Scanner not seeing half of SNES games

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hello Everyone,

I’m loving RetroArch however I have a weird issue with my SNES games only. When I scan for games in that folder it only sees about 50% of the games that exist. All the games are formatted the same and they all work if I load them manually. It’s picked up every other game for every other system I have expect for SNES. I used the same folder naming convention for all of them. Sega/NES/NeoGeo/Atari/Etc,etc all pick up each and every game that’s in the folder. SNES won’t for some reason.

Device: Nvidia Shield 500GB

File structure is: /ROMS/SNES/GameFolder/Game /ROMS/Sega/GamesFolder/Game

I’ve tried renaming the folder to Super Nintendo… SNES,… And some a few other variations but nothing works and now I just have duplicates showing in the list after the folder was renamed. I also can’t figure out any way to remove those duplicate files but that’s another issue I’ll deal with later.

I’ve tried all the games in Zip folders I’ve extracted all the zip folders and tried that I removed all the games out of the folders and just had them sitting in the root SNES folder.

I’ve deleted and reinstalled 3 different times to try renaming the folders and scanning with no luck. Any help is greatly appreciated.

#2

It should fine all No-Intro games just fine, since that’s what we base our databases on. If you’re using a GoodSet, it’ll only find the ones that match the No-Intro hashes.

To remove duplicates, you have to delete the playlist and re-scan.

#3

Thanks for the update. I’ve tired 3 different sources for SNES games and it seems to pick up about the same amount of titles each time. I would have to run through the list one by one to figure out which ones are not being picked up to see the difference. I have noticed it doesn’t pick up the same games most of the time, such as Super Street Fighter II (US or Japan). I’m just really confused as to why it’s seeing all my other game downloads just fine and some of those games I can’t seem to find on Dat-o-matic’s database. I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be showing because it looks like a custom hacked game, but it did scan in the NES section.

I can’t seem to find a source to get the SNES games that will scan and pick up but I’ll keep trying. Is there anyway for it not to match with the No-intro games database and just show everything in the folder since all of them do play and work?

In regards to removing from the playlist is there anyway to remove ALL SNES games from the list vs 1x1? I have right now 260 duplicates in my SNES list and was hoping for bulk delete. I’m using the Nvidia Shield Game controller to navigate and I can’t find anyway to delete the entire section of games. I’ll go mess around with it more on my lunch break.

Thanks for your input!

#4

Yeah, look in your playlists directory for the SNES playlist (*.lpl) and delete it, then rescan.

We don’t have a non-database scan, but there are some scripts and utilities that will do it. I don’t know if any are Android-compatible, though…

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#5

If you can get a copy of your SNES ROMs available on a Windows PC, you can configure Playlist Buddy to generate a playlist with all of the ROMs and the right settings for your device. You’d then have to copy that playlist to the playlist folder on your android device.

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#6

Thanks for the reply!

Yes I actually have all the roms on my PC and I FTP those files to the Shield. I’ll try Playlist Buddy and get back to you.

#7

Playlist buddy did the trick, all files are showing up. Another issue did arise and the thumbnails are all black except for two playlists. I haven’t had any time to test any further or browse the forums as my break was up. I’ll give it another shot tonight when I get off work.

Thank you everyone for the help.

#8

Update your assets through the online updater and if they still show up black, go make sure the playlists’ filenames match those of the appropriate icons.

1 Like
#9

current rdb for snes is based on no-header snes roms, hence most of them fails. take the time to edit and remove headers from roms using some snes header tools or just use some playlist creators like markwkidd’s

EDIT: retroarch database should somehow follow what the original DAT was for, like no intro snes/fds(and a few bytes in nes) games which has another xml that skips reading the header, instead of having to manually remove these headers ourselves(or make custom playlists/rdb) in order to use RA’s playlist

2 Likes
#10

Thank you everyone for all of your help. After a few hours of playing around I was able to get it all working. I didn’t like the thumbnails so I went back to the normal icon’s. I ended up loading RA to my PC so it was easier to run tests and figure it out. But everything is up and running!!!

#11

Wish I could get it to work. My scanner won’t find any of the rooms on my shield tv. I can scan file and it will play the rom, but when I scan directories, nothing is found. “No items” as it keeps saying.

#12

v1.6.0 has some issues with scanning on Android. You can wait for 1.6.1, which should be released soon, install a nightly from buildbot.libretro.com or install a nightly from fdroid.

#13

I had issues as well but ended up using Playlist buddy and getting it to work. It took some tinkering to get it to work right and I had to check the box to make it use the slashes for android/linux. Once I did that it all showed up after nuking the current library and loading the playlist files directly.

#14

I tried 1.6.1 and it actually made it a little worse. On 1.60, if I scan a single file instead of directory it would start playing the game. Now the only way to start a game is to load content. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I must be an idiot. I have RetroPie working great on a Raspberry Pi, but I wanted one of my own on the shield TV so I can play without the kids. Lol

#15

are your ROMs from No-Intro sets? if not, it’s not going to find them.

Anyway, if you’re still having issues, you might be better off just using one of the playlist utilities, like the aforementioned playlist buddy.

#16

Playlist buddy currently scans as a virus, Are there any alternative playlist editors that haven’t been compromised?

Asking as I’m havign the same issue. And this shouldn’t be a problem as the entire collection shows up in Retropie on my Pi 3 but only 3 games from the entire collection show up in retroarch.

#17

Did you get it from here? https://github.com/markwkidd/ahk-retroarch-playlist-helpers/releases/tag/a3923ee

if so, that’s a false-positive.

#18

Yes, And how is it a false positive if two different pcs with 4 different scanners between them all say the same thing?

EDIT:

Even on the site the file comes from in ‘ISSUES’ they ran it on a multiscanner you can plainly see it shows up as a threat in MANY places. This does not give me faith that it’s just a false positive:

https://www.hybrid-analysis.com/sample/5d283f2c3aa89f344c22d92020c3054db8f3a9307d484cf2825734508d443347

#19 
Remote Access
    Reads terminal service related keys (often RDP related) 
Spyware
    Found a string that may be used as part of an injection method 
Evasive
    Reads the keyboard layout followed by a significant code branch decision

Those are some pretty broad strokes, and you can look at the source right there in github and see for yourself if it’s malicious. But whatever, no skin off my back :man_shrugging:

#20

This is why I was asking if there’s an -alternative- to this program.