I finally successfully got Armbian installed on my Pinebook Pro's eMMC. That should be giving it its best possible performance. I thought you may all be interested in compiling a list of games that work at least reasonably well on it given its restrictions of being ARM64 architecture, 1.8GHz CPU & 4GBs RAM. So to start here is a list of the ones I currently have on mine. I may try more later but for now I'm limited by the stock 64GB eMMC that the PCP came with...

 

0AD - 3D RTS

Cave Story - Pixel Art Metroidvania

Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers - Kart Racer

Dune Legacy - RTS

Endless Sky - Space Sandbox

Flare - Fantasy RPG

Freeciv - Strategy

Freecol - Strategy

GZDoom - Doom Engine for Mods & Total Conversions

Hedgewars - Worms "Homage"

Neverball - Monkeyball "Homage"

Neverputt - Miniputt Golf Game

Open Fodder - FOSS Engine for "Cannon Fodder"

OpenRA - FOSS RTS Engine for "Tiberian Dawn", "Red Alert" & "Dune 2000"

Open TTD - Transit Management Sim

OpenTyrian - FOSS Engine for Top-Down Shmup "Tyrian"

Perfect Dark - PC Port of N64 Game with Keyboard/Mouse Support

Pico-8 - Indie Pixel Art Gaming & Development Platform

Pingus - Lemmings "Homage"

ScummVM - FOSS Engine for Classic Point & Click Games

Sonic Robo Blast 2 - 3D Platformer

The Ur-Quan Masters - FOSS Port of Space Sandbox "Star Control II"

Xonotic - Arena Shooter FPS

 

There are other games I have not yet personally tried like OpenHV, SuperTuxKart, other emulators etc but if anyone can confirm they work reasonably well on the Pinebook Pro then please let the rest of us know. All ScummVM games I've tried from King's Quest I to Grim Fandango work perfectly. However GZDoom will struggle with especially demanding modern Doom mods like Trenchfoot, Auger Zenith, Inquisitor III, Godless Nite etc. but most like Aliens: Eradication, Ashes 2063/Afterglow, Brutal Doom, Castlevania: Simon's Destiny, Irontusk's Diablo 3D, Revenge of the Triad etc run just fine.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 1Apr 1 by Katsujinken

PSP emulation with PPSSPP should work for a lot of games.

It's a pity we never got a fully working Vulkan driver. God of War is probably too much.

At least it was when I tested it many years ago.

 

Ooh interesting! The PBP in your video is using Manjaro though, can PPSSPP compile on Armbian? Perfect Dark aside, I haven't had any luck compiling other supposedly ARM64 compatible software like 2Ship2Harkinian etc through Armbian. If we can figure it out then maybe GoW will also be more playable on PBP through its own eventual native PC Port.

My PBP died, so I can no longer test it myself.

You can start by testing the PPSSPP aarch64 AppImage.

https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/releases

 

A couple of years ago I had performance issues with the PPSSPP Flatpak on my Phytium D2000, so I built it on Ubuntu 22.04. I'm not sure if I followed the instructions for Qt, or for Linux. So you need to install the prerequisites and I guess it doesn't hurt to install the additional packages mentioned for Ubuntu. 

https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/wiki/build-instructions#building-with-cmake-other-platforms-eg-linux

Updating to include a few more I've successfully run...

 

OpenMW - FOSS Engine to play Morrowind & it's KOTOR total conversion Starwind

Quakespasm - FOSS engine to play Quake and it's expansions, mods & total conversions 

UFO: Alien Invasion - an XCom "homage"

Yamagi Quake 2 - FOSS engine for Quake 2

 

I was able to test Quake Mods like the cyberpunk FPS prequel to a prequel to a Dreamcast mecha game "Slave Zero X: Enyo" and top down fantasy RPG "Prydon Gate". Both work great but I'll need to upgrade the eMMC before I can try larger sized conversions like Brutalist Jam III or Slayer's Testaments.

Did you try Yamagi Quake 2 with OpenGL ES1?

A developer optimized it, and I assume it will also be a lot faster on a PBP, but it might be that certain mods don't work with GLES1.

You have to build it like this: make -j4 WITH_SDL3=no with_gles1

Select OpenGL ES1 in the Video Settings.

If you don't see blood particles (or they are squares), go to the game console and disable a certain module: gl1_pointparameters 0

Restart the game and have fun!

Oh I just downloaded Yamagi from Snap but OpenGLES was glitchy so I switched the settings to OpenGL 1.4 and it works great so I don't especially want to risk what might happen if I switch it to OpenGL 3.4 lol

 

I also gave eduke32 a try and the flatpak version would launch Duke3D, Ion Fury, BloodCM, etc but have sound & no video despite what resolution I set it to or if it was on OpenGL vs Software. So I compiled the eduke32 mobile version which will launch my Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium Edition's duke3D.grp but give a CON file compilation error when I try those other build engine games.

Perhaps you can try to build Yamagi from source, as I pointed out, a developer has really optimized OpenGL ES.

Here you can see it on a VisionFive 2, RISC-V SBC, hitting almost 200fps at 1080p!

 

You can also try PS1 emulation with PCSXR (works without PS1 BIOS). I assume it's just:

sudo apt install rpcsx

 

.If you have a PS1 BIOS, you can also try Duckstation.

 

If you need a game for testing, you can try Magic Castle. It was released for free.

http://netyaroze.com/Media/Magic-Castle

https://archive.org/details/magic-castle-2021-07-may

 

Regarding eDuke32, did you try disabling compressed textures?

Quote

Note2: Some recent (G33 for example) Intel graphics cards work with OpenGL mode if texture compression is disabled (r_texcompr "0", see settings.cfg configuration file).

https://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions

Oh man, every Armbian install to Pinbook Pro's eMMC I heard of always ended up failing.

Which steps did you do to successfully install Armbian to your eMMC?

Would really appreciate it!

On 6/17/2026 at 7:30 PM, Bruno Piras said:

Oh man, every Armbian install to Pinbook Pro's eMMC I heard of always ended up failing.

Which steps did you do to successfully install Armbian to your eMMC?

Would really appreciate it!

Oops I'm sorry. I missed your reply. It's been almost a year since it got installed on mine but basically. First towboot is installed on the SPI. Then flash an OS to a micro SD card and boot to that. Then while in that environment, use dd in terminal to write Armbian to the eMMC. If you successfully do that you can now boot into Armbian in the eMMC but the sound will be super low so you'll need to go open Alsamixer to manually turn it up. Hopefully that gives you enough specifics to give it a another try

I've come back to report that after squeezing out a little more disk space that I've gotten a few more games working... more or less.

Devilution X - Engine for playing Diablo & Hellfire

Open Privateer - Engine for Space Sandbox Sim Privateer (It needed to have Vulkan drivers installed then use lavapipe to run that through the CPU. it chugs a bit but it works)

Quake: Arcane Dimensions - (Works but you'll want to turn down the resolution in its console with "r_scale 4"

G-Diffuser - PC Recomp Port of F-Zero X (still little glitchy but it's early in development & entirely playable)

There is a modern engine to launch MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries coming out soon called OpenMercs. The dev has said it will be ARM64 Linux compatible so I'll report back if I get it up & running.

Edited Tuesday at 07:31 PM3 days by Katsujinken

Ok got a couple more confirmations....

Nookery - PC port of Animal Crossing for GameCube (you'll have to lower the resolution & play it in windowed mode. At 1280 x 720 it is a reasonable size but a little sluggish. Since the game is about picking fruit & collecting seashells while bumming around town chatting to neighbours that sluggishness doesn't make it unplayable)

iortcw - modern engine to play Return To Castle Wolfenstein (has to be compiled then launched from the aarch64 folder. Guides also recommended using "r_scale 4" in its console but it runs buttery smooth at default for me)

Duckststion - Playstation 1 emulator (I've used this to play Gran Turismo 2 in widescreen & 720p until it gets its own native ARM64 Linux compatible port but it works pretty great already)

I'm down to 6.6GBs on the eMMC but if I can free up a little more space again, I'll try compiling XASH3D to play Half-Life. I've seen videos from years ago of it working on a PBP so I don't see why it shouldn't work, I just can't yet personally guarantee it.