racketboy.com

I just got a new laptop and N64/PSX adapter (see review here http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5386 ) and im very happy with it all. The only thing that is letting my entire portable gaming system down is the actual choosing of games! I just wanted to know how you guys sort your collection of roms, how you access them, and how you boot them into an emulator? I've tried a couple of front ends, GameEx was alright but the splash screen at the start stopped me from using it and it had a few too many features. What i really want is a way of displaying the boxart of my entire collection and shifting through it iTunes coverflow style. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

I know MAME has some screen shot, pretty front-end junk. I just have shortcuts to the EMUs in the root folder storing all the progs and ROMs. It's not fancy, but it helps out because I move my gigs of EMU from PC to PC a lot.

But your right, iPod/tunes front end would be killer-slick. I can see it now, iTunes 99 cent downloadable retro games like Gametap. Like Wii's VC, only to the next level.

Well, to answer my own question (did much more searching on google when i got home) I've found that Maximus Arcade is a truly amazing front end solution for emulators. Boot it up and it shows you a blue screen with a picture of a console on it, be it Nintendo 64 or Sega Mega Drive. You can scroll through your systems and pick the one you want, then it takes you to a list of all the availible games for it, and, if you set it up right, will show you a screen shot of each game in a little window to the left. If i could find a way to batch download the coverart of all of my roms, i'd be laughing! At the moment I have some very shoddy screenshots of the title screens, which really doesnt do the whole thing justice. It does cost $25 but theres a 30-day no limit trial, i'm going to run that out seeing how much i use it before i put down my hard earned cash. It works brilliantly, but i just dont know if its useful for me on my laptop, probably better for a media center or a dedicated arcade cabinet/computer.

Just found Racketboys article on Maximus Arcade (http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/04/ ... ition.html). Seems he likes it too

I've read a few good things about Maximus Arcade. I haven't actually bought it yet, but I'm going to download the trial and give it a try.

I was wondering if there was a front end that could integrate Windows-based games? I have Atari 2600 & SNES emulators, but I would love to browse and play my Touhou and Guilty Gear games in the same front-end. That would certainly be arcade-cabinet worthy in my book - if I only had a shop to work in.

RackGaki wrote:I've read a few good things about Maximus Arcade. I haven't actually bought it yet, but I'm going to download the trial and give it a try.

I was wondering if there was a front end that could integrate Windows-based games? I have Atari 2600 & SNES emulators, but I would love to browse and play my Touhou and Guilty Gear games in the same front-end. That would certainly be arcade-cabinet worthy in my book - if I only had a shop to work in.

If you use Windows Media Center, you can have it launch any Windows executable with a little tweaking.

racketboy wrote:

RackGaki wrote:I've read a few good things about Maximus Arcade. I haven't actually bought it yet, but I'm going to download the trial and give it a try.

I was wondering if there was a front end that could integrate Windows-based games? I have Atari 2600 & SNES emulators, but I would love to browse and play my Touhou and Guilty Gear games in the same front-end. That would certainly be arcade-cabinet worthy in my book - if I only had a shop to work in.

If you use Windows Media Center, you can have it launch any Windows executable with a little tweaking.

Then tweak I shall! I haven't used Media Center for quite awhile, but that was because it seemed have more problems than Windows Media Player streaming to my 360. It dropped out more frequently and took longer to load music in.

I'll definitely see what I can do with Media Center, though - thanks!

I've never really used Window Media Center. I have an Ipod so all my music is organised in Itunes. Tried all the conversion techniques and the like but to be honest i find it a bit cumbersome on my laptop just to listen to a quck song, but as i said, it's obviously not targeted at me. I've been using more and more Maximus Arcade. Really like the favourites feature. Just press the Z trigger (on my 64 controller) on any game and it is added to a list for that console that can be accesed by pressing the Start button. I found this site for title screen snapshots, don't know if it's useful for anyone but it includes most of the titles for Nes, GBC, GB, Mega Drive etc all arranged to conform to the goodset labeling system. I have set it up and 90% of them are very good photos.
http://localarcade.com/screenshotarchiv ... shots.html

I just put all the executables on the quick launch bar, then with my cordless mouse (and keyboard), at the couch in front of the TV in which my PC is connected to, I just click the quick launch shortcut and I'm into whatever EMU I want. Nothing fancy but it works just fine for me~