Phone-driven portal control for an emulated Skylanders setup, built for kids who outlived their PS3 hardware.
A Windows app that lets kids manage an emulated Skylanders portal from a phone or tablet, while a PS3 Skylanders game runs on the TV through RPCS3.
Who this is for
Parents who still have bins of Skylanders figures in the basement and kids who want to keep playing the games — but whose original PS3 hardware died years ago. If you already run RPCS3 on an HTPC hooked to your TV, this project replaces the alt-tab-to-a-Windows-file-picker dance with a phone interface your kids can actually use.
It is not a Skylanders emulator, a ROM dump, or a way to play games you do not own. You bring your own RPCS3 install and your own backups of the Skylanders figure firmware. See the setup page for what you need.
Why it exists
Physical Skylanders portals carry a surprising amount of hidden state. Every figure stores level, XP, gold, hats, and quest progress directly on the toy. When a figure gets lost under the couch — or quietly snatched by a sibling during an argument — that save data goes with it.
RPCS3 has a “Skylanders Manager” dialog that emulates the portal, loads figure firmware files from disk, and lets you clear or swap slots while a game runs. The problem is driving that dialog from across the living room. A tiny Qt file picker with filenames like C:\...\Giants\Fire\Series 2 Hot Dog.sky is not a thing a six-year-old can operate with a controller from the couch.
This app takes over that role. It runs on the HTPC, shows a QR code on the TV at startup, and serves a touch-friendly SPA to any phone on the same Wi-Fi. The kids browse figures by element and game, pick one, tap a slot, and the app drives the RPCS3 dialog for them — while the game keeps running.
Gameplay flow
- Launch the app from Steam Big Picture. A fullscreen launcher appears on the TV with a QR code.
- Phone or iPad scans the QR and connects over LAN.
- Pick a profile (one per kid, PIN-gated so siblings cannot nuke each other’s save data). Pick a game.
- App launches RPCS3 with that game. Launcher fades. Game boots on the TV.
- Phone switches to portal-control view: eight slots plus a browsable collection of every figure you own. Tap a slot, tap a figure, figure appears on the in-game portal.
- Reset a figure to fresh, swap in a different one, hand the phone to the next kid. Same flow until someone wants to quit.
Project status
v1.1.0 shipped. Core portal control works end-to-end. Profiles, PINs, multi-phone takeover with FIFO eviction, game launching with display-mode persistence, and the Skylanders-themed aesthetic are all stable. v1.1.0 added sticky disconnects (your figures stay on the portal across a PWA backgrounding or short network blip), the Kaos surprise feature (mid-game figure swaps with text-only catchphrase overlay, opt-in per profile), and a kid-friendly empty-portal UI.
Releases: github.com/chotchki/skylander-portal-controller/releases — Windows zip with the phone bundle embedded. See the roadmap for what’s next.