Who here plays MAME and other Emus?

[Jeff Strong]

Yeah definitely. I need to check out some of the more obscure ones as I've pretty much played out the older Zeldas and Final Fantasys.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I've been meaning to check out Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. Supposed to be somewhat similar to Sid Meier's Pirates (which is one of my favorite games of all time), but some say it's even better.

 

[Locksley]

I got MAME to play Asteroids in all versions, even though we don't have the same kind of monitors with trails after the vector-graphics it still is the game for me; not really into any other retro game than Asteroids

 

[Citizen]

I've been meaning to check out Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. Supposed to be somewhat similar to Sid Meier's Pirates (which is one of my favorite games of all time), but some say it's even better.

Great game, I'd recommend it. Pirates! is better as an actual piracy game, whereas UW2 is more about exploration. It's a little slower and doesn't look pretty like Pirates! but I'd say it has a better story. I wouldn't say either is strictly better than the other.

Terranigma is a must play SNES ARPG. Live A Live and Bahamut Lagoon are another couple of lesser known ones worth looking into.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Right on, I'll definitely check those out as well.

Seems like there are a ton of great SNES games I've never even heard of.

 

[Captain Caveman]

Right on, I'll definitely check those out as well.

Seems like there are a ton of great SNES games I've never even heard of.

https://www.unseen64.net/

A lot of consoles games got cancelled.. but the games/roms were released.. i loved my Super Wildcard for this reason back then

 

[Citizen]

Right on, I'll definitely check those out as well.

Seems like there are a ton of great SNES games I've never even heard of.

NES and SNES are full of hidden gems. Maybe even moreso NES. The thing with SNES rpgs is that the system got hit hard by lack of localization. For every good jrpg the US got, there were two more that didn't make it (especially the srpgs).

And then some like New Horizons made it here but just got 0 attention.

 

[Gabura]

So I'm getting back into emulators after a few years hiatus now that I've dusted off my X-Arcade tankstick and just wondering who else is into them?

What front end do you guys use? I had MaLa set up years ago, but it was for a 4:3 monitor, so all my layouts look clunky on my TV.

Fiddling around with some others and kinda digging Attract Mode so far.

Seems like a lot has changed in 7 years or so. RetroPie and such seems to have really taken off.

Attract mode is also what I use in my homebrew pincab which also has an integrated 2 player arcade stick, I use it with Flat Blue theme which can be used in portrait mode. Also use it as a launcher for the steam games. I've got MAME setup so horizontal games launch on backglass and vertical games launch on the playfield. Pretty happy with it so far. I have not been able to figure out launching marquees or flyers on the DMD ( I use a 10.1" touchscreen for the DMD ) which would be awesome. They also make the Nevato theme for attract mode which is a cool arcade theme

 

[Jeff Strong]

Attract mode is also what I use in my homebrew pincab which also has an integrated 2 player arcade stick, I use it with Flat Blue theme which can be used in portrait mode. Also use it as a launcher for the steam games. I've got MAME setup so horizontal games launch on backglass and vertical games launch on the playfield. Pretty happy with it so far. I have not been able to figure out launching marquees or flyers on the DMD ( I use a 10.1" touchscreen for the DMD ) which would be awesome. They also make the Nevato theme for attract mode which is a cool arcade theme

Thanks for the heads up on the Flast Blue theme. Pretty clean.

I also downloaded HyperPie 2 last night which is based on Attract Mode, and while it has a ton of bells and whistles, I think it’s overkill. Plus the 100+GB download almost killed my old hard drive lol...and that’s just the art and emulators... I haven’t even added in all the ROMs yet.

I think I’ll just stick with a basic version of Attract Mode, mainly because I don’t have all that much room on my SSD and all the preview videos are too laggy on my old drive.

 

[Gabura]

Thanks for the heads up on the Flast Blue theme. Pretty clean.

I also downloaded HyperPie 2 last night which is based on Attract Mode, and while it has a ton of bells and whistles, I think it’s overkill. Plus the 100+GB download almost killed my old hard drive lol...and that’s just the art and emulators... I haven’t even added in all the ROMs yet.

I think I’ll just stick with a basic version of Attract Mode, mainly because I don’t have all that much room on my SSD and all the preview videos are too laggy on my old drive.

I like it simple and clean too, Hyperpie does look so cool but I dont like to hunt down all the assets every time I change something. I know some frontends have integrated download and search options ( like the scraper in Attract mode) but they always seem lacking. I'll settle with a good game launcher and peace of mind then go for the whole whizzbang frontend. Same with the emulators, I used to enjoy messing with them a lot but ended up more tweaking and tuning (never satisfied) than enjoying the games so I stopped doing that too much.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I like it simple and clean too, Hyperpie does look so cool but I dont like to hunt down all the assets every time I change something. I know some frontends have integrated download and search options ( like the scraper in Attract mode) but they always seem lacking. I'll settle with a good game launcher and peace of mind then go for the whole whizzbang frontend. Same with the emulators, I used to enjoy messing with them a lot but ended up more tweaking and tuning (never satisfied) than enjoying the games so I stopped doing that too much.

Yeah agreed. It's just too much of a pain to try to maintain or even completely fill in something so big. Way more things to go wrong as well. I had the 100+GB download corrupt on me the first time after letting it go overnight, so I'm just gonna take that as a sign to move on heh.

As for Attract Mode, I found another theme I like called Silky. Here's a little video I made after tweaking it a bit for SNES:

 

[Gabura]

Yeah agreed. It's just too much of a pain to try to maintain or even completely fill in something so big. Way more things to go wrong as well. I had the 100+GB download corrupt on me the first time after letting it go overnight, so I'm just gonna take that as a sign to move on heh.

As for Attract Mode, I found another theme I like called Silky. Here's a little video I made after tweaking it a bit for SNES:

Thanks, I will check this Silky out the SNES thing needs some work in my cab, I did route an USB extension to the front of the cab for additional controller support

 

[Fungi]

Hah. I forgot! I also have one of those modded Xboxes loaded up with EVERYTHING. It's probably the most expensive thing I retro on and it totally left my mind. Wonder what that means.

 

[Gabura]

Hah. I forgot! I also have one of those modded Xboxes loaded up with EVERYTHING. It's probably the most expensive thing I retro on and it totally left my mind. Wonder what that means.

Its periodical for me too but the PinCab is always ready to go so that makes it easy when the craving comes

 

[Jeff Strong]

Thanks, I will check this Silky out the SNES thing needs some work in my cab, I did route an USB extension to the front of the cab for additional controller support

I'm digging it so far. Also works well for MAME. It shows the MAME flyers instead of the cartridge art by default, so I had to tweak the layout files a bit for SNES, also to get the box art on the right (was screen snaps by default, which seemed redundant to me since you already have the videos, plus snaps are kind of a weird way to navigate a menu).

Really happy with how it turned out.

 

[Gabura]

I'm digging it so far. Also works well for MAME. It shows the MAME flyers instead of the cartridge art by default, so I had to tweak the layout files a bit for SNES, also to get the box art on the right (was screen snaps by default, which seemed redundant to me since you already have the videos, plus snaps are kind of a weird way to navigate a menu).

Really happy with how it turned out.

Been messing with mame and the theme, managed to tweak the layout so it looks good in portrait (it already looked halfway decent) the snaps view is totally not usable in portrait but the normal view is quite nice with some layout adjustments. I even managed to get the snaps to work on my DMD and Backglass screen with the flyers showing on the playfield (which are awesome when the image quality is good). Set Attract mode to multi monitor and messed with the layout coordinates of the snaps ( real pain to figure out without good documentation). I like it so far now I just need no see if the wheel art can be moved to the DMD or backglass but i don't think this is an option without adding code to the theme. Maybe I can ask the dev/designer.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Been messing with mame and the theme, managed to tweak the layout so it looks good in portrait (it already looked halfway decent) the snaps view is totally not usable in portrait but the normal view is quite nice with some layout adjustments. I even managed to get the snaps to work on my DMD and Backglass screen with the flyers showing on the playfield (which are awesome when the image quality is good). Set Attract mode to multi monitor and messed with the layout coordinates of the snaps ( real pain to figure out without good documentation). I like it so far now I just need no see if the wheel art can be moved to the DMD or backglass but i don't think this is an option without adding code to the theme. Maybe I can ask the dev/designer.

Right on, cool to hear you’re digging it too. Sounds like a cool setup. Yeah, I haven’t tried messing with any coordinates, but it looks does look like a pain. I saw someone made a visual editor, but haven’t tried it yet:

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=1729.0

 

[Lord Boron]

I started using Launchbox for a front end end with console emulation. It easy to set up and the basic version is free. For MAME I use Emuloader. Check out the Simply Austin YouTube channel. He has a lot of info on emulators and front ends with some useful setup walk through and tutorials.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I tried out LaunchBox a few days ago and it seemed really solid. I wanted something a bit more flashy for the livingroom so I settled on Attract Mode (I'm guessing LB has some great themes too, but I didn't know where exactly to look). It's cool that we we have so many great options.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Does anyone have any wisdom when it comes to shaders? Seems like scanlines are all the rage, but honestly I’m not sure i’m sold on them after trying all sorts of different options. I get the reasoning behind it, but after playing on non-CRTs for so long, not sure I really want to go back heh, plus the shaders seem a bit forced and lacking subtlety. Seems like a little smoothing is enough for me. I’m digging 2 xBRZ for now.

I’ve heard ScaleFX is another good option for smoothing, but it doesn’t seem to like modern nvidia drivers very well.