Johnny T

Thanks Bundangdon, yep I'm certainly getting the feeling that Launchbox is where it's at. I do like tinkering with Hyperspin and it really plays into my OCD when it comes to getting a Theme/Wheel Art etc for *every* game and messing around with xmls, although quite tedious, can be satisfying when the system is all set up. However, I'm going to take the punt on LB I think and give it a go. I'm not so bothered about the learning curve as I've tinkered with RetroArch and other emulators before so I'm sure I'll pick it up with the help of YouTube. Thanks for your help and information

Thank you again Neil, that's really cleared it up for me. I think I'm going to buy a yearly subscription and just try it. From what you've said it sounds ideal. My only concern now would be around the speed of the system. The PC I have in my arcade, although it has it's own graphics card, isn't what you would call "high end"!! So I'm just wondering how the system will cope if I throw a thousand MAME files at it???

That's great to hear Napalm. What about from a speed point of view? Do you have many games and, if so, how does it compare to Hyperspin when it comes to choosing the games / scrolling through the choices etc? Is it laggy at all or is all those problems in the past? Thanks for your insight.

Hi Neil Firstly, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Just a quick follow up question that will relate specifically to my install. The way I have it set up at the moment I have Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher etc on the E: drive of my PC. My arcade cabinet (which is remote from the PC) has another PC in it that has an E: drive that is an exact replica. I then just tinker with Hyperspin (adding games / graphics etc) and then run a 'synching' program to synch the two drives together. This works really well. If I went to launchbox - would I need "Launchbox" itself on my main PC and then Big Box on my arcade cabinet, am I understanding that correctly? (i.e. that Launchbox is the configuration tool and Big Box is the software that actually runs)? Or could I just put Big Box on both PCs and then do exactly the same as I currently do? If that's the case do you know if I would need two licenses or just one? Secondly, regarding my Hyperspin question - you're perfectly correct - it was a bit of a daft question as I understand that a lot of launchbox users will have come from other front ends and the fact they stick around is testament enough to how good LB is. But I was more interested if there were any 'specifics' of "I love launchbox but the only thing I miss from Hyperspin is that you could do x y z in Hyperspin but you can't in LB". I just wondered if any of the things highlighted could end up being deal breakers for me. Thanks again for your comments / help, I really appreciate you taking the time out to answer the questions. One thing that has come up time and time again whilst doing some reading etc is how good the LB community is and you're proving that they certainly weren't wrong there! Cheers

Hi all, I have currently got an arcade cabinet I built and have it running Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher. Historically it only ran MAME and Megadrive but I'm now expanding it to include lots of extra systems. Obviously, with this being Hyperspin, it's a lot of xml editing and messing around and I'm now wondering whether I'm better just starting fresh with Launchbox. I've just had a look at a video about the new v8.6 of Launchbox and I've got some really basic questions... 1) Am I right in thinking that Launchbox is the 'free' version and BigBox is the 'paid for' version ? 2) Apart from paying for BigBox what is the difference between the two versions? 3) The videos of launchbox I've watched seem to show it being mouse controlled? I'm assuming that it can be configured to be controlled via an arcade cabinet joystick (my joystick essentially uses the keyboard arrow keys via the joystick and my buttons are set up as standard MAME keys i.e. left ctrl, spacebar, left shift etc) ? 4) Regarding point number 3 - is that maybe the difference between BigBox and 'free' Launchbox - that the former can be controlled from an arcade joystick??? 5) From doing some reading it seems that BigBox/Launchbox is slow when it comes to a system with a lot of games - but the info I read was from 2016 - is that still the case or is it fine now or is it still suited to systems with less games if you don't want to experience laggy performance? 6) Is there a benefit of using Rocketlauncher with BigBox/Launchbox ? 7) If I went down the BigBox/Launchbox route am I better just starting from scratch or can I still use my existing RetroArch / MAME configs etc (I have set up RetroArch to emulate the Speccy with some custom keyboard mapping for each game etc -- would prefer not to lose all that) 8) Is it straight forward to import Themes / Videosnaps / Artwork from my Hyperspin folder or am I better just letting Bigbox/Launchbox download everything again for me? 9) Is there a "portable" version of Bigbox/Launchbox that will work on a normal hard drive and not need to be connected to the internet? I'm sorry if some of these are stupid questions but if you can answer any (or all) of them it would be appreciated. I would also be interested from anyone who has experience of Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher as well to see if they have any regrets in porting over to Bigbox/Launchbox and what (if anything) they miss from Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher. Thank you for any help you can give me. Cheers John