gnwinter

Thanks. Ya I guess I should have posted when I have more specific questions. Ill post again after I try it out and figure out what doesn't work.

So I got a Windows 7 PC in the hopes of making it into a dedicated retro gaming console. I want to emulate NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, and PS1 games on it. I want to eventually be able to control everything through my wired xbox 360 controller and not have my keyboard or mouse even connected to it unless I need to tweak something. I have been tinkering with it for weeks and can't seem to get it to do exactly what I want it to. I am very inexperienced when it comes to editing config files and using commandline commands. I tried retroarch, and it does exactly what I want, but I still have to have a mouse and keyboard to start it and turn my PC off, and that GUI isn't the best. I then tried EmulationStation, and it sorta worked. I used it as the front end to retroarch, but I can't seem to exit one game and choose another one seemlessly. If I exit a game it would go to the retroarch GUI instead of EmulationStation, then if I exit retroarch it would take me back to my windows desktop. So then I tried Kodi and Rom Collection Browser. But I must be typing in some commands wrong because I can't get it to find my roms. Then I tried Steam and a program called ICE that is supposed to import roms and emulators into Steam's game library. I thought that I followed their tutorials exactly, substituting my rom paths and emulator paths, but still never could get it to find my roms. Needless to say, its been quite a frustrating journey. I have scoured the internet and read several forums where people describe how they have their PC's to run emulators seemlessly using the various methods I have tried. I have yet to try Launchbox and Big Box, but it will be my next step. Any advice, hints, tutorials, testimonials, or other tidbits anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated. I have the latest version of retroarch with several cores running fine and I also have standalone emulators (Nestopia, SNES9x, Fusion364, project64, and ePSXe) that I have set up that also work fine. My system specs are windows 7 64 bit, 8gigs ram, 320gig harddrive, AMD HD 6450 1gig video card.