You want games like Cuphead on Switch, Steam Deck or a small PC, and the first thing you hit is storage. A 32 GB Switch and a 64 GB Steam Deck both run out long before your patience does — my 64 GB Deck LCD showed about 40 GB free on first boot, before a single game.
Good news: this genre is tiny. Hand-drawn 2D run-and-gun and boss-rush games ship in hundreds of megabytes, not tens of gigabytes. Every title below is Steam Deck Verified, and all of them clear a graphics floor from 2008 to 2013 on PC. The one exception is flagged, with the fix.
Katana ZERO fits in 244 MB where Cuphead needs 3.3 GB
Katana ZERO is 244 MB on Switch and 200 MB on PC. Cuphead is 3.3 GB on Switch and around 3.6 GB on disk on PC — I checked my own Steam folder rather than trust the 4 GB the store page asks for.
That is roughly fourteen Katana ZEROs for one Cuphead. On a card with 6 GB left, it is the difference between one game and your whole shortlist.
Blazing Chrome is the other 200 MB entry, and it's the closest thing to a Contra you can keep permanently installed. Its eShop figure isn't published in a form I could verify, so treat the Switch cell as unconfirmed and check the listing before you buy.
What games like Cuphead ask of a small PC
The floor is a 2012 laptop, not a graphics card purchase. Published minimums, verbatim:
- Cuphead — GeForce 9600 GT or Radeon HD 3870 512 MB, 3 GB RAM, Core 2 Duo E8400
- Celeste — Intel HD 4000 integrated, 2 GB RAM, Core i3 M380
- Blazing Chrome — GeForce 9600 GT, 2 GB RAM
- Mega Man 11 — GeForce GTX 650, 4 GB RAM, Core i5-3470
The only lever you get is resolution
These games ship no graphics menu worth the name. There is no ultra preset to refuse: Cuphead gives you resolution, fullscreen and V-sync, and that's the list.
So the one adjustment that buys frames is dropping to 1280x720. On my five-year-old laptop, three of those four titles clear their floor on integrated graphics alone — Mega Man 11 is the one that wants a discrete card.
What you lose at 720p is the line. Cuphead's ink work is drawn for a sharp pixel grid; scaled up on a 1080p panel, the outlines soften visibly. On a Deck's 7-inch screen you won't notice. On a 24-inch monitor you will.
Switch, Steam Deck or small PC: where each one belongs
Take the Steam Deck if you want all five. Under 6 GB total gets you Katana ZERO, Blazing Chrome, Celeste, Mega Man 11 and Cuphead, all Verified, no settings work.
Take the Switch for two reasons only: you already own one, or you want handheld play shared on a TV. Sizes are equal or smaller there — Hollow Knight is 5.5 GB on Switch against about 9 GB on PC.
The small-PC picks
- Under 250 MB: Katana ZERO, Blazing Chrome — they fit on anything
- Around 1-2 GB: Celeste (1.2 GB), Mega Man 11 (2 GB)
- Budget 4 GB: Cuphead, DLC included in the same install
- Skip on a full drive: Hollow Knight, ~9 GB on PC
Cuphead's own DLC is the trap on Switch. The Delicious Last Course is a separate 1.6 GB there, so budget 4.9 GB, not 3.3 GB. On PC it lives inside the base install.
Discover Katana ZERO — 244 MB, Switch and Deck
Steam Deck Verified, 200 MB on PC. If your card is nearly full, it is the one entry on this list that costs you nothing to keep on it.
Discover Katana ZERO →Where these ports still bite on Switch and Steam Deck
A 64 GB Deck is tighter than 64 GB. After SteamOS you get roughly 40 GB usable, and Proton keeps shader caches on internal storage even when the game itself lives on a microSD card. Buy the card anyway, then leave 10 GB free internally.
A 32 GB Switch loses a sixth of itself to Hollow Knight. If it's the one you want, move it to microSD before it lands, not after.
Two settings problems with a real exit
No frame cap options means no headroom control. These games target 60 and hold it or don't; if yours doesn't, drop to 720p and force V-sync off before you touch anything else.
Docked Switch is the weakest of the three machines here. Handheld is where these ports are sharpest — the upscale to a TV is where the hand-drawn line gets muddy. If a 60 fps 1080p line matters to you, this belongs on PC, and the hardware floor for that is lower than you think.
Install sizes checked against store listings and my own Steam folder, September 2026.
| Game | Switch install | PC / Steam Deck install | Deck status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katana ZERO | 244 MB | 200 MB | Verified |
| Blazing Chrome | not published | 200 MB | Verified |
| Celeste | 1.2 GB | 1.2 GB | Verified |
| Mega Man 11 | 2.1 GB | 2 GB | Verified |
| Cuphead (reference) | 3.3 GB | ~3.6 GB on disk | Verified |
| Cuphead: Delicious Last Course | +1.6 GB separate | included in base install | Verified |
| Hollow Knight | 5.5 GB | ~9 GB | Verified |
Read next
- The full board of games like Cuphead — Pillar of the silo: the overview for a reader who hasn't picked a title yet
- Celeste, Blazing Chrome and Furi compared on difficulty — Sibling satellite that judges these same titles; my article only sizes them
- Cuphead 2 and the hand-drawn run and gun board — For the reader waiting on a sequel rather than filling a card today
- Light PC games and the settings that hold 60 FPS — Same category, same reader problem: GB on disk and the settings floor
- What a 60 GB game asks of the same machine — Hardware bridge: shows the other end of the storage and GPU scale