The Best Retro Gaming Emulator Frontend Launcher EVER! #batocera #retrobat #frontend

okay so for the past few weeks people's been asking me on and off of my videos which front end do I recommend and which one do I prefer which is my front end of choice so people will ask me retrat versus batera um emulation station batera you know whatever so I thought I'd do a video and give you the reasons why I totally recommend launchbox so it's a very controversial opinion we all know that there's three front-end systems out there which is mainly I cover on my channel uh retrat has obviously got the most subscribers for me on this channel uh so I'll give you a good explanation of why I think launchbox is probably the best you're going to get out there and before you even think it no I'm not being paid by launchbox developers to do this video um it's going to cost you some money obviously like I say we all know that launch boox cost money uh certainly if you want to get the big box option and we're also going to need to invest a little bit of money into Muve this 2o so let me show you why I think launchbox is better if I just open up launchbox now this is Commodore 64 for example now first of all this isn't big box I'm going to show you that in a minute this is your main interface for launchbox if you're using a free version of this you're not going to get neon Deluxe arcade theme like I've got here so this in itself to me is a really nice layout now something in particular that I'm into is microcomputers and commodor 64 is of course one of my favorite systems so rather than Super Nintendo or the generic Nintendo NES 8bit my personal favorite system is the c64 for many reasons so let me give you an example uh artwork through launchbox and mu movies uh you can scrape artwork in better artwork than on most of these free front ends let me give you an example if I just scroll down through my c64 games I'm going to come across a title which I've not scraped uh I'm not sure what this is the Silence of the stones let me give you an example where I can really easily edit this in order to get some artwork so what I'm going to do is just right click on that if I go to edit edit metadata media this is then going to bring up a little window and it's going to give us a lot of information and it's really simple in order to edit the information to get the artwork you want so here we go this is the information for this particular game this is released in 1989 and it's a Homebrew type of game we've even got developers name here so yes a lot of front end freeze system such as retrat will have all this information but I just like this feature we've got all of these options here for different things for this particular game you know so in depth so let's say for example I want to try and scrape some artwork for this it's not recognized the game because there probably isn't any artwork for this particular game to be honest it's a home brew game and it's totally forgotten about but what we can do is just edit this let's just take out the and if I go to close out of this and then search for metadata it's going to ask us to update metadata package so if I just put yes on this just to update this briefly and this is a good thing about laun box when you're doing things like that it's constantly being updated whereas things like retrat it gets a new update stable version update a few couple of times a year uh launchbox is a premium system so you're going to be paying for this you know you get what you pay for in life it's a really old school philosophy but it's very true so we're just waiting for this and now metadata has been updated so we got solids of the stones and it's now searching the local database for information and potential pictures but here we go so we've now found launchbox database the solids of the stones if I just use this then I press okay so what I'm going to do now that that metadata has been updated I'm going to attempt to scrape all the artwork so a really easy way Launch Box are doing this is controlling a on your system so everything's highlighted if you go to tools Download update metadata and media for selected games I'm going to go to next next this is another good feature with even the fre versions of launchbox is that the first section of this you're going to see is you get the option to download what you want in terms of artwork so something like retrat and I'm not pooing retrat I'm just using it's example because it's the most setup guides I got on my channel you're kind of limited to the types of artwork you can get on there whereas on here and this part is free we got so much more and in terms of artwork artwork means everything to some people to really make your front end look awesome so what I'm going to do for this particular game because it didn't scrape it the first time round I'm going to check all and I'm going to go to next now because I'm subscribed to any movies which cost me $3 I think it was or a couple of pounds in the UK I've also got the option to downloads from mu Movis which is also going to give us more artwork and preview videos so again I'm going to go to check on and next and I can also download theme battles through this so next again and I'm going to go for do not replace any assistant fields or media so what this is going to do is ignore all the media or the artwork that I've already scraped and just pretty much pick out the missing artwork and go to finish so this is going to take a little bit of time because I've got a lot of c64 games on here uh but what I'm going to do is just go through some of these really cool features we got for a launchbox if I go to image group and I go to screenshots because I downloaded from a combination of the free scraper as well as em movies I've now got all my c64 games in this format and we can obviously launch the games from here I've connected retroarch to this and again if we go to image group and we go to something like carts we then got in the c64's case majority of these are actually cassette tapes and Geeks like me into micro computers uh I would say get off on this but like this this type of thing and again Image Group we can go to something like mares and we're going to get mares so it's going to take a little bit of time to load everything up because I'm obviously downloading metadata so as we know I'm using the neon Deluxe arcade theme at the moment and like I also said that this is only for people who's actually got a legitimate licensed version of launch boox which is around £25 or $30 and going to last a year and any subsequent updates after that you'll need to pay an extra $10 I think it is but considering all the updates and everything else the Perfection I think launch boox is I think it's worth that if we go to tools manage launch boox themes we can then download additional themes so at the moment we got neon Deluxe arcad which has got a green tick next to it but we've got other themes and update after update these are getting improved too so there's plenty there and obviously I've only downloaded and installed the neon Deluxe I've also got the default and the old default here so even the defaults are pretty nice to look at nowadays and launchbox so if I want a plyer theme I just go to apply fee here we go and yeah just to say that launch boox recently had uh 13.10 update and I've not looked into it but from what someone said today it's actually got AI inside of launch box at the moment like I said I'm not looked into it uh We've also got a new feature from 13.9 called the game Discovery Center again I'm not looked into this because I've been pretty busy over Christmas plus I'm making videos pretty much all day long but um yeah it's got a lot going for it so obviously we've now changed our theme to default and as you can see if you're using an OLED monitor like I am right now the artwork really stands out at you so what I'm going to do is just show you a bit of big box so I'm going to just ignore scraping the artwork for that game because I think you know where I'm going with that now if I want to go into big box which is obviously the paid version of launchbox if I just click on those lines just there and go to Big Box [Music] ini so this is big box and in Big Box we got lots of different themes to use within big box so if I just go to this menu just here here manage themes and here we can download a host of themes now if I go down to all we've got a lot of themes here and some of these are really comparable with something like uh hypers spin so there's some really impressive themes here and on top of actually installing the theme and applying it we can then go into particular themes and edit the way they look say we go into Neo uh from the Neo Geo we can then edit it to look like something else rather than using the main theme layout if that makes sense so if I just scroll down very briefly we're also going to get information on each theme from what it's suitable for so for example we got three dimensions just here aspect ratio 16.9 WID screen only Al nox is a very nice theme 2 and again this one's for a 16x9 wi screen uh you also see other themes here aspect ratio any and there's plenty of those so you're not actually just restricted to 16 by9 now I like a lot of themes on other three front ends such as batera in retrat but I just feel that the look on some of these they look a little bit more premium like I said you get for what you pay for in life what we can actually do to explore these themes even further if we just select say cover box and under description it's going to tell you all the platforms which this particular theme is going to show up so pretty much all the main systems are there if we just go over to views we can then see how this is going to look like and the different styles of this particular theme how we can lay this out we come out of this and come out again we've even got options here which we can then go into a trct mode and we can enable a track mode from here and if we come back out we can mess around with transitions we can change startup sounds uh like I said there's more options with Launch Box in big box and I've experienced on any other front end system that I've covered on my channel and it's for little things like this or rather uh larger things like this which is why I prer launch boox and big box so plenty of options there now game Discovery Center which I mentioned just now was update to 13.9 I've not actually checked this out yet so we're going to just click on here now like I said I truly have no idea what this is about but one I've got some free time I'm actually going to explore this a little bit further but it looks pretty cool and it's got lots of classic old games on it we also got retro AR net play browser on here so from here we can play certain games online that type of thing which is quite a cool feature so what I'm going to do I'm going to just switch to desktop modes and I think a lot of people with launch boox also get freaked out that is a very complex system in order to uh map out emulators that type of thing but it really isn't that difficult uh majority of systems through launch boxes e eest by using retro watch so of course on retro watch you don't have cores on there for PlayStation 3 but having said that setting up rpcs3 through for launchbox isn't really that hard so let me just show you game so I'm going to go back to Commodore 64 and I'm using a retro watch core for my c64 games I'm going to go to image group a minute and go back to 3D boxes and I'm going to just quickly pick out a game so I'm going to go for Defenders of the earth so to play this if I right click on the game launch with retro watch and I'm going to be using the vice 64 the brro core for this now of course I can launch these through big box but most of the time when I do play launch box I'm just using it through the interface I'm using now but big box is really nice too when I've got extra typ to be using [Music] that now of course because I've got this mapped up with retroarch I can access the retroarch quick menu just as I could with something else like retrat but I think launchbox is really best off suit it really for people like myself you like to see a lot of visuals and there's plenty of those people around so through quick menu we can change video settings that type of thing just as you can do on any other front ends most front ends have retro watch run in the background retro bat certainly does and batera also does and you know even if you're using sub relate play might which I've also covered on my channel or emulation station or even emud deck for Windows which I've recently covered uh most of those systems pretty much are running uh 90% of the games using retro watch in the background so what I'm going to do is actually take you through big box again and we're going to check out [Music] c64 now just bearing in mind I've not really touched much of launch boxes are work in progress I got to say I'm busy most of the time through the days making videos and it's also been Christmas so been a bit busy doing that too but in the background of one of these fees we can put music on there and each one of these games can have preview videos being displayed as well as sound effects so it's got a lot on there and it's got a lot going for it in terms of customizing Wheels like this the possibilities truly are endless in launch boox and you're not restricted what just a couple of options like on some free front ends so I'm going to open up a game now if I go to gym slim which is a protovision game if I just open this up it doesn't boot up St straight away but we can actually choose from the option what to open it with and we got loads of different options here how we want to play this game if I go up to the top in that Vision that field of vision at top is obscured by that Commodore 64 logo we can then boot up the game and instead of just having The Bard now loading we can even customize that it's endless with launchbox big box I I say uh customizing it is really amazing and once you've got the paid version of launch box you can really see what your money is going [Music] towards [Music] so what I'm going to do whilst I'm in big box is actually apply a different theme so if I go down to manage themes and what I'm going to do is just go to available new updated and I'm going to check out fre d ions and what you need to do from here if you're looking at uh purchasing launch boox big box just go to install the theme was installed successfully so what we need to do then to apply it is go to apply his M theme yes now like I say once you downloaded a theme and you like a particular look of the theme you can come back out and just change how it looks in other areas now like I say because you got so many options in launchbox and especially if you sign up with Emy movies uh the amount of artwork you can get for different looks on these different themes are endless as well you could be there for hours and hours just downloading artwork and preview videos and everything else just for a few games so technically this theme right now should or could be displaying something else to go alongside it but that's a matter of research and seeing what other parts this particular theme supports [Music] so that's it like I say at the start of the video everyone's been asking me or rather several people's been asking me which is my favorite front end system and there you go that's a launchbox um you know other front-end systems like retrat I believe it's a really good quality free front-end system um personally I think a couple of the developers of retrat are particularly rude to me and they have been very roote to me in the past considering the amount of downloads I would have likely have got them on my channel but it's not about the developers as such it's about the product and I say retrat is still a great front end for a free beat but if you want a more premium look and you're trying to impress your partner your Ms or your husband who doesn't really give a damn about anyways then the most impressive look you're going to get for a front end by far is going to be launchbox big box like I say I'm not being paid by launchbox but this is my honest review of launchbox and why I like it so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of haters of this video out there but let's just remember this type of thing is totally subjective and just because I say I like it it doesn't mean everyone else has got to like it it's just my personal taste but anyways uh this is my answer my favorite is launchbox and I'm thinking right now next to that it's going to be emulation station but anyways thanks for watching and let me know in the comments what you think of launchbox if you're looking to try it out for yourself you've got a good reason there to check it out and purchase yourself a license key for it anyways until next time stay [Music] retro a

Channel: Just Jamie

Views: 11,904

Keywords: Batocera, Best emulator for low end pc, Best emulator frontends, Emu deck, Emulation, Emulation for beginners, Emulationstation, Frontends for windows, Launchbox, Playnite, Recalbox, Retroarch, Retrobat build, Retrobat frontend, Retrobat pc, Retropie, Top emulator frontends, Top emulator frontends for windows, Top emulators for pc, Which is the easiest emulator frontend for pc, best emulator for low end pc, best frontends 2024, retrofe 2024, retrobat 2024, just Jamie, launchbox 2024

Id: mWcEx0qDouE

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023