I’m curious what most people do

[donarumo]

As I rebuild my Launchbox again I’m wondering what most people choose for the following.

Feel free to suggest other options and questions for the various forks in the road you’ve encountered in your setups

Edited July 30, 2021 by donarumo

[pofo14]

I hide games with no art.

 

For my arcade playlists - I do by "platform" (Mame, Daphne, Sega Model 2 etc.) , and

Under Mame - I have playlists for 4 Player, SHUMPS, Beat Em Ups, Classics, etc.   Not sure I love this - and am interesting in seeing what others do.

[SiriusVI]

On 7/29/2021 at 7:55 PM, donarumo said:

As I rebuild my Launchbox again I’m wondering what most people choose for the following.

Feel free to suggest other options and questions for the various forks in the road you’ve encountered in your setups

For now: 1G1R sets, North America --> Europe --> Japan --> Rest.

Been thinking about splitting the collection and creating a separate Platform for different regions. There are disadvantages to this approach, though:

1. There would be a lot of duplicate games, since most games have multiple region releases. 

2. Some gams have multiple regions (e.g. USA, Europe; or USA, Japan). Where would those go?

3. Artwork might be inconsistent (American Artwork turning up on Japanese region games)

4. The curation effort would be much much higher.

5. What to do with the "Rest" regions (other than North America, Europe and Japan)? Having a "Rest" or "Various Regions" Platform is not optimal. Having Regions like "Germany" or "France" Platforms with just a few games in them is unpractical.

 

In conclusion, I think I'll stay with my 1G1R set. Having different regional versions is intriguing, but I guess I could just research what games have differences that are interesting enough and then manually adding these games into the collection. E.g. Contra III on SNES is "Super Probotector" in Europe. It has different sprites, everyone is a robot. So I'd add this version as an additional app to Contra III.

Edited July 30, 2021 by SiriusVI

[Archmage_R]

1. I have my launchbox split like this:
I have all games in for example "super nintendo" as one, with europe being the default (yes I know it is sub par compare to 60hz USA, but it's a nostalgia thing).  I have the additional regions under "additional apps". So for instance the game "Super pang" will be called just that, and then "super buster bros" will be listed as an additional app as the "USA version".

Then I have all games that are in japanese only under "Super famicom", this is so that both me, and any friends I have over can grab any game they want under the super nintendo platform and be sure that they can both play and understand it.

With platforms like Amiga, I have one platform called amiga, and then I have a different platform straight below it that is called Amiga (non english).
I use two different clear logos that both say Amiga for each platform respectively, but they are different in appearance/colour.

I do however when I google and find regional differences (Like for instance the japanese version of symphony of the night has 2 extra familiars cut from the english versions, or for instance actraiser 1 which is easier in the USA version because it was nerfed because the japanse believed it would be too hard for american audiences, and the pal version is somewhere in the middle of the two).  Add any games with regional difference to a playlist simply called that, because then I know that all the games in that playlist has differences between it's versions.
I also made one for games with fan translations/romhacks etc.

4. I always create images for any that are missing using paint.net. Making sure that I have at an absolute minimum, box art and clear logo. For stuff like fan games and mods and such I just make simple and "good enough" box art.



I also record videos for the games that are missing them, or have bad videos (choppy sound/laggy/really bad gameplay etc.)

I add all games on a one by one basis, so I all the 3000 games I have in my launchbox has all the media it needs.

Like here is the box art and clear logo I made for dune dynasty (a fan continuation of dune 2), It is not amazing, but it looks fine in launchbox, at least  on my 60inch 4k tv.
+ the current amiga logos I use (might change em later)

Edited August 1, 2021 by Archmage_R

[Archmage_R]

On 7/29/2021 at 10:44 PM, pofo14 said:

I hide games with no art.

 

For my arcade playlists - I do by "platform" (Mame, Daphne, Sega Model 2 etc.) , and

Under Mame - I have playlists for 4 Player, SHUMPS, Beat Em Ups, Classics, etc.   Not sure I love this - and am interesting in seeing what others do.

Not for mame specifically, but I have two "Play modes" playlists, (One for all my favourite games, and one for all the games I have not played yet) with sub playlists based on amount of players and type of multiplayer.

This way when I have friends over I can for instance find all games that are 2 players + and allows for simultaneous plays, or all games that are for 4 players + alternating, online/link cable/lan only or any combinations of this.
Cuts away all the "Does this game have multiplayer?" "Did that game have alternating, or simultaneous coop?" "what games can we play with more than 6 players?" etc.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Archmage_R

[Freestate]

I create custom boxes for all the games without retail boxes, most of the snes/superfamicom fanboxes for nintendo power, some satellaview and prototypes are designed by me, also the carts.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Freestate

[OhBoy]

I spent 3+ years scouring the web for artwork, so every game has at least a box front and screenshot. My platforms are separated by manufacturer. Each platform has every game imported, with North America being the priority region, and every other version as an additional app. Every regional exclusive outside of North America is in their own playlist. So for example if you load into my setup you’re presented with Microsoft, NEC, Nintendo, etc (there’s also All Favorites and Playlists categories listed on the root menu with the manufacturers). Click on NEC and you’re presented with TurboGrafx-16, TurboGrafx-CD, SuperGrafx, and PC-FX. Click on TurboGrafx and you’re presented with Favorites, All Games, North America, Europe, Japan, Genres, Play Modes. 

[SiriusVI]

45 minutes ago, OhBoy said:

Each platform has every game imported, with North America being the priority region, and every other version as an additional app.

Did you do that manually? I tried auto importing my No Intro SNES collection that way, but in many cases, regional variants were not combined with the North American version, but instead added as a separate game. That happened with many Japanese Games that had a different title from the North American version, e.g. Donkey Kong Country 3.

[OhBoy]

1 hour ago, SiriusVI said:

Did you do that manually? I tried auto importing my No Intro SNES collection that way, but in many cases, regional variants were not combined with the North American version, but instead added as a separate game. That happened with many Japanese Games that had a different title from the North American version, e.g. Donkey Kong Country 3.

Yeah it was automatic. 99.9% of the No-Intro sets combine correctly for me, including the Donkey Kong Country games. How long ago did you try? I recently re-imported my entire collection without much issue.

[SiriusVI]

10 hours ago, OhBoy said:

Yeah it was automatic. 99.9% of the No-Intro sets combine correctly for me, including the Donkey Kong Country games. How long ago did you try? I recently re-imported my entire collection without much issue.

Interesting. I tried that quite a while ago. Maybe it works better now. Do you also import different revisions of the games? I have also had problems with that, e.g. lower revisions were made default.

[Gosunkugi]

I have it set up to show Platform Categories, and I strive for completeness, so I like to split each system when I can into Region, Public Domain/Homebrew etc. That way I can have all the different box art, which for me, aside from having everything in one place, is a big draw for using Launchbox. I spend far too long just browsing the art, and like someone mentioned above, I like to create my own for games that are missing it.

When it comes to importing games I like to take it slow, getting the names right, fixing errors, reducing the file sizes of the images, adding metadata, and yeah playing the games too . As you can imagine when you have a platform with a large library, this can take a while. Heck, I'm still working on several, and will be for a few months to come yet.

I don't have the licensed version of Launchbox however, so no Big Box for me, I don't see the point of all those bells and whistles when I'm gaming on a laptop. So no movies, marquees, logos, cart images, back of boxes. I keep it simple with box art and a title screen, that's all I need.

I'm on the fence on combining games at the moment. I do it occasionally, but for the most part I'll just go with the latest version and delete the redundant ones.

Also the Virtual Boy is a handheld, and I'll die on that hill. ?

[OhBoy]

12 hours ago, SiriusVI said:

Interesting. I tried that quite a while ago. Maybe it works better now. Do you also import different revisions of the games? I have also had problems with that, e.g. lower revisions were made default.

Yeah I do, I think LB chooses alt and revisions as the default. I import betas and prototypes separately because LB tries to make those default. When I import those I use the option to not import duplicates, that way only betas and protos that weren’t released get imported. 

[SiriusVI]

21 hours ago, OhBoy said:

Yeah I do, I think LB chooses alt and revisions as the default. I import betas and prototypes separately because LB tries to make those default. When I import those I use the option to not import duplicates, that way only betas and protos that weren’t released get imported. 

Interesting. I may give this another shot =).

[SiriusVI]

On 8/13/2021 at 9:13 PM, Gosunkugi said:

so I like to split each system when I can into Region

How do you deal with games that have multiple regions, e.g. "(North America, Europe)". What do you do when a system has regions with just one or two games in them (Gremany or France)?

[Gosunkugi]

On 8/15/2021 at 10:22 AM, SiriusVI said:

How do you deal with games that have multiple regions, e.g. "(North America, Europe)". What do you do when a system has regions with just one or two games in them (Gremany or France)?

I find it easier in those cases to create a region called World, that contains the combinations, JUE, JE, JU, etc. It works for now and keeps things neat, but I'm not satisfied with it because I don't get all the easily browsable box art. So eventually I'll probably just end up duplicating entries, when time permits. I haven't added the German and French releases to Launchbox yet except when the games are exclusive to that region, and then they just go in Europe. Perhaps I could create a new category for 'other' that holds them, as well as any Brazilian or Australian releases if there's only a handful.

[SiriusVI]

On 8/16/2021 at 6:33 PM, Gosunkugi said:

I find it easier in those cases to create a region called World, that contains the combinations, JUE, JE, JU, etc. It works for now and keeps things neat, but I'm not satisfied with it because I don't get all the easily browsable box art. So eventually I'll probably just end up duplicating entries, when time permits. I haven't added the German and French releases to Launchbox yet except when the games are exclusive to that region, and then they just go in Europe. Perhaps I could create a new category for 'other' that holds them, as well as any Brazilian or Australian releases if there's only a handful.

Yeah, well none of these solutions is perfect. Would be great if Launchbox had a no intro full set importer which could automatically create playlists for different regions, similarly to what the mame full set importer does with its playlists, but for regions

That way you wouldn't need to manually duplicate roms.

[Gosunkugi]

What I'd love is if when you combined games, they visually stacked behind each other like playing cards in solitaire. That way if you clicked on the thumbnail, it flipped to the next one in line, showed the relevant boxart and the current metadata. You could put region specific details in the notes and see it at a glance. Right now combining games you only ever see the one.

[SiriusVI]

3 hours ago, Gosunkugi said:

What I'd love is if when you combined games, they visually stacked behind each other like playing cards in solitaire. That way if you clicked on the thumbnail, it flipped to the next one in line, showed the relevant boxart and the current metadata. You could put region specific details in the notes and see it at a glance. Right now combining games you only ever see the one.

That would be awesome. In BigBox there could be a "flip region" switch or something. That would make me reconsider my way of organizing roms. But for now I'll just stick to a 1g1r set.