LaunchBox 13.27 Beta Thread

[faeran]

Hi everyone,

Welcome to a new beta round. Beta 1 starts with a bunch of under-the-hood improvements to the app, and we would love any help you can give to make the app the best it can be. We are looking at roughly 3-4 betas this round with larger features coming with Beta 2.

 

⚠️ As of Beta 2: For those who heavily utilized the save backup features in previous versions, please refer to this migration guide carefully before upgrading to this beta. There have been some structural changes that affect how saves are managed. This guide talks you though everything you need to know. ⚠️
https://feedback.launchbox.gg/help/articles/5615549-1327-save-management-migration-guide

 

Beta 1

Things we need help testing

Beta 1

• Added RetroAchievements support for WiiWare titles when using Dolphin - While signed into RetroAchievements, import your Nintendo WiiWare titles, then run Tools > Achievements > Scan and confirm achievement badges are assigned. Verify achievements load and function as expected in the Game Details pane (beta 1)
• Updated Dolphin integration to better support newer versions - Using the Dolphin plugin, attempt to download or update to the latest available version of Dolphin such as version 2603a or newer and confirm everything installs correctly and games still launch without issues (beta 1)
• Improved ROM prioritization when combining multiple versions of the same game during import - Run a ROM import that includes multiple versions of the same game such as betas, demos, or different regions and confirm the final imported game selects a proper retail release as the primary version and respects your Region Priority settings (beta 1)
• LaunchBox system tray support is now free for all users - As a free user, enable system tray options such as minimize to tray and close to tray then confirm LaunchBox minimizes and closes to the tray correctly and that the tray icon right click menu is fully functional and responsive (beta 1)
• Improved Big Box video playback stability with FFMPEG and Windows Media Player - In Big Box, browse platforms and games that include videos using both video engines optionally enable attract mode and confirm the application remains stable over extended use without crashes or video related issues (beta 1)

Beta 2

• RetroAchievements received a major expansion across LaunchBox and Big Box - While signed into RetroAchievements, browse Game Details, achievement profile views, pause screens, and default Big Box views to confirm beaten/mastered status, playtime commitment details, filters, and related stats all load and behave as expected
• Save Management has been significantly expanded - Test save tracking, backups, backup history, and restore workflows with supported Dolphin and PCSX2 games, and verify RetroArch Saturn saves continue to be detected and grouped correctly
• The Welcome Wizard import flow has been overhauled - Run through a fresh wizard import and pay attention to staged progress, status messaging, retry behavior, media download limits, and persistent image download queue handling
• Xbox 360 and PS3 now support additional formats - For Xbox, try importing default.xex and Games on Demand titles - For PS3, try importing ISO files - and confirm game detection, naming, and import results make sense
• Steam trailer downloads have been restored and LaunchBox video playback has been updated - Download trailers for a few Steam games, then verify playback controls and general in-app video behavior work as expected
• Import and metadata workflows saw several targeted updates - If you use Ubisoft, Xbox storefront imports, or mixed-ROM imports with multiple versions and regions, those are all good areas to sanity check in this beta
• Big Box received several quality-of-life and stability updates - Hybrid view searching, achievement filters, popup behavior, system menus, and video playback are all worth extra testing time if you use Big Box regularly

 

Full Changelog

You can view the complete changelog here (it gets updated first):
https://www.launchbox-app.com/about/changelog

Beta 1

• New Feature: Added RetroAchievements support for WiiWare titles when using Dolphin
• Improvement: Updated Dolphin integration to better support newer versions
• Improvement: Improved ROM prioritization when combining multiple versions of the same game during import, using a smarter ranking pipeline to better select the ideal default ROM
• Improvement: Extract ROMs now preserves the original archive folder name inside the temp directory, improving save path consistency in emulators such as RetroArch
• Improvement: FinalBurn Neo importer now automatically unchecks Extract ROMs for the emulator associated platform to prevent unnecessary extraction
• Improvement: LaunchBox system tray support is now free for all users, with options to always show the tray icon, minimize to tray, and close to tray
• Fixed: Improved Big Box video playback stability when using FFMPEG, resolving rare crashes related to video disposal and media cleanup
• Fixed: Crashes in Big Box when navigating between views with Windows Media Player video playback enabled
• Fixed: Issue where auto play music could cause the UI to lock up after Big Box opened
• Fixed: Bulk Edit Wizard issue that could trigger a crash style error while applying or finishing changes
• Fixed: Potential null reference issue when saving a new emulator
• Fixed: Operation Wolf now correctly shows MAME High Score support

Beta 2

• New Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box now include major RetroAchievements expansions with richer Game Details support, beaten/mastered and playtime commitment visibility, improved achievement profile stats, improved Dolphin integration, and broader default theme support
• New Feature: RetroAchievements can now be filtered in Big Box and Pause views, making it easier to browse and focus on the achievements you care about
• New Feature: Big Box Hybrid views now have their own dedicated search behavior, keeping searches scoped to the current platform or playlist instead of kicking you out to a global search
• New Feature: Save Management has been significantly expanded with better save tracking, automatic backups, backup-on-close options, backup limits, manual backup scans, and save version history tools, including expanded support for Dolphin and PCSX2 save tracking across Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo WiiWare, and Sony Playstation 2, plus better support for the Mednafen Saturn core
• New Feature: The Welcome Wizard import experience has been overhauled with staged progress, clearer status messaging, improved retry handling, and much better visibility into what LaunchBox is doing during first-time imports
• New Feature: The Welcome Wizard now supports media download limits and persistent image download queues, giving you more control over setup-time media downloads
• New Feature: LaunchBox now includes video playback controls for a better in-app video viewing experience
• New Feature: Manage Emulators now includes an "Open Emulator" context menu option for quickly launching the selected emulator directly from the list
• Improvement: Ubisoft imports have been refined with better product filtering, name cleanup, and settings handling for a more reliable import experience
• Improvement: Xbox storefront importing has seen some reliability improvements with lookups, caching, and import handling
• Improvement: Xbox 360 imports now support default.xex and Games on Demand formats across all import workflows
• Improvement: PlayStation 3 imports now support ISO files across import workflows
• Improvement: Fullscreen image viewing has been improved with pixel-perfect integer scaling, image detail labels, and better fullscreen monitor behavior
• Improvement: Related Games and Game Details performance have been improved by deferring expensive loading until needed
• Improvement: 3D model viewing, carousel browsing, and media list performance have been improved for smoother browsing in media-heavy views
• Improvement: Added a new option to disable the dynamic Play button and use a static Play button instead
• Improvement: The All Games section will now properly update to match the selected LaunchBox language
• Improvement: Big Box popup and plugin badge handling has been made more reliable
• Improvement: EmuMovies authentication and media download flows have been improved with more reliable login gating, retry handling, and messaging
• Fixed: Steam trailer downloads have been restored with updated handling for Steam's newer streamed trailer delivery, along with better trailer selection, improved fallback handling, and broader MP4 compatibility across imports and media downloads
• Fixed: Big Box no longer keeps reloading new instances of the same System Menu
• Fixed: Big Box now behaves better when screensaver timing overlaps with popups and other overlays
• Fixed: LaunchBox no longer crashes if the emulator name is empty and you tab out of the field
• Fixed: The License page no longer crashes due to overlapping links
• Fixed: The Options menu has been hardened against scenarios where it could fail to open

 

Some Known Issues (already on our list to fix immediately)

• The welcome wizard maybe not bring over some of your settings and your license in some scenarios depending on your choices (beta 2)
• PCSX2 save management can incorrectly point to the wrong game, or incorrectly categorize backups (beta 2)

 

Thanks as always to everyone helping test this out, your feedback makes a huge difference.

[xokia]

Any news on if/when the fix to retroarch will make it in? This is the issue I pointed out a while back if your rom is zipped launchbox unzips to a /tmp directory. This breaks retroarchs ability to create console level overrides. Retroarch use the directory preceding the rom file as the console name. i.e. the console would be tmp and every console system that had zipped file would try to use the tmp overide file.

Edited April 3 by xokia

[faeran]

11 hours ago, xokia said:

Any news on if/when the fix to retroarch will make it in? This is the issue I pointed out a while back if your rom is zipped launchbox unzips to a /tmp directory. This breaks retroarchs ability to create console level overrides. Retroarch use the directory preceding the rom file as the console name. i.e. the console would be tmp and every console system that had zipped file would try to use the tmp overide file.

There's a potential fix in this beta for that. Let us know if that solves that particular issue. With this change, any ROM that is extracted by LaunchBox will be placed into a folder named after the original file’s parent folder
RetroArch also has its own ability to extract ROM files and play them by default, so another user option could be to simply disable LaunchBox's extraction process within the emulator options page.

[JaredN]

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any improvement with FFmpeg. It still crashes and returns to the desktop on BB and LB, in an apparently random manner, with no error message. I'm switching back to WMP...

260403_BB_1.evtx 260403_BB_2.evtx 260403_LB_1.evtx

Edited April 4 by JaredN

[xokia]

On 4/3/2026 at 7:07 AM, faeran said:

There's a potential fix in this beta for that. Let us know if that solves that particular issue. With this change, any ROM that is extracted by LaunchBox will be placed into a folder named after the original file’s parent folder
RetroArch also has its own ability to extract ROM files and play them by default, so another user option could be to simply disable LaunchBox's extraction process within the emulator options page.

Some of retroarch's cores do not reliably work with zipped files. FB Neo, MAME, sega saturn, dreamcast, psx beetle to name a few. You will get mixed results.
I'll try it out this weekend. Thanks for the update

*edit*

Launchbox unzipping the folder for retroarch appears to work correct now. They get mapped to the correct system when using the tmp directory.

Edited April 4 by xokia

[Jabb3rJaw]

It’s still early but so far I haven’t had any crashes using WMP. Already a big improvement. I also noticed LED Blinky starts up quicker when my system starts. There used to be a few second delay.  Also scrolling through letters seems smoother and faster.  So far so good!! 🤞

[fianovale@hotmail.com]

On the latest beta ( 13.27 beta 1) the achievements doesnt appear for the Nintendo Wii console. Have only two games right now; The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return and Retro City Rampage DX.

[Jabb3rJaw]

After more testing and  someone who posted multiple times about Bigbox crashing I can say I am happy that I have not had one crash with this beta using WMP. I’ve restarted the system multiple times and not one crash. Whatever was causing it you’re on the right track. I haven’t tried FFmeg though so can’t comment on that. Thank you!!! 

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, fianovale@hotmail.com said:

On the latest beta ( 13.27 beta 1) the achievements doesnt appear for the Nintendo Wii console. Have only two games right now; The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return and Retro City Rampage DX.

Give this a read and see if it helps any.

RetroAchievements Support for Nintendo Wii - LaunchBox

[Jabb3rJaw]

Day 2 no crashes!!! Can’t tell you how happy I am lol. It was so frustrating but everything seems to be back to normal. Thanks to the Launchbox team!!!!!

[Omifi]

Whatever you guys did with the multiple rom prioritizing has been working great. I re-imported many of my platforms as a test and each time the retroachievement supported roms increased drastically. While this is a good improvement i think LB needs the option to show the retroachievement badge even when the supported game isnt set as the default  

[faeran]

On 4/3/2026 at 11:58 AM, JaredN said:

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any improvement with FFmpeg. It still crashes and returns to the desktop on BB and LB, in an apparently random manner, with no error message. I'm switching back to WMP...

260403_BB_1.evtx 68 kB · 2 downloads 260403_BB_2.evtx 68 kB · 1 download 260403_LB_1.evtx 68 kB · 1 download

Thanks for the report. Based on what I see in there it's basically saying that it tried to run a video and something with your hardware/drivers are basically providing a "we can't play this file" response. With FFMPEG, it lives lower in the stack which means hardware configuration can have a big impact. That's kind of outside of what we can do, in the sense that your crashing isn't caused by something that we can fix inside of our code. We do have plans to fix that somewhat, although it won't make it into this update, since it will involve a fairly extensive FFMPEG wrapper and program update, but I do think that it will end up solving a lot of hardware related crashes like the one you are showing. In the short term, make sure all your drivers are updated and all that regular stuff, and like you said, WMP is the much safer option, as it's the native WPF engine that performs lighter in general. All that to say, stay tuned.

On 4/4/2026 at 1:12 PM, Jabb3rJaw said:

It’s still early but so far I haven’t had any crashes using WMP. Already a big improvement. I also noticed LED Blinky starts up quicker when my system starts. There used to be a few second delay.  Also scrolling through letters seems smoother and faster.  So far so good!! 🤞

On 4/4/2026 at 9:37 PM, Jabb3rJaw said:

After more testing and  someone who posted multiple times about Bigbox crashing I can say I am happy that I have not had one crash with this beta using WMP. I’ve restarted the system multiple times and not one crash. Whatever was causing it you’re on the right track. I haven’t tried FFmeg though so can’t comment on that. Thank you!!! 

20 hours ago, Jabb3rJaw said:

Day 2 no crashes!!! Can’t tell you how happy I am lol. It was so frustrating but everything seems to be back to normal. Thanks to the Launchbox team!!!!!

That's good to hear. Sounds like me spending an entire month of straight attract mode crash fixing at least is paying off for someone!

18 hours ago, Omifi said:

Whatever you guys did with the multiple rom prioritizing has been working great. I re-imported many of my platforms as a test and each time the retroachievement supported roms increased drastically. While this is a good improvement i think LB needs the option to show the retroachievement badge even when the supported game isnt set as the default  

Good to hear about the rom prioritization work is working good for you. I agree with showing the RetroAchievement badge even when the supported game is an additional app, although maybe I'd go even one step further. I'll see what I can do!

[Fursphere]

Any chance you could work trackball / spinner bigbox "wheel" control into this release?   

[faeran]

2 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Any chance you could work trackball / spinner bigbox "wheel" control into this release?   

Probably not this release, and while I can't promise anything, there's already a branch in the early stages. Just know that it requires a complete rework of the entire system, but there's some big things coming around the corner.

[Fursphere]

2 minutes ago, faeran said:

Probably not this release, and while I can't promise anything, there's already a branch in the early stages. Just know that it requires a complete rework of the entire system, but there's some big things coming around the corner.

Progress is progress!   I'll take it.   thank you!

[andyco47]

still crashes ramdom never had this with VLC player

 

[faeran]

Just now, andyco47 said:

still crashes ramdom never had this with VLC player

 

I assume you are referring to FFMPEG and not WMP. Either way, if you'd like to help, you can post your logs here, along with all the event viewer crashes, as we can take a look at it for you.

However, it's funny you say that because the most amount of problems we ever had was due to VLC back in the day.  It was crazy times. Different experiences for different people, with different hardware, but like I said earlier in this thread, a huge change to FFMPEG is coming probably in 13.28 that will get rid of all the remaining outlier issues with it when it comes down to hardware specific compatibility playback issues.

[Jabb3rJaw]

@faeran If it will help with this beta I can try FFMeg but I had given up on that lol. I was even crashing with WMP but not any longer.  This is the best update for performance in a while. My scrolling through the letter is smoother and quicker and led blinky starts up quicker during the start up video. I appreciate your work on this!! 

[fianovale@hotmail.com]

On 4/4/2026 at 10:52 PM, JoeViking245 said:

Give this a read and see if it helps any.

RetroAchievements Support for Nintendo Wii - LaunchBox

Sorry even with that tutorial the cheevs doesnt appear on launchbox for me

[zombob]

16 minutes ago, fianovale@hotmail.com said:

Sorry even with that tutorial the cheevs doesnt appear on launchbox for me

I can confirm that the achievements for both games show up on launchbox v13.26 (non beta). Note that the retro city rampage game requires the European version of the rom and you need to use the tool to scan for wii games.