Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

Mame and Retroarch


Itsjimbob

Recommended Posts

I am very new to Launchbox but have been using Mame for 15 years or more. I have recently updated my cabinet and updated my ROMs to the MAME .261 set. I have installed Launchbox and like it. My question is, I would like to play games from other systems than Arcades such as SNES, Atari 2600/5200, Playstation ect. I see that Retroarch is a multi system emulator and think it would serve my purpose. Can I configure Launchbox to run the arcade games through MAME and all the consoles through Retroarch? I dont want to run MAME through RA. Am I better off just adding seperate emulators for each system? Thanks in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I imported some SNES,N64, 7800 roms Retroarch came up as the default and I just let LB do it's thing. Roms are all working so not sure if anything is "wrong". lol.. I did see I could have chosen MAME to run the roms as well but I stuck with the default from LB.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, Itsjimbob said:

I am very new to Launchbox but have been using Mame for 15 years or more. I have recently updated my cabinet and updated my ROMs to the MAME .261 set. I have installed Launchbox and like it. My question is, I would like to play games from other systems than Arcades such as SNES, Atari 2600/5200, Playstation ect. I see that Retroarch is a multi system emulator and think it would serve my purpose. Can I configure Launchbox to run the arcade games through MAME and all the consoles through Retroarch? I dont want to run MAME through RA. Am I better off just adding seperate emulators for each system? Thanks in advance.

Yes, you can do that and most people do it that way.  MAME for arcade and other emulators such as RA for other platforms.  Each platform (e.g., NES, SNES) can uses it's own emulator. You can even use a specific emulator on per game basis if it is capable of running that game type via Edit Game Window and choosing which emulator to use:

Screenshot2024-02-03145737.thumb.png.66bcd5bda4d08e0830586757e08a51c3.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Itsjimbob said:

Thank you. I will try RA and see how it works out. I will only add a couple ROMS for it at first. Do you or anyone else recommend a better emulator for old school consoles or is RA just as good?

You will get a variety of opinions but I think for cartridge based systems RA is easy to get working and performs well on those emulators.  Plus there are a variety of cores to pick from if prefer a different emulator base.  For majority of the older CD based systems like Nintendo 64, NEC Turbografx CD those also tend to be easiest to setup in RA. When you get to "newer" systems like Wii, WiiU and PS3 "on up" then tends to be less beneficial and/or no cores.  The other issue is RA cores can lag behind their stand alone emulator base which usually isn't a big deal for the older cart systems. The advantage to RA is once you get it figured out then other systems are pretty similar to setup. However, MAME and computer systems are main areas I avoid using RA as it adds another layer for troubleshooting particularly if trying to also use via LB. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...