AstroBob

Hi Folks, Thanks for reporting this, this is a known issue in 13.18 as the Use Emulator to paly this game is incorrectly being checked when doing these types of imports. I just wanted to let you know that we’ve confirmed this behavior, and it is indeed a bug. We’re working to address this in our upcoming beta. In the meantime, for storefront games, it’s recommended to use storefront importers. For standalone .exe files, you can simply uncheck the Use emulator to play this game option after importing. I understand this is far from an ideal solution in the short-term, and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. I’ll keep you updated as soon as the fix is available. Cheers,

Hi Folks, I just wanted to let you know that we’ve confirmed this behavior, and it is indeed a bug. We’re working to address this in our upcoming beta. In the meantime, for storefront games, it’s recommended to use storefront importers. For standalone .exe files, you can simply uncheck the Use emulator to play this game option after importing. I understand this is far from an ideal solution, and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. I’ll keep you updated as soon as the fix is available. Cheers,

Hi there, Thanks for the great question! Unfortunately, attract mode isn’t currently supported in the Game Discovery Center section. It’s a feature we’ve heard requested by a few folks, but due to the way this section handles games—compared to a static list like in other views—it would require a more extensive implementation. Apologies that we don’t have a better solution at the moment, but I hope this helps clarify the situation. Cheers,

Hey everyone, It’s officially 2025—can you believe it?! We hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is feeling refreshed and ready for the new year. As we step into January, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on everything that happened in our community as we rounded out 2024. Let's dive in! TEAM UPDATES: LaunchBox for Windows (13.18) & Android (1.16) Released 🚀 We closed out the year with an exciting double release! These updates brought new features, including the ability to manually import ROM files for multiple platforms simultaneously on Windows, a complete MAUI framework overhaul, and support for direct game imports from network drives with local download options on Android. Alongside these additions, both platforms received numerous fixes, improvements, and optimizations, making them better than ever. It was a great way to wrap up the year! 🚀 We’re Expanding the Games Database! 💿 With some new backend changes implemented, we're ready and looking to expand our growing games database, starting with platforms. We put out a call to gauge which platforms you'd like to see added to the games database, and encourage you to share your picks and join the discussion over on our thread COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTIONS: While our team has been hard at work, our community has been buzzing with activity. We’re actively exploring new ways to showcase these amazing contributions, and although it’s challenging to showcase absolutely everything, we wanted to highlight a few cool things that stood out this month. We’re actively thinking of ways to expand this and feature more of your fantastic work, so stay tuned for more highlights in the future! A wonderful little virtual LaunchBox award, courtesy of @DemmyTree 🙌 Best Emulators of 2024 🏆 Modern Vintage Gamer has put together a fantastic recap showcasing the best emulators of 2024! The video dives into the progress made by these emulators over the past year, highlighting major updates, exciting new features, and the advancements that have brought some of our favorite systems to life in incredible detail. If you’re looking to upgrade your build with support for higher-end systems, this video provides a comprehensive overview of what to expect. 🎮✨ Boot Directly into the Nintendo Wii System Menu from LaunchBox 🐬 We’ve all done it—booted up the Wii system menu just to bask in its iconic ambient music and relive the joy of navigating those channels like it’s 2006. (Don’t pretend you haven’t!) Thanks to a great tip from @Retro_Rage you can now set up an entry in LaunchBox that lets you boot directly into the Wii system menu from Big Box. No need to dig through settings—just one click, and you’re back in nostalgic bliss. Let’s be real: who says the Wii system menu isn’t the game of the year? 😏 Sega Master System 2.5D Boxart Pack 🎁 We received an amazing submission from @ABeezy13 , who has re-created the entire Sega Master System front box set in stunning 2.5D! 📦✨ If you're the type of user who likes a little depth to their boxes, this pack has you covered Cover Packs Galore 📼 It's great to see some lesser-known platforms get some love, this time a full cover pack for the ZX Spectrum from @thisvampireheart And @ci2own has been on a roll with full packs for platforms such as the Atari 7800 and Sega Mark III THIS MONTH: January Winter Game Discovery Playlist ☃️ With January here and the winter season in full swing, it’s time to bundle up, grab some hot cocoa, and dive into some frosty fun. ❄️🎮 To celebrate, we’ve added a brand-new Winter Sports Playlist to your Game Discovery Center in Big Box! This curated collection features thrilling games inspired by snowboarding, skiing, ice hockey, and more. Whether you’re carving up the slopes or perfecting your moves on the ice, these games are sure to bring the chill of winter right to your screen. 🏂⛷️✨ Get ready to embrace the season in style! What kind of content would you like to see showcased here? Let us know in the comments below! Happy New Year, and happy gaming! AstroBob

Hi @ChunkyLoverMark thanks for report here. I just ran a quick test, and it seems to be working for me. However, here are a few things to help narrow this down: • Does this issue consistently happen across all platforms, or does it vary depending on the platform? • Does changing the region priorities have any impact? • If you disable all other options except downloading videos, does the behaviour change? Let me know what you find, and we’ll work together to figure this out!

Hi @trueanimus thanks for catching this. This is a known issue in 13.18 and we've got on our list to fix up, should be addressed in our latest beta release. I'll let you know when that goes live. Thanks again for letting us know.

Hi @alvarinho Thanks for the great question! It’s awesome to hear you’ve been archiving your physical media. I’ve done the same with a few consoles, though I still need to get my hands on a cartridge dumper for my N64. As for backing up your LaunchBox build, the software is designed to be portable. If your media, images, and emulators are contained within your LaunchBox directory, the easiest way to back up everything is simply to copy that folder. We also have a guide on moving LaunchBox to a new PC, which might be helpful. It outlines key considerations in case you’re not using the default portable directory setup. If you’re looking to reduce the size of your build, here are a few tips: • Limit the number of images per type: For instance, you can configure LaunchBox to grab only one image for each type, such as clear logos, screenshots, or box art. • Remove videos: If you don’t use them, removing videos can free up significant space. • Use .zip archives for certain systems: LaunchBox allows you to set emulators to extract ROMs on launch for systems that don’t support playing zipped files directly. • Compress CD-based systems: I highly recommend checking out the excellent compression guide from RetroGame Corps for more details on this. • Check your Updates folder: LaunchBox keeps a history of previous version installers in your LaunchBox / Updates folder, incase you ever need to revert. If you don't need these, you can safely delete them, as each one is around 300mb Hope that helps, let me know how you get on.

Hey @ChunkyLoverMark Thanks for the kind words, and I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the streams! I completely understand that YouTube is a preferred platform for watching them. What we’ve tried to do is limit uploading streams to YouTube to those that offer new or re-usable content. Given the nature of the streams, we know they can sometimes include a fair bit of filler and casual conversation, which may not be as useful for re-watching later. In contrast, we’ve focused on uploading streams that are more tutorial- or workflow-oriented. Towards the end of the year, many of our streams fell into the former category, which is why there haven’t been many uploads recently. However, we’re now settling into a more consistent weekly streaming schedule, and we’re definitely looking to improve both how and when we upload them to YouTube. I hope that clears things up! Let me know if you have any other questions, and thanks again for your support!

@Chris V. thanks for reporting this and apologies for the issues here. There's a known issue on 1.16 at the moment, whereby if you have the Show Play Time Tracking Prompt option turned on in your preferences, but you are blocking notifications to LaunchBox at the Android level, then games will get stuck on the loading screen. To fix this, either turn off the Show Play Time Tracking Prompt option in LaunchBox's options or allow notifications to the LaunchBox app in Android's notification settings. Can you confirm if that addresses the issues you're seeing and that it allows you to launch games. Apologies for the issues caused here

Thanks for confirming. There shouldn't be any change to the code that touches scan imports, though if you feel there is a big difference between versions it would be great if you can open a new thread with any repro steps to help us look into it. Cheers,

From all of us at LaunchBox, we’d like to wish you a Happy New Year and an incredible year ahead! 🎉 2024 has been an amazing year for our community, and we couldn’t be more excited to celebrate everything we’ve achieved together. From exciting new features like Auto-ROM Imports, Save Management, revamped Emulator Integrations, and Game Discovery Playlists to the creative themes, builds, and contributions from our incredible community—you’ve all helped make LaunchBox better than ever. 🎮✨ Our community continues to grow, and we’re so grateful for everyone who’s been part of it this year. Whether you’ve shared feedback, created something amazing, or simply joined in the fun, thank you for being part of this journey with us. 🙌 We often joke that playing LaunchBox “is” the game, but behind that humor lies the truth: your passion and dedication to crafting the perfect setups inspire us every day. Seeing the hours and care you’ve poured into your builds motivates us to keep making the app even better for you. 💡🛠️ Here’s to a fantastic 2025, filled with even more gaming magic! 🎉✨🎮 P.S. What do you think of my new build? 😉🔥

Thanks for the update. We use the ROM's region to denote which boxart, regional name is used during the import. If it cannot be determined from the ROM, then it will fall back on your Regional Priorities settings. As a last resort, you can always change the alternative name after import, but the ROM region and regional priorities from LaunchBox's settings is what takes priority. Cheers,

Thanks for trying that. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to bulk set additional names across multiple games, but I understand the conundrum here. To slightly clarify my earlier post, the aspect that actually takes top priority is the region of the ROM. We attempt to determine the region of the ROM file based on its name and assign the region priority accordingly. The “region priorities” section acts as a fallback in cases where we’re unable to correctly identify the ROM’s region. I imagine that since many German-language games are included with the EU ROM, even if you’ve set the German region as a priority, it’s likely defaulting to the Europe designation when you import it. Unfortunately, given the lack of a way to bulk change alternate names, there isn’t an efficient method to update these in bulk. I’m sorry I don’t have a better solution for you, but I hope this helps clarify what’s happening.

Hi there, thanks for the great question! To clarify, on Android, it’s not possible to split the media section of LaunchBox into a separate directory as you can on Windows. All media must remain within the LaunchBox directory, which can be located either in local storage or on an SD card. However, with games, those can live anywhere. When you import games, LaunchBox references the file paths where the games are stored, allowing you to split them across multiple SD cards if you wish. Hope this helps clarify! Let me know how you get on.

Thanks for that. For now don't worry about loading JoyTray as a regular Windows startup, we want to confirm that the Startup Applications section within LaunchBox is working as intended. SojJust to clarify: When you add JoyTray.exe to the Startup Applications section in LaunchBox, does that app open correctly when LaunchBox loads? And what about when using Big Box? If not, we’ll need to confirm whether that section is launching any application at all. It doesn’t have to be Steam—try adding any executable file to that section. The goal is to verify whether LaunchBox and Big Box are correctly opening the specified .exe files when the applications start. Let me know how it goes!

Hi there, Thanks for reporting this. The email should contain a .xml file as an attachment, which is your license. The email subject should be titled something like "Your LaunchBox Premium License" Please check to see if you have that email or if it’s been caught by your email client's spam filter, as the email should be sent out instantly. If you’re sure you haven’t received it, please drop a mail to support@unbrokensoftware.com with your details and they’ll be able to get you sorted. Cheers,

Hi Folks, I believe if you delete these additional update / DLC entries from LaunchBox, it won’t try to re-import them. Or are you finding after doing this it keeps re-importing them?

HI @ChunkyLoverMark, Thanks for reporting this! To get platform videos working, follow these steps: 1. From any platform view, press the three dots in the top-right corner and select View Settings. 2. Ensure the Background Videos option is turned on. The platform video will then play in the background of your view. There are also a few additional options, such as hiding the box image, to make things look cleaner. Hope this helps! Let me know how it goes.

Hi Mark, Thanks for reporting this. Unfortunately, YouTube recently changed something on their backend which broke the way we stream videos. We're looking into ways we can address this. I'll try and update you once we have a better idea of when you can expect this to be fixed. Thanks for bearing with us in the meantime. Cheers,

Oh, sorry about that. Lots of bugs in my head That one is already fixed, I was using this as intended just yesterday. Though looking through the release notes I don't see any entry for it, so it's possible we missed that. Apologies if that's the case, but this should be working at expected again on 13.18. Let me know if you notice otherwise

We've confirmed this is indeed a bug and will get this fixed up, thanks for flagging this If you're talking about the import wizard incorrectly asking you to specify a core, even when a default one is set, then yes it's our list and we are working to get that one fixed up

Hi There, If you clear out the platform field and then search for the DB entry, do you see both versions, or still only the Wii one? If so, can you try settings the platform to Arcade first, and then searching? It should restrict searches to whatever you have set in your platform field. Let me know how you get on

Hi there, Thanks for the great question! If you have Enable Automatic Imports on Startup turned on under the Tools > Manage > Storefront section, LaunchBox will automatically import locally installed games when you first start it up. However, if you’ve deleted those games from your library, they won’t be re-imported automatically. LaunchBox keeps track of which games you’ve deleted to prevent re-importing them repeatedly—this is particularly useful for games you intentionally want to exclude. That said, the easiest way to bring those games back is to use the Tools > Import > Steam Games option. Here, you’ll be prompted to enter your Steam API key. Once that’s set up, you can select from a list of available games and choose which ones to import. I hope this helps clarify things! Let me know if you need further assistance or run into any issues.

No worries, thanks so much for that stellar description and detail over on the other thread. We really appreciate that and is exactly what we're looking for to help us add these platforms. Make sure to follow that thread to stay up to date when we make additions. We're planning to have some new ones lined up early in the new year. Cheers,

Hi @FfReAkDude, thanks for the question. I’m not entirely sure, but I believe that under Options > Data > Region Priorities, if Germany is listed at the top, the system will prioritize that region for relevant data. I know this works for box art, but I think it may also apply to additional names (assuming a German name exists in the database). Could you test this with a game you know has a German additional name in the database and let me know how it goes?