🕹️ Database Matcher & Auditor 2.0 for LaunchBox

Database Matcher & Auditor 2. is an automated library auditing and database matching plugin for LaunchBox. It scans your game library for unmatched titles (games missing a LaunchBox Database ID) and uses a multi-threaded fuzzy matching engine to accurately find and assign their official LaunchBox DB IDs. Based on slipsystem's Launchbox Games Database Matcher idea but taken it a bit further.

Once DB IDs are assigned, you can instantly scrape missing box art, clear logos, fan art, and trailers using LaunchBox's native metadata download tools.

✨ Key Features

• 📊 Full Library Auditor: Instantly scans your library or specific platforms to identify unmatched games, missing box art, missing logos, and missing video snaps.

• ⚡ Fast Indexing & Multi-Threading: Uses an in-memory inverted word index to search the launchbox database records.

• 🧠 Smart Title Normalization:

  • Strips bracket tags (USA), disc tags (Disc 1), version strings (v1.02), and punctuation.

  • Automatically splits CamelCase & PascalCase titles without spaces (e.g., converts SuperMarioBros 

    →→

     Super Mario Bros).

     

• 🎯 Fuzzy Matching Engine:

  • Consecutive Word Sequence Scoring: Prioritizes titles with 2 or more exact sequential matching words (e.g., matches "The Empire Strikes Back" to "Star Wars Episode IV: The Empire Strikes Back").

  • Sub-phrase & Sliding Window Detection: Handles titles embedded within series prefixes or subtitles.

  • Phonetic Penalty: Heavily penalizes false phonetic matches that lack actual word overlap.

• 🌐 Optional Cross-Platform Matching: Toggle cross-platform searching to find matches across alternate console/arcade releases . Only use this if your not fussed about accuracy. This gives many more results and more accurate title hit rate at the cost of having other platforms art work. I figured any artwork for the game is better than none. this is off by default though. 

• 🔍 Interactive Match Resolution:

  • You can edit cleaned titles directly in the grid and click 🔍 Search to re-query instantly for that title.

  • Double-click any game row to view up to 20 top candidate matches (top 10 current platform + top 10 cross-platform matches if enabled).

  • Assign confidence threshold slider (default: 80%) for safe bulk auto-matching. High the slider the less results but more accurate.

Installation : Extract the LaunchBox.DatabaseMatcher folder to the launchbox\plugin\ folder and Restart Launchbox

Currently WIndows only as far as i know.

🎯 Primary Use Cases

1. Fixing Unmatched Imported ROM Sets: Quickly assign DB IDs to imported MAME, homebrew, custom ROMs, or Japanese/European collections.

2. Much higher accuracy/ hitrate on malformed file titles.

3. Metadata & Media Scraping: Fixes many more grey placeholder boxes than the standard launchbox search, by preparing unmatched games for LaunchBox's built-in media downloader and looser word scoring engine.

4. Cross-Platform Media Fallbacks: Match obscure ports or arcade titles to console database entries when a specific platform entry is missing media.

💡 Tips for Best Results

• Step-by-Step Workflow:

  1. Select a platform (or All Platforms) and click 1. Audit Library.

  2. Choose whether to turn on search all platforms for other game ports/versions. Warning this will give potentially inaccurate artwork, purists stay away! if in doubt leave it off.

  3. Click Search DB Matches to run fuzzy matching.

  4. Adjust the Assign Threshold Slider (80% is recommended for safe bulk auto-assignment).

  5. Click 3. Auto-Assign Matches.

  6. Click 4. Save to LaunchBox to commit changes permanently.

  7. Scan for Media/Artwork in the normal way

• Manual Override: If a game doesn't match correctly automatically, before "Auto assign matches" edit the text in the Clean Title (Editable) column and click 🔍 Search next to that row.

• Inspect Candidates: Double-click any row to open the candidate selection dialog and manually pick the exact DB entry you want. Non platform results will be at the bottom if enabled

• Download Media: After saving your matches, go to LaunchBox's top menu: Tools 

  →→

   Download 

  →→

   Update Metadata and Media for Selected Games to fetch missing artwork!

• If your collection is large i would suggest doing one platform at a time as searching can take a while.