Getting Started...

[Nathan S]

Hi all, I built an arcade cabinet and was using a raspberry pi with retropie as the brain for the arcade.   I have found that it is underpowered and does not play a lot of the games and have found it to be unstable. For example, right now it is not booting, this may be because my kids sometimes probably unplug it without shutting down, but still... 

I have reimaged the PI in the past and it still happens.  I am ready to move on to something else that will both be more stable and play more of the games (e.g. Nintendo Game Cube etc).

I have done some research online and am trying to navigate the confusing world of MAME and all the possible front ends etc.  That research landed me here.  I'm hoping to get some basic questions answered:

1. Is MAME the backend for the arcade system, regardless of the front end? Or...?

2. Launchbox was recommended in some places I came across.  Unlike others, I'm less concerned with how pretty the interface looks and that it have the latest bells and whistles,  I'm hoping for as straightforward an install and configuration as possible including clear documentation.  I don't need it to be the fanciest thing out there and don't plan on customizing it significantly, I'm looking more for ease of install, documentation and stable.

3. Can I get the system (the backend and Launchbox) running and stable on this system: AMD A6 4400M APU with Radeon HD Graphics 2.70GHZ Running windows 8.1 4GB Ram, x64 based processor. It is an old laptop I have lying around, it would be great if I could get it running well on this, if not, I'm willing to invest a few hundred on a PC.

4. I've read some things about downloading rom sets? I have a whole bunch of roms from the retropie system I described above, am I better off downloading a specific ROM set from somewhere to match the system I ultimately end up?  Or am I misunderstanding?

Any help is greatly appreciated.  If there are resources I should read up on, please let me know.

Thanks! Nathan

[neil9000]

Hi and welcome.  

1) MAME is a emulator like any other, except it only emulates Arcade games.

2) Not a question, but yes.

3) I'm not a AMD gut so hopefully @Lordmonkus can chime in there.

4) Try them first, they will probably work, but we can advise if not.

 

[Nathan S]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the reply.  Sorry, for #2, I meant to ask, would Launchbox fit the bill in that regard?

And, for #1, I'm pretty new to this, what do you mean by it only emulates Arcade games?  As opposed to console games?  I'm looking to play Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Game Cube games (mostly the nintendo family) and some of the classics like PAc Man, Donkey kong, frogger, Golden Axe etc.

Does that help at all?

Thanks again.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Nathan S said:

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the reply.  Sorry, for #2, I meant to ask, would Launchbox fit the bill in that regard?

And, for #1, I'm pretty new to this, what do you mean by it only emulates Arcade games?  As opposed to console games?  I'm looking to play Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Game Cube games (mostly the nintendo family) and some of the classics like PAc Man, Donkey kong, frogger, Golden Axe etc.

Does that help at all?

Thanks again.

Ha ha,  

OK , sorry for my short but accurate answers.  

2) yes, that is the whole ethos of Launchbox, easy to get your nostalgic games running quickly and easily. (I am of course a mod here, but I am not paid at all)

Mame is a emulator like any other, like a snes emulator, but it only emulates Arcade games, so you would need a collection of said games.

 

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah Launchbox will run on your system but performance may or may not be what you expect depending on certain things like how much other stuff is running on your system at the same time, what theme you use and how many games you have.

I run BigBox on a very old PC hooked up to my TV but I keep my game selection limited, use a lightweight theme and turn off all the fancy effects in BigBox but still looks great. For reference my system specs are the following:

Windows 7
AMD Athlon 3800+ @ 2.4 GHz
2 gigs ram
Radeon 7850 (1 gig DDR5 vram)
Some generic 160 gig hard drive
2500+ games

A dedicated graphics card does help with BigBox and I would suggest if you were looking to build a more powerful dedicated PC for emulation that would be a good thing some point later. I always tell people you can never have too much hardware for emulation even though you can get away with lower specced hardware for the basics.

Mame mainly emulates arcade games but it does emulate other stuff like consoles and home PCs as well but that is a more advanced subject.

Oh and welcome to the forums, feel free to ask any questions you may have and we will do our best to help you with anything.

Since you seem to be new to emulation allow me to point you to a guide I recently write up just for people such as yourself.

 

[Nathan S]

OK, that's really helpful, thank you.

So, just to make sure I have my head around how this all works:

1. I would download and install the emulator itself (let's say Mesen for NES), which enables the actual playing of the game on a windows box and then download and install launchbox which is the pretty front end which lets me browse the games across the different emulators I would ultimately have installed.  Is that right?

2. How does Big box fit into all this? As near as I could tell it is for a big screen experience, which I think would map closely to a full arcade cabinet like I have?

3. In terms of this comment:

At the risk of being a pain, is there a way you could give me an idea of what you mean by keep the game selection limited?  Do you think I could get N64 games running with my setup?  I think that's the console that had the games my kids were most interested in.

I run BigBox on a very old PC hooked up to my TV but I keep my game selection limited, use a lightweight theme and turn off all the fancy effects in BigBox but still looks great. For reference my system specs are the following:

Thanks, you guys rock.

Nathan

[Lordmonkus]

1. Correct

2. BigBox just gives a nice and fancy way or organizing, displaying and launching your games using your controller.

3. Well some people like to have gigantic libraries of every game for every system and when you start dealing with games in the multiples of 10s of thousands of games things can bog down due to the sheer size of the xml files Launchbox / BigBox has to deal with. Smaller libraries <10,000 games shouldn't be a problem though.

[Nathan S]

Great.  

So just to close the loop, do you think my hardware setup would enable playing N64 games?  Gamecube?

Thanks.

I'm sure I'll have lots more questions once I start playing around.  I'm sure your guide will come in very handy.

[Lordmonkus]

N64 and Gamecube will be touch and go with your system specs. I think you would be fine but you really would just have to test them out and see how it goes for you.

[Nathan S]

Hi all,

I am making progress, I've got the Window 8 laptop reformatted, am back at Windows 8.1 and have uninstalled all the junk that ships with the laptop.

I downloaded Mesen but have not yet played around with it.  A few questions:

1. To see if Mesen is working with my setup (I have an arcade cabinet), would I connect it the cabinet and see how the games work?  The setup asked me if i wanted to setup using W, S etc keys and that's what I chose, is that the way to configure it to work with an arcade cabinet?  Any tips here would be great.

2. In terms of Launchbox, I haven't yet downloaded the software.   I see it is downloadable here: https://www.launchbox-app.com/download.   I've seen people reference Big Box, is that a different download?  Is that what I want to use on an arcade cabinet.

Thanks in advance as I try to get everything working.

Nathan

 

[Lordmonkus]

17 minutes ago, Nathan S said:

1. To see if Mesen is working with my setup (I have an arcade cabinet), would I connect it the cabinet and see how the games work?  The setup asked me if i wanted to setup using W, S etc keys and that's what I chose, is that the way to configure it to work with an arcade cabinet?  Any tips here would be great.

Yeah just install it on the PC and set it up and try it out, given your specs posted in your original post it should be fine though.

18 minutes ago, Nathan S said:

2. In terms of Launchbox, I haven't yet downloaded the software.   I see it is downloadable here: https://www.launchbox-app.com/download.   I've seen people reference Big Box, is that a different download?  Is that what I want to use on an arcade cabinet.

Launchbox is the desktop "management" mode though many people such as myself actually use it in this mode 99% of the time anyways. BigBox is the "cabinet / htpc" mode where its controlled using a joystick or controller. This is the mode and exe you will use in your cabinet and it's a part of the same download, no separate download at all.

Ignore the Launchbox.Next.exe file, that is a part of the current beta and will be replacing the standard Launchbox.exe in the future when it's ready.

[Nathan S]

Great, thanks.  So would I want to setup my laptop to autostart bigbox.exe on startup and also to boot directly to the desktop without requiring a password?

[Lordmonkus]

That's up to you and if it makes sense in your setup or not.

[Nathan S]

Hi there,

I spent some time downloading the first emulator and ran into some issues trying to figure it out.  Between kids and work my life is just too hectic to spend hours downloading an troubleshooting emulators and configuring and troubleshooting.  As I mentioned above, I already have the hard work done--I built the cabinet and had it working with a raspberry pie setup, however after a while it became unstable and also wouldn't play many of the higher end games I wanted to play.

That got me thinking, wondering if I could possibly just buy a package online somewhere that comes with all the emulators and everything configured, either a hard drive or, if the price was right maybe even the PC itself.  Honestly, that seems like the only way this is going to get done.

Is such a thing possible?  I did a little bit of Googling and found this:   . Does anyone know anything about it?  Do you know of other places I might look? 

Any help is appreciated!

Nathan

Edited by Lordmonkus

[DOS76]

We frown on trying to do what you are trying to do and the people who sell those to people so you are on your own on figuring it out.

[neil9000]

Dont touch that site, its garbage. Also buying HDD's with roms on them is highly illegal.

[Lordmonkus]

No, and do not link to these kinds of sites, selling pre packaged emulation setups with roms and emulators is illegal and not allowed here.

[Nathan S]

OK, apologies. 

Would it be possible for me to send my laptop to someone on this forum (preloaded with my ROMs) and receive back a fully running system I can plug into my arcade cabinet?  I would, of course pay for the service.  Apologies if I am not allowed to ask this.

I'm just trying to come up with a (legal) way to get my system up and running since I don't have the time to work with it. 

Thank you.

[Lordmonkus]

I'm not gonna say you can't ask but I also doubt you will find someone willing to do it for you.

I will say this though, I highly recommend you learn to do it on your own. Start small with simple systems and emulators, we have tons of guides here on the forums in written form and videos on the YouTube channel walking you through what you need to know.

Learning to do it for yourself will teach you how it all works so when something goes wrong you will know how to fix it easily, it really isn't that difficult.

[neil9000]

A whole playlist of tutorials there.