I bought Bully during a Steam sale four years ago, played it for 50 minutes, and uninstalled it soon after. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate one of the best Rockstar games of all time, the seminal “GTA at boarding school” classic of 2006. Quite the contrary; I adored playing it on my brother’s PS2 so much that the thought of experiencing it through anything other than the 20-inch Panasonic TV we’d had in our shared room growing up was nothing short of sacrilege.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself foregoing Hades 2 to try out Bully on my Steam Deck during a road trip last weekend. And imagine my further surprise when, after 19 years, I was able to recreate that nostalgic safe space from the passenger seat of a Fiat 500.
Transplanted treasures
Being able to get locked into Bully again in 2025 only further reinforces my stance on the Nintendo Switch 2 vs Steam Deck debate. I’ve said in the past that I can’t justify the extra cost of replacing my whole games library right now, but I’m not the only one who’s going back instead of getting with the times.
My editor Andy, for example, has been rediscovering the joys of older Steam games thanks to his new Valve handheld. That’s not a fluke – it’s the same reason I can’t see myself buying a Switch 2 until it has more games I actually want to play. Even with the host of upcoming Switch 2 games and third-party ports, however, Nintendo’s latest console will take a very long time to catch up to Valve when we talk sheer library size.
Where the Switch 2 is a novel, exclusive indulgence, my Steam Deck is a jack of many trades. It’s a thousand gigabytes of pure Wild West freedom, a lawless world that speaks to the breadth of third-party gaming experiences available on PC and, now, the Steam Deck. Take Bully, for example. I’ve always seen it as a PS2 game through and through – and in my heart, it still is – but my Steam Deck threw platform snobbery out the window with shocking ease.
After a polite enough stretch of time spent chatting to my partner in the car, waiting until she’s firmly on the motorway and more in need of focus, I settle further into my seat, boot up my Steam Deck, and flip to the Bully cover art. A yellow alert icon sits in the lower-right corner of it, precisely where I’d usually see a green one.
This tells me that while Bully has been mostly reformatted for the device, some button mappings might not have made the console jump perfectly. This doesn’t bother me. I’ve played Bully enough (and held a wide enough variety of consoles in my time) to know when circle means B.
As expected, the on-screen button prompts reflect the PS2 Dualshock layout as I’m welcomed back to Bullworth. I’m surprised by how good it feels, how much bigger the OLED screen seems as it rests on my kneecaps. If anything, the PlayStation button prompts only deepen the illusion of being transported back to a time when GTA 6 was beyond the dizziest dreams of our collective consciousness.
Endless summer
Where the Switch 2 is a novel, exclusive indulgence, my Steam Deck is a jack of many trades.
I never thought I’d associate a Rockstar game with cozy, warm fuzzies. They’re comfort games, for sure, but never cozy. Yet here I am at peak levels of calm, knuckle sandwich in one hand and a fellow student’s shirtfront scrunched up in the other.
As I curl up in the passenger seat, comforted by the car engine’s familiar rumble, I think for a moment how mind boggling I’d have found this situation back in 2006. I went through a period of playing Bully every day after school at one point. To do so, I’d have had to wrestle with a bunch of ropey cables, feel about the back of the TV for AV inputs, find a PS2 memory card with the correct save file on it, and rifle through my brother’s many PS2 CD books for the privilege. Now, I can play it wire-free, TV-free, fuss free… in the middle of a busy highway.
It’s oddly soothing to beat up jocks and bullies with the screen nearly pressed up against my nose. Strolling through Bullworth Vale, shopping for chocolates to gift Jimmy’s nerd boyfriend (because yay for Scholarship Edition adding same-sex smooches), even skateboarding away from police while the “truant” warning flashes below the minimap fills me with a warm, actively cozy glee.
That novelty is far more precious to me than the splendor of a shiny new Switch 2. My Steam Deck is a little gateway to the past, a genius way to experience the greats of my childhood on modern technology while sacrificing none of the enjoyment. I’m still not planning on getting rid of my PS2 entirely – it still works, and at this point, it’s pretty much a family heirloom.
But now I’m maybe a little bit more open to trying out my old console classics on my Steam Deck now that I see how it thrives at the one thing the Switch 2 fails to right now: being a one-stop shop for multiplatform icons.
The Steam Deck is your gateway to playing all the best Steam games on-the-go!
