Best Frontend loader for PC

[mrwasi]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering what the best frontend loader for windows (10) would be.
Something that's easy to set up and displays video previews of games.
I've searched around and came across a few that may be of some interest:

EmulationStation (not sure if it has video previews of games)
GameEX
Mala

Note I did not include Hyperspin because I think it has WAAAAAYYYYY too much content and I've read it takes ages to set up.

Thanks in advance for all the help!

[ZellSF]

If you want to be all fancy with video previews and all then everything takes ages to setup. Time that's better spent actually playing games.

[waiwainl]

Includes USB plug

[Ed Oscuro]

RetroArch was my ticket into Mednafen PSX, so I'll support that until something better comes along.

But I admit I'm with ZellSF, I don't see the use of video previews either, unless you're setting up a kiosk (which is going to be illegal, anyway).

[SNK-NEO-GEO]

For MAME..I like Maximum Arcade.. very easy to setup

[mrwasi]

Found one.

Easy to use and fast setup.

Big Box aka Launchbox

https://www.launchbox-app.com/big-box

[bulbousbeard]

I would check to make sure that Big Box works with ASIO MAME. Once you've run MAME with ASIO and experienced no audio latency, there's really no going back. It's a game changer.

For a desktop, I'd go with QMC2 or MEWUI. Attract Mode or Big Blue for an arcade cabinet, although I'm not sure if Attract Mode screws up with ASIO yet.

http://dankan1890.github.io/mewui/

http://qmc2.batcom-it.net/

http://attractmode.org/

https://sites.google.com/site/bigbluefrontend/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2M77Vp5EcI

[mrwasi]

I'll be using Mame 0.170

I'll check out the ASIO. Thank you for the tip!!!!

[Ed Oscuro]

That ASIO sounds pretty fresh, I'll check that out.

Does only GroovyMAME support an ASIO driver or is it just an exposed sound protocol once I install the ASIO4ALL driver? Or is there something else to it?

[Xyga]

btw: MEWUI to become the new default integrated: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh ... =5&o=&vc=1

So GM 0.171 should feature it too.

[BPzeBanshee]

A big-ass screenshot and a compiled exe on MediaFire for anyone who wants to try out the UI. The old one is still available as a "simple" option via mame.ini's ui tag (write "simple" instead of "cabinet").

I like it but I think it's about time they stopped running the internal GUI at 30 FPS and started actually making it feel more responsive. To be fair though this has been a gripe of mine for years.

[Xyga]

Still, that's really cool !

One question by the way: I've tried MEWUI before and never found if it's possible or not to set it to portrait orientation (?)
Haven't found the setting if it exists...

[bulbousbeard]

That ASIO sounds pretty fresh, I'll check that out.

Does only GroovyMAME support an ASIO driver or is it just an exposed sound protocol once I install the ASIO4ALL driver? Or is there something else to it?

Mainly GroovyMAME, but the author released a baseline version of the ASIO patch so that you can just do ASIO without all the other GroovyMAME stuff. ASIO4ALL won't give you anything with the standard MAME.

[charlie chong]

A big-ass screenshot and a compiled exe on MediaFire for anyone who wants to try out the UI. The old one is still available as a "simple" option via mame.ini's ui tag (write "simple" instead of "cabinet").

I like it but I think it's about time they stopped running the internal GUI at 30 FPS and started actually making it feel more responsive. To be fair though this has been a gripe of mine for years.

i'm about to setup a mame pc for my 15khz trinitron so i'll give this a whirl when i do!
thanks

[mrwasi]

Found another good Frontend RetroFE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbo0aGLKB0g