Lordmonkus

You may want to check out this really quick tutorial I did that takes a fresh install of Launchbox and Retroarch using the Nestopia core and shows in a quick and simple manner to get them working together.

Depending how large of a library you are planning on having I would look at putting it all on a separate HD. Putting it all on a SATA hard drive vs SSD won't be any difference at all in performance.

I won't get into a debate here at all but if you want to talk about the importing process of Launchbox compared to Hyperspin there is no comparison at all. They are handled in 2 entirely different ways, in Launchbox the actual importing takes longer because of all the scraping and artwork downloading but you do not have to worry about rom naming. Hyperspins import process itself is fast but you have to all the prep work of downloading correctly named roms or renaming them, then you have to download the art packs and match their names to the roms or rename your roms to match the art. You are comparing apples to oranges in terms of importing processes. Now of course if you already have a HyperSpin art collection you could speed up your game import process into Launchbox by telling it not to scrape for art work and then using your HS art after.

I highly recommend putting Launchbox and all of your games and emulators on a separate drive from C:\ all together if possible. If you cannot do this put it right in the root of C:\ C:\Launchbox

I would love to give one of these a try sometime, it's a Hori PS3 / PS4 controller that is wired and has a great looking d-pad. The only thing you may not like about it is it uses the XBox layout. https://www.amazon.com/Horipad-FPS-Plus/dp/B0106XFCPI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486317071&sr=8-2&keywords=hori+controller Without ever holding an XBone controller I think if I were to be buying an all in one controller that is wireless I would go with the PS4 controller despite my minor issues with the d-pad on it, everything else about the controller is pretty much perfect and the analog stick layout is pure personal preference. Since you are buying for 4 players it is costly to buy 2 sets of 4 controllers. On my main gaming system since it is just for me I use the Hori FC and XBox 360 controller. Speaking of the old Epyx controllers, those things are amazing, I still have mine from my old Atari days.

I find you just cannot change directions with the split d-pad as quickly as a proper full cross d-pad, it also makes fighting games like Street Fighter more awkward. You just need to have your thumb over the center and rock it in the direction you want instead of having to make very deliberate presses avoiding the center of the d-pad.

I have the same issue with the 360 d-pad, it's garbage. The XBone controller d-pad looks better but I have not held one to see if it is better.

That's unfortunate, they should make a replica of the Hori N64 controller with it's analog stick, that would be killer. The PS4 controller is really nice and extremely comfortable but I really wish they would have put in a non separated d-pad. Those small gaps in between each direction is annoying, yeah it's better than the PS3 ones but still not perfect. If they would use the same d-pad as the Hori FC the PS4 controller would be pretty much perfect unless you prefer the XBox analog stick layout.

Yeah I haven't seen any reviews of it yet but if it's like their Snes controllers it should be good.

There is the new 8bitdo N64 controller which is wireless bluetooth lik their other controllers.

Yeah the 8bitdo controllers are nice and they are wireless if that is something that is a must have for someone. For me though I don't mind the wire and the Hori FC has the perfect layout vs the Snes 4 face buttons. Having 6 face buttons for the Genesis and fighting games plus the 4 shoulder and "guide" button map to stuff for the emulators makes it that much better.

Thank the developer FaithLV, they did all the work The best tips after spending some time with the program today is to make sure the profile folders match your rom names after importing them into Spectabis and be sure to actually edit a games config in Spectabis itself by turning on Fullscreen and No Graphical Interface. If you don't make at least one change PCSX2 won't fully exit out when closing a game when running through Launchbox. Very minor things.

Yeah those N64 ones are killer and expensive, I want one but not willing to pay that price for one.

Yeah their shit does go up in price after its out of production. Even the previous model Fight Commander is going up in price. It's like 63$ now but I got mine for 35$ https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Controller-PlayStation/dp/B00TKLFES8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486281204&sr=8-2&keywords=hori+fight+commander

40$ is not a bad price though and they really are high quality.

For analog controllers I would suggest either Xbox 360, Xbox One or PS4 controllers. I don't know what the XBone controllers d-pad is like but it looks good. However the d-pad on the 360 controller is absolute shit and the PS4 for is better but not great because of the split directions. If you just want d-pad only controller without analog sticks the Hori Fight Commander is absolutely perfect. https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-PlayStation-Officially-Licensed/dp/B01GVOFIAA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486280196&sr=8-1&keywords=hori+fight+commander I have the previous model of this controller and it really is the perfect controller for anything that doesn't require an analog stick. There is also a Microsoft one with the Xbox button labels but it is the same controller coming soon and Amazon is taking pre-orders. https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Officially-Licensed-Microsoft/dp/B01MSEPQ55/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=jkfty-20&linkId=58c50de1ad87c1d63888177eb659d030 These Hori controllers have 10 foot cables so they are plenty long and are extremely responsive. I cannot recommend these controllers enough, I really love mine. As far as wireless vs wired is concerned I have seen some issues with emulators having problems with controller IDs. When they turn on their IDs change and can cause issues within the emulators bindings. Wired controllers don't have this issue if the controller is plugged in all the time.

It's a recent addition but like I said its very much a work in progress, some games work fine but others sound awful. One nice little benefit with it from what I have seen in some quick testing was that you can simply just load the rom itself instead of pointing to the .bml file like Retoarch Bsnes.

The new beta builds of Snes9x 1.54 and Retroarch cores do now support MSU-1 hacks but still needs more work before it's close to on par with Higan and BSnes.

Now that I have had lunch and settling in to do some further testing I have run into the first thing to really watch out for which is your rom file name in Launchbox needs to match up with the profile name. As an example the rom name Shin Megami Tensei - Digital Devil Saga (USA).iso is no good because of the (USA) in the name because Spectabis uses the profile name Shin Megami Tensei - Digital Devil Saga. The easiest workaround at the moment is to rename the profile folder to match the name of the rom you have imported into Launchbox. These profile folders are found within \Spectabis\resources\configs\.

Yes per game configs have been possible with PCSX2 but always been a pain in the ass. Spectabis makes this so much easier now. The user by the name of FaithLV over at http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Spectabis-Frontend-reworked-111 made frontend for PCSX2 which allows for custom configs per game. Here is a link to the current version as of this post https://github.com/Spectabis/WPF_Spectabis/releases/tag/1.0.2-hotfix Download and install it and set it up by importing your games which is extremely quick and painless. Within Spectabis you can edit each games settings and this will generate a profile for that game. Once you have your games configured how you want in Spectabis you will then want to add Spectabis as an emulator to Launchbox, this will become your PS2 emulator and not PCSX2 even though you will be using PSCX2. Spectabis is more of a middle ware in this process but it all works just fine from my quick testing. In the emulator settings window you will want to enable "Use file name only" In the Associated Platforms tab you will want to set the Platform to Sony Playstation 2 like any other emulator and the command line parameter will be -profile Keep in mind this is a new feature to Spectabis just added because of requests made in this thread on /r/emulation I have only done quick testing on a single game so far but I really wanted to share this quickly with you guys and I will do more testing but I really don't expect any issues with it other than maybe a bug in Spectabis itself.

With a game loaded press the Tab key on your keyboard, then go down to Video Options. Then in there you should see an option for Rotate. I am fairly certain this feature is there for version 0.164 but it could be possible that it was not implemented back then. I am currently running 182 but I do know for certain that it has been in since 168. I no longer have any versions older than 178 to test with to be absolute certain though.

Personally I use Split sets, it allows for more fine control over the games and which version of a game I load.

In Dolphin go to Options > Configure > Interface tab > uncheck Confirm on Stop

Maybe turn down the image quality a notch, animations and the reflection effect.