AstroBob Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Can you believe it? LaunchBox is turning 11 years old this month! From humble beginnings to a thriving and passionate community, the team has grown from a single visionary to a collaborative team of over 10 people in various full-time and part-time capacities. Since this week is a time of celebration for us, we want to shine a light on some of the amazing folks who are helping to shape the future of LaunchBox and make it what it is today. While we won’t be able to feature everyone on the team, and there are also multiple contributors both within and outside the community, we hope these posts offer some insight into some of the people working behind the scenes at LaunchBox who you might not know. This will give you a glimpse into their roles and history with the project. We're kicking things off with Andy a.k.a @AstroBob Please introduce yourself and describe your role on the team I’m Andy, but you might know me as AstroBob on the forums. I recently joined the LaunchBox team as our new Community Manager. My job is to create engaging content for our awesome community, including events, articles, discussions, troubleshooting guides, and tutorials. I’m here to help you get the most out of LaunchBox! What is your history with LaunchBox? Having been a console gamer for most of my life, growing up on Sega and Nintendo consoles, I found myself wanting to preserve and consolidate my collection as digital storefronts began closing down. This journey led me to pick up my first gaming PC, with the goal of creating an all-in-one gaming machine. When researching the best frontend, I wanted something that treated my collection like a customizable database. I instantly fell in love with LaunchBox for its rich nostalgic media focus, along with powerful search, sort, and grouping features. It was exactly what I was looking for! A snapshot of my collection, highlighting my favourite game of all time! What advice would you give to new LaunchBox users? LaunchBox can be an incredibly powerful toolbox that lets you elevate your collection to new heights. That said, the amount of options can sometimes appear intimidating, but don’t let that overwhelm you—focus on creating a collection that works for you. While you can supercharge your setup with themes, media, running scripts and plugins, you can also keep it minimalistic and simple. Focus on what works for you, and you can always expand it later. What do you think is the most underrated LaunchBox feature? I’m a huge fan of the “Additional Apps” feature, which lets you track variations of games under a single entry. Whether it’s regional versions, fan translations, ROM hacks, or achievement subsets, it’s a fantastic way to keep your collection organized while enjoying different variations of the base game. Did you know each regional version of Donkey Konga for the GameCube has a completely different tracklist? What upcoming features or developments in LaunchBox are you most looking forward to? I absolutely love the recently released Game Discovery Center. It’s an awesome way to browse your collection when you’re stumped on what to play next. The team has implemented some amazing curations, highlighting games based on specific criteria. But I can tease that it’s about to get even better! Expect new categories and curated lists that will let you experience your collection in a whole new light. Stay tuned! The discovery centre is a great way to discover a hidden gem or that old classic! What’s your go-to gaming setup currently? Right now, I’m rocking a Lenovo Legion Go alongside a Razer Core X eGPU enclosure with an RTX 2080. It's nothing fancy, but it offers excellent portability and flexibility to play wherever I want, and when I need extra power, I can dock it with the eGPU for that extra juice. Big Box is also the perfect companion for viewing rich media on the Legion Go's glorious 8.8-inch screen. As someone regularly on the move, a portable gaming PC has worked wonders for me How do you envision the future of retro gaming? With the recent boom of PC handhelds, we’re entering an amazing new era of retro gaming. It’s now more accessible than ever to experience your entire childhood collection on a single device, all pre-configured for easy pick-up-and-play. From classic consoles to modern classics, PCs offer the best way to experience the games that matter to you. Couple that with a beautiful front-end like LaunchBox, and you have a collection that would make even Grandma envious! There’s no better time to dive into the world of retro games and rediscover your favourites 🎮 ❤️ Stay tuned for more "Meet The Team" posts coming throughout the week! 🎉 4 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acethor Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Glad to have you here AstroBob. P.S - I love using Additional Apps as well, especially for Demo versions of games and also ones that use Trainers 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroBob Posted August 26 Author Share Posted August 26 10 minutes ago, Acethor said: Glad to have you here AstroBob. P.S - I love using Additional Apps as well, especially for Demo versions of games and also ones that use Trainers Thanks @Acethor, it's good to be here 😁 And absolutely, demos are a great use, I like to have things like early demo builds, lost prototypes etc bundles under the same game rather than their own instance. So this feature really helps in that regard 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandpasgameroom Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 (edited) Really enjoy LaunchBox on Windows and Android. I would love to see a Linux release, so I could get it rocking on my Steam Deck as well! Edited August 26 by grandpasgameroom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanamatic Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 10 hours ago, grandpasgameroom said: Really enjoy LaunchBox on Windows and Android. I would love to see a Linux release, so I could get it rocking on my Steam Deck as well! Agreed, would love Launchbox on Linux! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanamatic Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Hey AstroBob! I relate so much with the pursuit of an all-in-one gaming machine. There's nothing like having everything in one place. The only problem with that is the struggle to decide what to play next xd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special T Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 I figured the Additional Apps section wasn't used by a lot of people but that's where I keep my fan translations. I manually add them then add custom fields for who translated them and when they were released, what the patch version is, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5thWolf Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 Man, LB has been so amazing the many years I have had it and been programming and adding to it. It is so hard to think of more cool stuff other than tweaks here or there. All the major things one could wish for gets add. The dev team is amazingly active! Would be cool to see, if possible, animated clear logos 😉 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rippedgeek Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 Excellent, congrats on the anniversary, and thanks for all the hard work and commitment that has gone into making LaunchBox such an amazing platform. <3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroBob Posted August 27 Author Share Posted August 27 7 hours ago, Phanamatic said: Hey AstroBob! I relate so much with the pursuit of an all-in-one gaming machine. There's nothing like having everything in one place. The only problem with that is the struggle to decide what to play next xd Thanks @Phanamatic, indeed one machine to rule them all 😃 I'll even use LB to log games that I can't play on PC, like certain mobile games or recent gen console games, just so it's all tracked together 4 hours ago, Special T said: I figured the Additional Apps section wasn't used by a lot of people but that's where I keep my fan translations. I manually add them then add custom fields for who translated them and when they were released, what the patch version is, etc. @Special T Nice, yeah translations are a great use for additional apps. I like the use of custom fields to add details about the translation too, neat! And thanks everyone for the kind words. I'll make sure everyone on the team sees all your kind comments, it keeps us all going 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanamatic Posted August 27 Share Posted August 27 11 hours ago, AstroBob said: Thanks @Phanamatic, indeed one machine to rule them all 😃 I'll even use LB to log games that I can't play on PC, like certain mobile games or recent gen console games, just so it's all tracked together That's an awesome idea! I'm definitely gonna start doing that 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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