Over 10 years ago I found HyperSpin, and subsequently RetroArch. It’s been an amazing ride that’s led me to some interesting places, like working for EmuParadise for a time. In that time I have worked tirelessly on my system; Gam3B0x.
Several years ago though, I ditched HyperSpin, and went to LaunchBox, and it’s been amazing. With RetroArch powering the heart of my system, I’ve been able to build this truly amazing thing that has changed how I see video games forever.
For the last 7 years I haven’t shown anything, simply because I haven’t had the time to sit down and do a video. Today though, I finally got around to it and I am just really really excited to share it with everyone.
This is who I am.
This is what I do.
This is how I play.
This is me, on a digital canvas.
I hope you find this interesting:
(Yes, this is a youtube video. I am NOT a youtuber, I do not monetize EVER, nor am I interested in doing so. I use youtube solely for sharing content; nothing more.)
(I guess video embeds don’t work here, so I’ll just leave the link and an image)
Skimmed through the video just to see your set up. Mind me asking why did you ditch HyperSpin for your current set up? To this day I still haven’t come across another front end that looks better and more attractive than HyperSpin. I’ve been using that since 2015 and still going strong.
Edit: Ah ok you kind of go in depth a little bit on what it’s all about in the beginning. Nice.
A lot of it comes down to managing the library. I much prefer the GUI to tinkering with xml files. I can get really granular and creative without having to rely on RocketLauncher anymore which is nice.
I was missing HyperTheme immensely before I found Community Theme Creator; but I’ve never liked the themes I see most gravitate towards. Very loud, and busy, and animated. Made sense for arcade builds, but it just wasn’t my style.
Yeah I pretty much was picking up on that on my second rewatch of your video.
I hear you. For me it’s the exact opposite, I love the “loudness” the themes and the video previews HyperSpin displays, it all looks like one big hyped attraction mode that just pulls me in, combined with RetroArch and a shader of choice I get transported to gaming heaven soon as I turn it on.
Also because of HyperSpin I’ve discovered countless games especially Japan exclusives I’ve never heard of simply by scrolling down the alphabet and just looking at the video previews and saying “what the hell is this this looks cool as hell” then I’m playing a brand new game on the spot lol. Your set up looks cool too though especially since it works the way you want it to.
Looks very very cool! Probably the best “usable” collection I’ve seen so far. I have 1G1R sets for many consoles and use playlists for favorites similar to your setup.
I have a ton of missing or inconsistent media (box art and so on) though and I have too large a collection to fix it all manually.
Your setup looks very uniform. The only thing I persoanlly would change is to include videos, because it’s cool to see footage of games I don’t know.
Also, my Launchbox / BigBox is not as snappy as yours, even though I have a beat of a PC. Maybe it’s Launchbox, maybe it’s Windows 11, or maybe my collection is just too large at this point.
Feeling dumb, but I can’t seem to get anything but the base URL lol. I knew I was doing something wrong!
Yeah I get sensory overload pretty easy haha. I didn’t have it turned on for the video, but I do have a mix of calm game soundtracks that shuffle while I’m in the main menu. Orchestral Chrono Trigger, and Sonic Project Chaos, stuff like that. Gaming is my quiet escape.
It was interesting you both mentioned this, and I had to go double check. Yeah, none of my videos are popping up. I must have mistakenly shut them off in my custom theme. The screenshots are meant to be a fallback that will display if a video isn’t present (I keep videos muted, which is why I probably didn’t notice).
I started with 1G1R sets, but trimmed them down from there. Nothing major but, for example I’m NEVER going to play games like Madden, so having a dozen of them in each platform was distracting. Same for edutainment like Sesame Street, or games like Barbie. I cut out all the untranslated Japanese Visual Novel games (I actively seek out translated games to add, constantly).
I also delete a game if I play it and it’s just absolute trash. That’s super super super rare, but it’s happened.
I’ve actually found this to be the biggest win for LaunchBox, however I don’t grab ALL media though. I get the box art (Front, back, and spine) screenshots, game title, clear logo, and cart/disc. Then, as I’m looking around if I “do” happen to find a problem with media I mark it in BigBox as “Broken”. Then there is a playlist I made that only shows in launchbox where when I have time I can fix the games with broken art.
Are you on an HDD or an SSD? I moved my LaunchBox software to an NVME M.2 drive and it fixed most of my issues immediately. I keep the games on several external hard drives, and one internal NVME for super modern stuff (like silent hill 2, for example). All in all though I am rocking 46 TB, but just swapping the LaunchBox software to that super-fast drive was a huge win.
If you’re using the 3D boxes like I am, and I didn’t mention it in the video, the games with Jewel cases like PSX and Saturn, have a reflection applied to them that I have found just turns those sections into a total slog to go through. I changed them to DVD cases, and then altered the sizing to give it the same vibe.
I remember you from the Hyperspin forums!
What made it exciting was the community, mostly, since the base software was only receiving fixes for new Windows versions for years, its closed source nature and reliance on flash for themes, not to mention lack of native controller, plus being basically a 1024x768 frontend, it’s quite amazing it lasted until 2020 or so, it didn’t receive major updates since 2009, if I’m not mistaken.
I have great memories of the time and I met lots of cool people there, too!
Hey, your LB setup covers all the bases, that’s neat!
I still have my old HS setup that still works, but I mostly use RA’s own playlists and sometimes ES-DE to browse systems that RA doesn’t support, such as 7th gen consoles or PC games, etc.
