JRPG with one of the best OSTs ever made. While playing it, I had an existential crisis realizing I’d never run a D&D campaign this cool.

Metroid Fusion (GBA) - A metroidvania (duh) set in an infested space station, where an injured Samus races to arm herself against an unknown enemy. It manages to feel desperate, claustrophobic, and fast-paced, which – hot take – I feel is rare for the genre.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA) - A self-indulgent pick for me, as I imprinted on this short-but-sweet game at an early age. It’s the last isometric Zelda and a swansong to the genre. The central gimmick, shrinking Link to the size of a mouse, gives the pixel artists the rare chance to show environments in lush, up-close detail that makes the world spring to life. Also: Ezlo sounds like Danny Devito. That is all.

If you want a challenge, I’d recommend googling The Legend of Zelda: Beta Quest. It’s a ROM hack where the load trigger table (that is, the table that contains what door leads to what scene) is randomized using the save file name. The only way to win is to get to the final Ganon fight and defeat him, and there is a way to lose since there’s this test area where Link can’t move and is then killed by some armored enemies, and the load trigger table can sometimes open that up.

I played through Lollipop Chainsaw on my steam deck. No, not the new one, the original ps3 one with an emulator. Don’t bother with the remake.

It is a good time waster and is humorous.

The NES Point & Click “trilogy”:

• Shadow gate

• Deja Vu

• The Uninvited

The games all run on the same engine, but that’s about it for similarities. You don’t have to play them in order, but I feel like they improved things as they went along so it kind of helps.

• The Longest Journey
• Grim Fandango
• The Dig

• Golden Sun
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
• Advance Wars
• Patapon (This has a PC port on steam)
• Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force

I’d get some of the decomp/recomps working like Zelda 64 and Perfect Dark. It is really something to experience these titles again with 60 fps, widescreen etc.

Earthbound and mother 3 with English patch!

Here’s a list of games I’d recommend based off of things like length to complete ( at least maybe 2 or more hours minimum ) in no particular order:

• Final Fantasy X ( PS2, but has a remaster on Steam I think if anyone cares )

• Hot Wheels Beat That ( PS2 )

• Dokopon Kingdom ( Wii ( I’ve had seemingly seizure level texture glitches on PS2 version that can only be stopped by loading a save state or completely rebooting the game on emulator ) )

• Sonic Unleashed ( xbox360/decomp ( kinda cheating, can also get Hedgemod Manager for a modded playthrough, requires dump of original xbox360 game/DLC files ) )

• Dr. Mario 64
• Kirby Air Ride (w/ Hack Pack mod)
• Land Maker
• Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (and Wii)
• Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary
• Panel de Pon (Gamecube and GBC)
• Rhythm Heaven series
• Twinkle Star Sprites
• any JRPG, just pick something you haven’t played yet

Final Fantasy Tactics

Chu Chu Rocket GBA has a really deep puzzle mode

Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Pokémon Emerald, and Fire Emblem.

Turn-based makes awful phone controls more bearable, and since those games are RPGs it’s easier to pause and resume without breaking the “flow” of the game.

I’ve been emulating a lot of 3DS games on my Deck, played these three quite extensively on a bus trip to NY:

Pokemon Ultra Sun (with Photonic Sun hack for catching em all, more interesting wild pokemon distribution and more challenging trainer battles)

Kirby Planet Robobot, the best 2D Kirby after Super Star

Fire Emblem Awakening

Crash bandicoot