NES Import Front Box Art Region Issues

[hexsorcerer]

While importing No-Intro ROM sets into Launchbox I have found that, for each platform, most games will match with the correct box art automatically but many will not.  For those that do not, there are a variety of problems and solutions, but each requires manual effort in some way.  A few relevant details about my setup:

1. I am using LaunchBox premium, latest version (7.16 as of now)
2. I am using a premium EmuMovies account to download art assets.
3. I have configured my region priorities to always give preference to US/NA art over JP art.
4. This is specifically for Box-Front art (typically the Box-Back is correct for the ones I've checked)

I attempted to document each game that had an issue to isolate the problem, but I've already found over 50 after finishing the B's, and it would take many more hours to complete the entire list.  However, I think every type of problem is covered here, so I'm hoping that this might be enough to figure out how to fix them.  I have identified the following unique issues:

1. LaunchBox downloads both the US and JP box art, but chooses the wrong one by default.
2. LaunchBox will only download the JP box art, even though US art exists.
3. LaunchBox will not download any box art during import (still downloads videos, manuals, music, and screenshots).

For each of these issues, I have discovered manual workarounds:

1. Hit F5 to refresh the title until the correct box art is shown (may have to refresh 5+ times before it switches).
2. Manually download the US art from EmuMovies, and manually place into the correct Image folder.
3. Edit the entry and manually click the "Download Media" button (for games that are not Beta or Proto).

I also discovered one game (Adventures of Lolo) that simply will not import into LaunchBox at all.  Unsure if this is related or a separate issue.  I've seen several other folks having issues with automatic box art selection and region preferences, so I'm hoping that this may help LaunchBox reach 100% automatic correctness.  As I mentioned earlier, I see this problem across all platforms, but it's the same set of problems, so maybe if we can fix these, it will fix the others as well.

Here is an (incomplete) table of titles and their specific problems:

Name	LaunchBox DB ID	Problem	Solution
1943: The Battle of Midway	1018	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
8 Eyes	316	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Addams Family, The	1048	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Addams Family, The: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt	1502	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Adventure Island 3	1509	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Adventure Island II	1023	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Adventures of Bayou Billy, The	327	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Adventures of Dino Riki	1511	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
The Adventures of Dr. Franken	25939	No art downloaded	None (Proto)
Adventures of Lolo 2	1610	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Adventures of Lolo	?	Will not import	?
Adventures of Rad Gravity, The	1611	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Adventures of Tom Sawyer	1612	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
After Burner	2963	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Air Fortress	1373	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Airwolf	329	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing	1027	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Alien 3	996	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Alien Syndrome	1614	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Arcadia VI	?	No art downloaded	None (Proto)
Arkanoid	2153	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Athena	1621	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Athletic World	1622	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Atlantis no Nazo (Super Pitfall II)	26391	NA not downloaded	None (Proto)
Bad Dudes	332	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Balloon Fight	333	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Bandit Kings of Ancient China	1630	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Bard's Tale, The	334	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Bard's Tale, The	334	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Bard's Tale, The: Tales of the Unknown	N/A	No art downloaded	None (Beta)
Baseball	335	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Baseball Simulator 1.000	1634	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Baseball Stars	1635	NA-02 available, JP-01 default	Refresh game until NA-02 displayed
Batman Returns	2765	NA-02 available, JP-01 default	Refresh game until NA-02 displayed
Batman: Return of the Joker	1034	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Battle of Olympus, The	385	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Battletoads	2770	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Battletoads-Double Dragon	2774	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Big Nose and the Witchdoctor	24924	No art downloaded	None (Beta)
Bio Senshi Dan: Increaser Tono Tatakai	?	No art downloaded	None (Proto)
Black Bass, The	1650	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Black Bass, The	1650	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Block Out	?	No art downloaded	None (Proto)
Blue Marlin, The	1652	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Blue Marlin, The	1652	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Blues Brothers, The	1039	No art downloaded	Edit -> Download Media
Bonk's Adventure	1654	NA-01 available, JP-02 default	Refresh game until NA-01 displayed
Boulder Dash	1041	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Bucky O'Hare	1044	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Bugs Bunny Birthday Bash	?	No art downloaded	None (Beta)
Bugs Bunny Fun House	?	No art downloaded	None (Beta)
Burai Fighter	1659	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
BurgerTime	205	NA not downloaded	Manual download and placement
Buzz & Waldog	?	No art downloaded	None (Proto)

[hexsorcerer]

After some more experimenting I came up with a workaround for these issues that (I think) requires the least amount of work.

In summary:

1. Do not use the LaunchBox scraper during import (causes the problems mentioned above).
2. Manually download and place desired art packs from EmuMovies into Images/<Platform>/<Image Type>/<Region> (note: some are only available through sync).
3. Sort the platform by region, then add each region to a playlist (i.e. NES US / NES Japan / NES Europe).
4. Highlight all items within a playlist, then download any missing media for those items (will vary by platform).
5. Navigate to the images folder for the platform, and manually move them into the region for that playlist (since we only download one region at a time, you can just select them all, much faster!).
6. Visually scan the playlist for any remaining issues (most common problem: name mismatch).
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for each playlist as necessary.

The key detail I discovered through all of this, is that LaunchBoxs' Region Preferences feature depends on the artwork being in a subfolder matching the name of that region.  By default, when LaunchBox downloads assets from EmuMovies, it dumps them all into the root folder for that particular image type, which results in the region preferences failing to apply.  Although I didn't fully test this, it looks like it does correctly sort any art downloaded from the LaunchBox DB, which might suggest that the EmuMovies API doesn't provide the information required to do the necessary sorting.  Either way, I believe this is the cause of the "random region" artwork problem that myself and others have encountered after importing a set.

The alternative to this method was to manually scroll through each image folder and Ctrl-click all images for a certain region, and then manually move them into the correct region folder, which took many hours and was error-prone.  Since LaunchBox removes the region info in its file naming convention, I had to select them based on their thumbnail preview rather than using search.  For systems that had no visual difference in region art, this was even worse.

By using this workaround, I ended up with a near-perfect configuration that required almost no "scrolling/clicking" through long lists, which was my desired goal.