zugswang

This unfortunately is Launchbox/Bigbox biggest issue, it's very slow (2 minutes to load up Bigbox, 30 seconds to load up Launchbox) for me. I thought it was because I had 150,000 games on my setup, but it's slow due to the way Launchbox/Bigbox is working in the background. It has to do too many backups etc and feels like it is looking at the entire setup each time you try to do anything. I also have Hyperspin, and even with 150,000 games on that everything is practically instant when doing anything. (Obviously working in a different way, but using same emulators/media/roms) Hopefully speed can be improved over time, because as beautiful as it looks, this is a fatal flaw for sure.

Why are you using cores ? Just use the MAME emulator for these systems and they will all play fine.

No, you have to add them yourself. Search for devices, clear logos etc and add them to relevant folders and you will see it look better as you do. Not everything is supplied for you, you have to go and hunt it down on the forums, or create it yourself.

If you have the correct romset and bios file combination and have setup Launchbox/Emulator correctly, 99.9% will work.

Worst case scenario, just rename the drive letter to what it currently is.

In my experience it will keep metadata for all the roms you have. In the end to use the bezels you will need to do some renaming. Depends on how important it is to you. 2 hours and it would be done.

Or, just go to the bezel folders and rename them to what the roms are called. The bezels can be named anything as long as they are the same as the roms.

In Launchbox, go to tools,options,integration,MAME and untick both boxes

People say a bad workman blames his tools when someone says that something they have done is not of good quality because they did not have the correct things to do it with, to mean that it is really because they did not have enough skill.

If it's important to you, just edit the xml and look for the emulator details and delete info between <Emulator>5ddb7a93-ff7c-4f45-a986-082900a63a95</Emulator> If you want them all deleted so no emulator is used, then just to a bulk edit.

Copy and paste files to another drive, or sync as you say then remove some files from recycle bin if required ? It's a tough decision, but I will stick to my way of doing it, but thanks for the info. ps, Yes I thought you meant real time syncing which would defeat the object, but the other manual way sounds like way too much hassle compared to just copy and pasting some files. Sometimes the simple option is best.

Thanks, but I prefer to just manually copy over the files, as I know that the exact setup I am copying worked perfectly. If I leave it to sync, it will sync the files I currently have, which may not work. I just want a complete copy of my setup as a backup that I know worked perfectly. For me this is the best solution.

Use the cdimono1.zip from the latest MAME bios files as that has all the files required. I have it setup using Mess with this bios file and all work and play fine.

As with anything on a computer, the best thing to do is backup all the main files, except for the large images, videos, music, games and manual folders. Just copy them to another drive on a regular basis and if there are any issues you can simply copy them back from your backed up folder and replace existing folders. I do this on a daily basis and it's approx 10gb for me and I have 150,000+ games (takes 10 minutes to copy files) Very useful if I start messing with settings etc and any issue arises.

For all the positive's Launchbox has, the one thing it does not have is speed. It's slow everywhere when it is dealing with a process like loading , updating media etc due to the way it is working in the background. I have 150,000+ games and it's taking approx 2 minutes to open Bigbox and about 30 seconds to open Launchbox. No idea if that's the norm, but that's what I get and everyone will be different. Coming from Hyperspin where it loads instantly no matter how much is on it takes a bit of getting used to, but then Hyperspin does not do so much behind the scenes as Launchbox.

I have learnt from experience on both. I would not take what you see online as gospel all of the time (though it's a good guide), it's usual just trial and error for most things. Out of 100 games you will get 1 or 2 that won't load correctly, or will load and then crash after conversion. Once put back to the original file it will play fine. gcz files for Gamecube, I have yet to come across one that has had an issue, but I have not played them all.

Not in my experience, but same could be said for converting to chd,pbp etc I find many games won't load after conversion, especially if the compression is too high.

For Gamecube you can use Dolphin emulator to convert them all to gcz format. They are all compatible with Dolphin and RetroArch.

Thanks for all your boxart that you share, but it would be better if you zipped them up and posted them in downloads. Also naming them would be useful ?

Just tested on latest Windows version 20H2 build on Windows 10 Home and works and plays perfectly here. used game from eXoDos 4.0

Make sure you have actually installed the core in RetroArch first or it will not show up in list of cores.

MAME a nightmare ? A monkey could get it working in 5 minutes. Just download it , drop the roms and bios files into the roms folder and thats it. What's a nightmare about that ?

Check also that you have the bios files in with your romset for the specific version it is, e.g. MAME 0.226 If the bios files are not in with the rom's they will not load also.

Check that you have skip checks set to roms only in RL if you are using split MAME romset and rom extension if you are using merged set or the won't load.

Try and use mesen_libretro core instead and see if that works. Also make sure you have actually downloaded the cores in RetroArch or it won't work. You need to set RA up as well as just configuring Launchbox.