[The LaunchBox 2021 Community Poll]

As to the poll question about Suggested/Recommended games....this is the single most important thing to me, if it is focused on retro games only.  And so long as it does not morph into low-key advertising or monetization stream. 

As a noob to retro gaming, having thousands of roms is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.  No normal person is going to play a thousand games and, more to the point, no normal person is going to enjoy trudging through that many games to find out what they like. 

At most, what I really want access to is the best 50 to 100 games from across all retro arcade/console platforms, based on user reviews and popularity. 

Now, yes this should be a feature the user can enable/disable.  It should not ruin the user-interface experience.  It should only add to the experience. 

Also, I see no reason for this feature to be applied to modern games (console or pc).  It only makes sense as applied to retro games.  I don't need Launchbox to recommend modern games to me. 

 

[If Retroarch is a frontend and LaunchBox is a frontend, why do I need to use Retroarch within LaunchBox?]

4 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

Because up until recently the Retroarch team did not want Jason to integrate it into Launchbox but they have changed their stance on this recently.

There are some personal builds out there on the internet but they will require some searching on your end due to the fact that all of them include roms.

Also it is much easier to do a full pre packaged solution for a Pie because the hardware configuration is completely known unlike a PC where hardware configurations vary drastically.

You don't have to if you don't want to. You can use Retroarch on its own or you can use any other emulator you choose in Launchbox.

That makes a lot of sense, now.  Thanks.  Glad to hear there may be some tighter integration between the two. 

I guess what I also needed to learn (and just learned is):  Launchbox/Bigbox is for visually pleasing / comfortable user interface to manage roms, while retroarch is for managing the emulators.  Maybe this isn't correct, but that's my understanding for now.

[If Retroarch is a frontend and LaunchBox is a frontend, why do I need to use Retroarch within LaunchBox?]

I'm trying to figure out the relationship between Retroarch and Launchbox, and how to "correctly" use the two together. 

If Retroarch is free and has something that Launchbox needs, why doesn't Launchbox (or Bigbox) build it into their frontend?

Also wish there was a complete packaged solution for pc, like there is for retropie, is there?

Thanks for the help. 

 

PS.  I've tried to research this question but have not found any good answers to it.