kurzih

Thank you for the clarification! My main concern was indeed these 18+ games and having a "Not Rated" stamped on them instead of a 18+ or relevant marking. Though that concern still exists, since it's been confirmed that we should have them for the time being marked as "Not Rated", until we get more age ratings in the system. The European PEGI would be the most easy to have content wise next I think. For myself, I'm pretty sure I didn't upload any naughty bits in those wacky but cool Japanese entries (with also stunningly beautiful pixel art & animation) - I have to say, some of them are really, really good games and safe for anyone. I recommend using Retroarch's translation API if someone wants to give those games a go without the need of Japanese language skills: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/ai-service/ I'm using sometimes the version that does a screenshot of the current gameplay while pausing and translates the Japanese text into English. I did stumble into a few potentially policy-breaking images in the Windows section today. Since it's fresh in the memory I will try to find them and do some moderation. I'm sure the community will help!

I'm not sure it's funny to have fascism added in the topic in the world we leave in right now.. but I do understand the situation itself is a bit comical (and time consuming with all this back and forth). We've been discussing about this identical naming a lot in the past and if this Batman game has been switched back and forth, it looks to me that not everyone is aware of the issues. Batman needs to be unique! (that would be a funny topic title ) To put it simply: having the main default name 100% the same with another name on the same platform causes issues with images files, video files and the searching function (you get only one hit even if there's multiple games named the same). There used to be a lot more default names named the same, but thankfully a lot of moderators have taken their time and been naming them the way they do not cause issues anymore - guess how many identical titles there was in the Commodore 64 section? This has been a process going on for quite a while and some think that the alternative naming is the solution without touching the default name, but that doesn't solve all the issues - especially the media issues. Please read these threads for more information, Jason also commented about this a few months back: PS. I was actually the one who first submitted this game, and you are totally right, the game rocks! Edit: Thank you for spicing it up with more media images.

I have a question about the ESRB Age rating field that's been bothering me for a long time. I feel this field is really unclear, even the info tab isn't clear enough: Simply put, my main question is: what is the aim for Launchbox with this field? Is it: 1) To take the age rating found on the game's cover / publisher website and have it in this field (yes, according to the rule in the screenshot). 2) For America only? since ESRB is an American age rating system founded in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Rating_Board 2b) I would assume it's not for America only, but what about games that were not published in America at all? And games pre 1994? 3) And to me, most importantly and confusing: what is the use for option "ESRB - Not Rated". Lately I've seen this used as a mean of "I don't know the age rating, but I don't want to leave this field empty" To my understanding, "Not Rated" is mainly used for online gaming portion of the game, user-generated content and other content that simply cannot be Age rated. If a game has no age rating, then what's wrong leaving this field empty? I find it a bit disturbing seeing for example Adult Only Japanese PC games given a "Age Not Rated" status, when they are actually "Adult Only +18" games in Japan. And I've been submitting probably over a 1000 Japanese entries since this Spring, wouldn't really want to see those "Not Rated" additions on 18+ games I've added (I just leave the field empty if I can't confirm the age rating). Unless "Not Rated" is want Launchbox Devs want for games without age ratings/unconfirmed age ratings? So what I ask is a clarification on this ESRB field - especially the usage of "Not Rated", thank you! Suggestion: could we add an "Adult/nudity content: Yes/No" field? That could probable even open up the possibility for adding missing covers (front/back ), due to the nudity in them (that cover could be hidden in certain conditions if it's flagged "Yes", some of them are quite mild, but I've skipped them too).

Thank you for bringing and explaining your dilemma. I looked at it from a few different sources. It kind of sounds like the game was first released in Europe in 2008 and then re-released in Europe+US later in 2010. I'd say that would count as two game entries (probably they updated the content within those two years), so you get my accepted vote at least!

Had a similar problem a couple of times after updating to the latest Retroarch. Have you tried to empty the cheevos_token code inside the " " in retroarch.cfg?

It's good questions, though I would perhaps think it like this: Publisher/Developer naming should perhaps be chosen depending on how the company is displaying itself to the gamer on the front/back cover (like the company Logo) and/or in-game if there is no cover. For example, would a game start with "Nintendo presents" .. or "Nintendo, co. ltd. presents. Full company names are good for making legal contracts etc., and some company's official names are actually a totally different name than their "publicly known trade name". I also understand that the Publisher varies depending on regions and if it's globally the same company, but named slightly differently, then I think its most commonly used name would be fine as you said. Or if that's not fine, then as you suggest, we would like to have them fully named by region and separated with a Region field option. In the case of a fully named regional name, it would indeed sound odd if for example a game with a different European alternative name than the US name has the Publisher "Nintendo of America", that would be incorrect information. But in the end I wouldn't decline if someone wants to change Rare, Rareware or Rare Ltd., XXXX America, XXXX Europe and so on. Though I doubt if it will be worth the time changing 1000's of entries just to add Ltd. or remove it. And yes, the database default language is English and the default (Primary) region is North America.

You will also get an issue with media files, since both entries have 100% the same default name. They will get mixed up (both entries will use each others images, since they are saved in your images directory using the default name). And it even gets worse with video files from EmuMovies for example. The default name cannot be named the same as another game on the same platform without issues. For this Tetris case what could be done in the database is to switch places with the alternative name (Name + (Publisher) - for example) and the default name. This [Default Game Name (Publisher)] workaround has been done especially in the Commodore 64 platform, since there are tons of games named the same - and the solution works just fine. The other benefit of them being differently named is that the search function results in finding them more easily, not only showing one entry for multiple games with the same name. More about this here, I recommend checking these out: And here:

I can also confirm that this feature is for some reason disabled or hasn't moved to the updated GUI: And when you search with "Search metadata", you get all the fields filled with the metadata found in the Database: But then the emulation field remains empty: And, yes - my default emulator for PC-9801 is "Retroarch". Before the new GUI update, the Emulator field was also auto-filled when there was an entry on the database.

Personally I think that the name in the database should have the Publisher's and/or Developer's name that existed at the time the game was launched. Otherwise we might get for example older games like "Shadow of the Beast" published by "Psygnosis" turned into "Sony Studio Liverpool or XDev" or DMA Design turned in to "Rockstar North" for the game "Lemmings" which would be quite odd to be honest But having aliases/gameography does sound interesting! Launchbox is an eyeopener for gaming history - I've found out so many things I'd never heard of before and I thought I did know a lot already.

As long as it's not the same as the other, I'm sure any of those options would be accepted And if it's from the same publisher (but still different game), then probably (Region) or (Year) would be the next options. I think what makes most common sense is what you could choose, unless/until we get an absolute database rule on this.

For the sake of especially media images not getting mixed up (since they are saved in your image folder using the default database name), please make sure the naming is not 100% identical to the other Monopoly entry, we've discussed this in a few topics before about identical default names in the same platform:

And to put it really simple: In the end the entry doesn't show up in your Launchbox App if you don't have it in your local collection - and you'd be surprised how people do genius workarounds for "impossible" emulation (look at the MAME team for example). What doesn't run today might well do tomorrow. I would love to add some entries that are on the edge of being a game or not, but it's very much a turn off thinking that the time and research I would put on the entry is swept away when someone requests a deletion after the entry has been accepted with a simple line like "this is not a game" or "this is not possible to run without .. " etc. I think deletion requests shouldn't be made lightly and reserved mostly for duplicate entries (which actually doesn't quite work at the moment xD) or totally incorrect information. And remember, my focus about this topic is about video game consoles/devices and products that are considered part of gaming history. I do understand that if we talk about computers, then there is a risk that we'd see Deluxe Paints, Word processors, Animation studios in Commodore Amiga for example (though I wouldn't object to be honest, Amiga can have all the love it can have ). And those would be harder to "promote" in the Launchbox Games Database. And most likely would fail to pass the initial acceptation process. Maybe @Jason Carr might have a comment/guidance on this case? PS. And as a bonus Jason, when could we see more platforms opened in the Database? I'm volunteering for adding at least 50 entries for NEC PC-6001 for example (the emulation works fine) Quite happy with the additions I managed these past months with PC-88/PC-98/FM Towns/FM-7/X1 etc. (except Sharp X68000, credits for the new additions is to someone else, good work btw whoever you are!) - moving on to the next platforms.

This has most likely been brought up, but I agree that there could be more common genres available. Though for Action-Adventure, you can always choose first Action, then Adventure. You can select multiple genre. And for Business there is Management Simulation, which is quite OK for that I think. Maybe we might have a separate poll on this subject or a community vote at some point again, like we did before, after the previous one's list has been completed: I for one would next love to have more options with Game Maps, Manuals and Game Guides. Thankfully that is a work in progress in the 2019 poll list: 24 New Document Fields for Hintbooks, Cheats, and Maps That would enable our Big Box Theme Wizards to implement them in their designs, for example the default template would be nice to have things like this (a raw example): There's enough space where we could have more of those nice info icons (used by ie. favorites, age rating now). And even better, assignable hot keys where you could press them even during gameplay (bringing the map up etc.) and why not below those a game genre icon row? EDIT Maybe this topic should rather belong here: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/forum/63-features/

I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but there is some stepping stones in the way. Which might be problematic for someone's collections, especially when updating metadata. To put it simply, in my opinion: An information field is to be filled with confirmed information. If there is nothing, then the field can be left empty. 1. Potential issue for example if someone puts "Unknown" (as temporary or final information ) in the Developer field. What happens when you want to update your metadata with the recommended settings in the hope that there is new fields/media available that you are still missing:Since the field is already occupied by "Unknown" I would think that launchbox will not be updated by a potential updated field entry if someone has found the actual developer and put it in the database. 2. In general what I would hope is that whenever we do changes and/or additions in the database is that we would not only think about our own local collection, but how it would affect everyone's collection. Putting things back and forth for example will most likely result in duplicate media files (thankfully we have the clean up function to tackle that). And the database exists because it's there to be used by the App - so thinking of how things would look in Launchbox and BigBox is good to think about. 3. We can always do changes that would only affect our own collection in the Launchbox App. For example it's quite fast and easy to Add "Unknown" Developer using the Audit function if you really, really want every field 100% filled with data. EDIT: Even faster, if you use the sort list function "Arrange by" and select "Developer", using Bulk edit takes just a few seconds. 4. I've seen also some fields that might not have been filled the way they are intended to be filled like ESRB rating. In cases like Japanese only consoles/computers the field is probably best left empty since "ERSB - Not Rated" is actually an Age Rating status given by the Publisher if for example it's not rated yet or the online functionality makes it not possible to rate. There seems to be many Japanese adult only games that have a "Not Rated" field activated, when actually the Japanese age rating counterpart does exist for them (most adult only games for example on the X68000, PC-98 games have a round "18" warning sticker on them). Even the instruction on the DB says that the Age rating should reflect what is on the Box:

This command line works on Mame at least for me for all the cartridges. Have you tried without -cass, -cart options: apfimag -skip_gameinfo (-skip_gameinfo is optional, I just like it simple and having extra clicks as little as possible)

Just wanted to make my voice heard: Lately, I've seen a few attempts while moderating that someone is trying to delete Video Game Console / Handheld Console entries from the database that have already been accepted, because they are not "Game" enough. These are not my entries, but somebody did use their time to get them in the Database and they've been there for quite a long time and have been initially accepted. Entries like the Nintendo DS Browser for Nintendo DS or Cooking games, promo discs, cheating software etc. My opinion is that the reason "This is a Games Database, these should not be here" is not a good reason to reduce the amount of entries we have in the Launchbox Database, especially if they have been approved and been there for a long time. Here's a simple guideline suggestion and why I think so: if a software product was made by a gaming company for a gaming console (not talking about computers here) it's place is deserved in the DB and even more if it's part of a ROM collection - it can actually be used in a Emulator or the original TV console/handheld console - it's part of that said console's gaming history. I don't see the harm of them been there. Many would like their full collection ID'd in the DB. I personally would hope that instead of removing (and searching for) entries that are a bit less gaming related, we would use our time adding missing game entries. There are still thousands of game entries that would be very welcomed to the database. EDIT: Just remembered that a few weeks ago I did "Save" someone's entry that was deleted with that "not a game" reasoning and I uploaded it as a new entry with a description and naming that would protect it (so far, so good): https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/134238 (Game Boy Camera's Included games) It was deleted because it was "Not a game". Actually that product is bundled with a game cartridge with games made by Nintendo in it + the software that uses the Camera. This is just an example and one more reason of why I believe these kind of entries should be left in the database.

This is an old(ish) issue/(bug?), that remains the be fixed - there are multiple similar cases: If an accepted deletion still remains in the DB, then it's no use requesting another deletion, since you've done all that you can at that point. I'm afraid it doesn't make a difference trying multiple times to delete it from the DB. I suggest contacting the devs/leaving a bug report. I guess it's here, maybe a forum moderator could correct it if I'm wrong about the process: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues?status=new&status=open

Keep up the good work @Z3R0B4NG, really agree on you on many points! Thank you Personally I like high-quality authentic artwork that look really nice using BigBox (texts readable etc.), those new authentic 3D Boxes on the SNES look absolutely fantastic! I also think there's room for both authentic and fanmade reconstructions/artwork as long as we choose when uploading the most logical image type for them and avoid replacing authentic artwork to fanart/reconstructions or vice-versa. That would also save moderation time if there's no need to change image types. Physical (like cartridges, discs etc.) objects are always a challenge and it's sometimes really hard to find a good quality original source. I welcome every effort. Lately I've been mostly adding new games (Japanese games too! PC98/PC88/FM Towns etc. etc. :P) and also making minimal edits on those game additions like cropping and removing background from discs and converting them to PNG. I think I'll take a break now phew.. Don't mind someone else taking over though! One of Launchbox's best features is that there can be something for everyone. For example some like images that fit one size and others like their images with scratches and bruises as long as they're as authentic as possible.

It's sometimes marked on the filename if it needs an OS to boot depending on what collection the files are from. I use the boot OS alternative on all files by default, but if there are some that don't work that way I then use the "Custom Command Line Parameter" in the Launchbox Emulation tab for them. But most have been working with booting the OS first. For exiting I use the focus button on MAME (Scroll Lock by default) to get "back" the full keyboard control to the host computer instead of the emulated one Then I can normally just press ESC to quit. Or you can also then access the MAME menu (TAB) to switch discs (File Manager). To get the keyboard focus back to the emulated computer just press the Scroll Lock key again.

For Apple IIGS did you try the following without "use file name only without extension" ticked? apple2gs -skip_gameinfo -flop3 And for games needing the OS to boot: apple2gs -skip_gameinfo -flop3 "PATH TO System 6.0.1 DISK IMAGE" -flop4 More on that here: and here:

There are plenty of options when downloading box art from Launchbox, like Fan-Art / Reconstructed. You can choose what you like best and if there's not the type you're looking for, then you can either submit or request one (in the forum's media sections there are a lot of wizards doing magical stuff with game media artwork). By the way, there still are physical (launch) releases for PC/Windows, even if very limited. Not long ago for example, Terminator Resistance: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/122696.

In the end this is a matter of taste. But those XBRZ/XBR filters make the games look really apart - almost like a beautiful remaster (which I didn't reject by the way). I'm sure some would choose the XBRZ version and others the type which I suggested. Personally I'm really fine with just using Fullscreen and Bilinear if available and using some scanlines if needed to get that groovy nostalgia from the 80's-90's. Some filters work well with some platforms and others don't. It's really cool to try out with Retroarch's shaders* for example to find what suits you best or WinUAE etc. to just try to get the view as close as you had decades ago with your original machine. And the Mini consoles are a good example of how 8bit/16bit games have been put to look in 720p HDMI output. Though some (more than the TV mode) filters could have been added Just please understand that there are many views on the matter and all of them are no more wrong or right than the others. Even nowadays some cool Indy games like to have their graphics pixelized á la 8-bit/16bit era. And they works fine on 4k etc. *EDIT: also not forgetting about the fantastic work of @Mr. RetroLust

Hi! Just a quick comment from my part. As I said before in a different discussion, I'm really for uploading new screenshots, especially when there are missing ones. I don't mind if they are upscaled - I personally prefer hi-res images anyway, especially for Box Art (I have been painfully trying to find good ones for new games I've added for example to PC-98/PC-88 etc. and Japanese games for different consoles and also replacing ones that are really low-res). I would just HOPE that screenshots are uploaded without any shaders/filters/special effects. Because they will look quite different from what they used to be. I just uploaded an example after I saw one case (didn't reject it though, just wanted to give an alternative to the uploader): The one that was recently uploaded by someone for the Game Boy Advance Game "Boboboubo Boubobo: Majide!!? Shinken Shoubu": The version I have suggested, I manually upscaled the PNG file to the same size as the upper one (PNG's are great since they are losseless): Sure, my version looks pixelized, but so it should - GBA didn't smooth the graphics like that. But please keep uploading those missing screenshots, this is just my opinion!!

This works for me on most CD based games with the FM Towns Marty console: fmtmarty -skip_gameinfo -cdrm Then you also need to check that CHD/disk/bios path(s) are present and correct in your settings (ie. mame.ini) and you have all the files needed.

Just tried some OpenBOR games. I don't really like making multiple exe to launch games - want to keep things as simple and as automated as possible. I've done a quick & simple script if anyone's interested, until OpenBOR gets an update that will make this obsolete: WARNING! This script will empty the default OpenBOR\Paks\ Directory each time it is run (and copy the PAK file you run from launchbox so there will always be just one PAK there). So you need to have all of your PAK files somewhere else to be copied from. Think the "OpenBOR\Paks\ " as a temporary directory from now on. Make the script (with any text etc editor): OPENBORSTART.BAT (put it in the same directory where you have the OpenBOR.exe - and make sure you don't have any Paks in the "temporary" Paks Directory - if you do, move them somewhere else to be imported by Launchbox): ################## @echo off del E:\Emulators\LaunchBox\Emulators\OpenBOR\Paks\* /Q copy %1 E:\Emulators\LaunchBox\Emulators\OpenBOR\Paks\ OpenBOR.exe exit ################## (change the path to the ones you use to make the script find the files/directories) Things to do in Launchbox: 1. Make the default emulator for OpenBOR point to the "OPENBORSTART.BAT" script and tick "hide console: (and of course in "Associated Platforms" should have "OpenBOR" and default emulator ticked.) 2. Import the PAK-files as usual to launchbox, they will be identified (including their path) in the script with the "%1" mark. 3. When executing a OpenBOR game from Launchbox the script will first empty the default "temporary" OpenBOR/Paks folder and copy the file you've imported to launchbox and start it automatically, since it is the only one present in the folder. Hope you might find this useful!