AstroBob

Hi Folks, We’re thrilled to announce that our friends over at RetroAchievements have just added another major new console to their supported platforms. And this one is bound to get a few arms swinging... The Nintendo Wii! For those not familiar, RetroAchievements is a service that lets you earn community-made achievements in retro games. We integrate their service directly into LaunchBox and Big Box, allowing you to filter, sort, and create playlists based on RetroAchievements data. You can also log into RetroAchievements right inside LaunchBox, and for emulators where we offer integrations, LaunchBox can pass those credentials through for you. We want to congratulate everyone involved in making this happen. It’s a huge milestone, and one plenty of people have been waiting for. The RetroAchievements team are also kicking things off with their Wii launch event, which runs for 4 months through July 19th. Along the way, players can earn points for beats, masters, and bounties, with exclusive event badges available at Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Grandmaster tiers. They’ve also put together a helpful Wii setup guide for getting Dolphin configured for the best Wii experience, and we’d definitely recommend giving that a read alongside this post. If this is your first time diving into Nintendo’s motion-control wonder machine, or you’re looking for a reason to revisit some Wii classics, LaunchBox is the perfect companion for organizing your collection. Let’s look at a few things you can do to build the perfect nostalgic setup. Setup your RetroAchievements account in LaunchBox 🎖️ If this is your first time using RetroAchievements, you’ll first need to create a free account. Then, in LaunchBox, go to `Tools > Options > Integrations > RetroAchievements` and enter your credentials. This allows LaunchBox to see which of your games have existing achievement sets. Make sure Dolphin is up to date 🧰 Next, you’ll need to make sure you’re using a version of Dolphin that supports RetroAchievements for Wii. At the time of writing, a minimum version of `2603a` is required for Hardcore unlocks, or `2603-81` or higher if you’re using the Nightly/Dev branch. You can update Dolphin directly through LaunchBox by going to `Tools > Manage > Emulators`, just make LaunchBox's displayed Dolphin version is higher than the required version. You can also review Dolphin’s RetroAchievements integration options in LaunchBox by going to `Tools > Manage > Emulators`, editing Dolphin, and opening the `RetroAchievements` section. This is where you can see whether the emulator supports RetroAchievements setup through LaunchBox and review the available integration options, such as using your LaunchBox RetroAchievements credentials and applying emulator-specific achievement settings where supported. Scan your library for achievement data 🏅 With all these new Wii sets available, the next thing we’ll want to know is which games in our LaunchBox library support achievements. To do that, head to `Tools > Achievements > Scan for all games / current platform`. If your game uses a supported file format such as .iso or .rvz, and you have badges enabled, you’ll start seeing achievement badges next to supported Wii titles in your library. Badges in Wii games 🤯 I never thought I'd see this day Note: At launch, .rvz and .iso files will correctly pick up achievement badges, but .wad (which are used for WiiWare games) do not. We already have a fix for this and will update this article once that is avaliable Put Game Progress Tracking to work 📈 With over 100 sets ready to go at launch, this is also a great time to put LaunchBox’s Game Progress Tracking features to good use. If you already know which Wii games you want to tackle first, you can start by marking them as Want To Play and building out a little achievement-hunting backlog. From there, LaunchBox can help automate the rest. If you head to `Tools > Options > Game Progress Automation`, you can configure how those status updates behave and choose which progress values LaunchBox should assign as you spend more time with a game and start earning achievements. It’s a great way to keep a big launch like this from turning into total choice paralysis. A fine looking `Want To Play` list if I do say so myself (Donkey Kong Barrel Blast haters come at me) 🤣 Organize your library by control style 🎮 One of the best things about the Wii is how many different ways there were to play, which makes it a perfect platform for controller-based playlists. LaunchBox can pull controller support information down from the LaunchBox Games Database as part of your metadata. To view it, open a game’s edit window and check the Controller Support section. From there, you can create playlists for different control types, such as Wii Remote and Nunchuk games, Classic Controller-supported titles, or pointer-heavy party games. If you just want to browse on the fly, you can also use the Filter button next to the search bar to narrow your Wii library by control type. For example, you could quickly filter down to games with Wii Zapper support or Classic Controller support without needing to build a playlist first. See which of your games require what controls Create controller-based playlists 📂 As one example, why not build a playlist for games that support the Wii Zapper? It’s a fun way to group together rail shooters and pointer-heavy titles into their own little collection. To create it: 1. Create a new playlist in LaunchBox and choose the option to auto-populate it. 2. Add a filter for controller support. 3. Set the rule so that Controller Support (Wii Zapper) is equal to Full Support. 4. Save the playlist and let LaunchBox populate it automatically. From there, any Wii games in your library that have Wii Zapper support marked as Full Support will be added to the playlist for you. Ready to start zapping my way to victory 🔫 Choose the control setup that suits you best 🕹️ One of the nice things about playing Wii games on modern hardware is that you have a few different options. Depending on the game and the experience you want, you might prefer a keyboard and mouse setup, a modern controller with gyro support, or original Wii Remote hardware with a sensor bar for the most authentic feel. If you want help deciding which route to take, or you need help configuring a specific control method, we’d recommend giving the RetroAchievements team’s Wii setup guide a read. It goes into much more detail on getting Dolphin configured for the best Wii experience, including the different control options and how to get them working smoothly. I'm going with the OG Wii-mote/Nunchuck combo, with the gloriously plastic-y Wii-Zapper, combined with the Mayflash Dolphin Bar 🐬 Pay a quick visit to the Wii Menu 👤 Some games will require you to have a Mii, so this is a good time to make sure your virtual living room is properly inhabited. In Dolphin, you can install the Wii System Menu by going to `Tools > Online System Updater`, then boot into it via `Tools > Load Wii System Menu 4.3U`. Once you’re in, head to the Mii Channel and create your masterpiece, whether that’s a lovingly crafted lookalike or the usual wonderfully cursed Wii-era gremlin. It only takes a minute, and it can save you from running into game-specific requirements later on. I remember sitting on this menu for hours 🥰 Grab yourself a Wii-inspired Big Box theme 🎞️ Now that we’re leaning all the way into the nostalgia, why not give Big Box a little Wii-inspired flair? If you really want to replicate some of that Wii Menu magic, a custom Big Box theme can go a long way toward making your setup feel like you’ve stepped back into 2006. One great example is Mini Consoles It features distinct console-inspired views across a huge range of platforms, including Nintendo Wii, and is all about recreating the look, feel, and atmosphere of the original hardware and dashboards. Enhance those visuals with texture packs 🖌️ We’re not done yet! While Wii games were originally built with much lower resolutions in mind, Dolphin lets us upscale them to glorious 1080p and beyond. To complement those visuals, we can also use custom texture packs to enhance the detail and breathe new life into classic games. The Dolphin Custom Texture Projects forum is a great place to start if you’re looking for texture packs, though there are plenty of fantastic community recreations floating around online as well. If you’ve never installed them before, Putachi’s guide is a great walkthrough for getting everything set up. Title screens have never looked this good! 🎨 A little tease: Wii save management is on the way 💾 And we’re not quite done with Wii support yet. In an upcoming update to LaunchBox’s Game Save Management feature set, we’ll be adding full support for managing Wii saves as well. That means you’ll be able to display save badges in LaunchBox for Wii games with save data, and manage those saves directly from LaunchBox by backing them up or deleting them as needed. It’s not part of this rollout just yet, but it’s coming soon. Remember this interface? Soon you'll be able to replicate nuking your Wii saves one-by-one directly from LaunchBox 😉 So, what Wii set will you tackle first? A huge congrats again to the RetroAchievements team for another massive rollout. With so many Wii games to choose from, what will you be playing first? For me personally, my go-to will probably be the Mario Galaxy games. They’re some of my favorite memories on the system, and they feel like the perfect sets to dive into ahead of the Super Mario Galaxy movie arriving next month. What are some of your favorite Wii memories, and what sets will you be tackling first? Let us know down below. Happy gaming! AstroBob

We’re working on addind .iso support as a format to be recognised by LaunchBox’s auto-rom import featureset. You can upvote the request here to be notified when it goes live: - https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/ps3-iso-support

Thank you both for the updates here. Yes, we've definately seen issues where the playtime synced to the cloud is taking president over newer updates, so if it's synced at 0 hours, LaunchBox tries to download this playtime first and incorrectly overwrites the newer playtime Thank you, let me run some tests on this and see if I can reproduce this. I'll keep testing this and keep y'all posted

Hiya, Thanks for the detailed report here and sorry the issues, but glad to hear the dynamic box sizing somewhat improves performance here. I wanted to chime in to flag that we're actually working on an update to the image grid behind the scenes to improve it's performance. We have a full writeup of the current image grid implementation and how we aim to improve it over on our feedback site, and linked below here: - https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/improved-performance-mode-for-image-grid We're hoping to put this into a beta in the near future, but if you'd like to try it out, feel free to upvote that post, that way you'll be notified once it's ready to test. It would be interesting to hear the impact that it has when viewing the `all` category, as it's specifically designed to be a more performant mode for these specific large views. Cheers,

Hi Folks, Thanks for the suggestions and reports here. We've gone ahead and opened an official request for this feature on our feedback site. - https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/allow-alternative-sorting-options-in-big-box Feel free to upvote and add any additional context for how you see this working. We'll be sure to post any updates to this over on that request. Cheers,

This is something we plan to add in the near future, aiming for the upcoming 13.27 release. Not just softcore, but other types of RA stats as well. You can follow the post below to be notified when it goes live: - https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/allow-for-retroachievement-score-to-be-switched-to-softcore

Hi Folks, Just to close off this thread, we've just released the hotfix release 13.26 to address a lot of these issues.

Version 13.26 - Released February 10th 2026 Release Summary Release Summary: https://feedback.launchbox.gg/changelog/launchbox-for-windows-1326 Full Changelog: https://www.launchbox-app.com/about/changelog New Features: Added full FinalBurn Neo arcade ROM import support across both the Single Platform Import wizard and drag and drop imports, making it easier to bring FBNeo based arcade collections into LaunchBox Added a new Big Box option that lets video audio play alongside background music, giving you more control over how your setup sounds with proper music priority behavior Improvements: Smarter auto play behavior for thumbnails so videos only auto play when a game has music and background music resumes properly when it does not Optimized music playback in LaunchBox to run off the main thread and reuse the same VLC session, improving overall performance and playback stability Improved background rendering safety so image and video backgrounds are handled correctly across views without images being treated like videos Hardened video volume handling to prevent rare errors when video players are shut down or reloaded Improved image caching reliability to better handle file system edge cases and ensure cached images are written successfully Reduced memory usage in Carousel and Media List views by ensuring image resources are properly released to help prevent memory leaks over long sessions Addressed multiple reported issues related to music playback reliability and session management Fixed: Background and game music now loop properly in Big Box and LaunchBox instead of stopping at the end of a track Background music no longer restarts or skips the current track when the screensaver activates Game music no longer continues into the screensaver when it should stop Game music priority and audio mixing inside the screensaver now behave correctly when the relevant option is enabled Background music reliability in Big Box with better playback tracking to prevent music from stopping early or behaving inconsistently at the end of a track Platform videos in LaunchBox now stop playing correctly when the platform details pane was closed Restored video playback on Platform Hybrid views where videos were previously not playing RetroAchievements scanning for 7zip compressed games by extracting ROMs to a temporary location before scanning, allowing compatibility checks to work correctly for archived files Arcade imports no longer incorrectly reject files that are not listed in Metadata.xml when force metadata is not enabled, improving support for non MAME Arcade files such as Hypseus Singe A problem that could cause the Single Platform and drag and drop import wizards to become unresponsive near the end of the import process should no longer occur Resolved an issue where the left sidebar could fail to show or hide correctly

Hiya, we've had reports where Microsoft's Smart App Control in Windows 11 could be causing conflicts here. We've just pushed out another signed version of the installer that should the specific file yours is failing on. Can you delete the installer, and re-download it again through LaunchBox and let it run the update. Let us know if that goes through this time Cheers,

Hi Folks, sorry for the delayed response here and thanks for taking the time to report these. We really appreciate the feedback here and it's totally valid, we know we slipped up with the 13.25 release, a lot of things slipped through that shouldn't have and apologies for any issues caused there. We outlined a bit around that in our 13.25 known issues post here: However, a new beta for 13.26 that directly addresses most of the issues reported in 13.25 has just gone live, include issues you mentioned such as: Missing backgrounds in Big Box Vertical wheel issues Issues with music and screensaver mode in Big Box Soundtrack priority issues We understand not everything may be addressed (i.e we know there are still issues with Steam trailers which requires a bigger re-write), but we're aiming to focus this next release on as many fixes as possible. If anyones comfortable giving it a whirl, you can find the full details here: Apologies for any issues caused with this latest release, we appreciate it's been a bit rocky but hoping to get things back on track with 13.26. Please do keep us posted with any issues still outstanding on this latest beta and we'll do our best to try and get them sorted

Hi Everyone, We have just released 13.26 beta-1, which contains a ton of fixes from the 13.25 release, as well as some additional quality of life improvements. You can see the full list of changes here: It would be great if folks experiencing any of the listed issues could give this a spin to see if that solves them. For any outstanding issues, please jot them down on the new beta post so we can continue to investigate. We're aiming for this next release to be a much shorter release cycle focused mainly on fixes, so do let us know if there's any issues still affecting you here. Thanks for bearing with us while we got this hotfix out.

Hi Everyone, We have just released 13.26 beta-1, which addresses everything mentioned here (except for Steam Trailers, since that requires a bigger rework. It also includes a bunch of fixes around music in Big Box, and much more. You can see the full list of changes here: It would be great if folks experiencing any of the listed issues could give this a spin to see if that solves them. For any outstanding issues, please jot them down on the new beta post so we can continue to investigate. We're aiming for this next release to be a much shorter release cycle focused mainly on fixes, so do let us know if there's any issues still affecting you here. Thanks for bearing with us while we got this hotfix out.

Thanks for this report, we've confirmed this and already fixed it up, it's pending the upcoming hotfix release. You can upvote the known issue report for it here to know when it goes live. Also it lists a temporary workaround if you're stuck without a sidebar currently: 🔗 https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/section-sidebar-cannot-be-shown-or-hidden

I've just updated the post with a new known issue that was discovered with the sidebar. This has already been fixed and is pending the next hotfix release. We've also done some work on the music side but those may not be ready for the first hotfix, but we'll keep you posted. Thanks for the other reports, unfortunately we haven't managed to tie any of these back to the release just yet, but we'll continue to update this post and of course once the hotfix is ready for release

Okay, thanks for that. The fact a new install exhibits the same issue and the fact that that error is pointing to a .dll makes me thinking Windows has a lock on one of the core files needed for LaunchBox to run. Can you run this command in powershell on your LaunchBox directory. This will bulk unblock files via powershell To be safe, run it on the new test install that you created first to see if it helps. Keep me posted