Setting Up RetroArch and LaunchBox for Emulation

Of course we would so we're going to search for game information in the local metadata database we'll choose next now we have the option to download box art and a few other things for each game that way we can have a nice little list of games and it's just a really good looking front end i usually just leave everything checked here but if you're worried about space you can go through and deselect what you don't want to download next we don't need to specify any custom options for n64 so we'll choose next now we have the option to download box art and a few other things for each game that way we can have a nice little list of games and it's just a really good looking front end i usually just leave everything checked here but if you're worried about space you can go through and deselect what you don't want to download next we don't need to specify any custom options for n64 so we'll choose next here it's going to parse the games and these are the games that we're going to be importing i just chose a few of them to make it quick for this video here finish and since this is the first time we're setting up retroarch it's going to go through that process real quick for us also so just give it a little bit of time so launch box has finished importing our games it's also downloaded retro arch in the background for us basically all we need to do is start up a game so let's go with uh banjo-tooie we'll just double-click it's automatically gonna launch it for us because it already set up retroarch and we're ready to play i mean it really takes no time at all to get up and playing with launchbox nowadays especially with this new retro arch integration so as you saw it was really easy to get up and running with n64 now we're gonna do one more here and we're gonna import some playstation one games and playstation one does require a bios so right up here we have these three little lines we're going to choose this we're going to go to tools import rom files it's going to give us that same walkthrough wizard i'm going to add a folder this time it's going to be that playstation 1 folder with all of my ps1 games in it we're going to select this one choose next it's automatically detected that it's sony playstation next we're going to be using retroarch because it's now installed and configured automatically and now what it's going to do is prompt us and let us know if this system in retroarch needs a bios and playstation 1 really does need a bios right here in order to play sony playstation games in retro arch a bios file called scph5501.ben is required at the beginning of the video i showed you where i had mine i'm just going to browse here we'll go back to my desktop roms bios scph5501.bend this is my playstation 1 bios launchbox is going to import this for us and put it in the correct location so we can use it when we start up a playstation game with retroarch i'm going to copy the files in my launchbox directory and we'll just go through the motions one more time i'm importing four games for playstation one we've already got retroarch set up launch box prompted us for that bios so all we need to do is click finish it's going to import those games for us download the metadata and then get all of the box art we need for each one of those games so it's imported them metadata is there in the background right now it's actually downloading the box art for us if we wait a few seconds we'll see these images populate so we'll get the box art for those playstation 1 games and there it is so we can start playing a game right now we'll just go with crash team racing it's going to start up retro arch for us we've got that bios in place it's using the duck station core and we're good to go so we now have n64 and playstation 1 set up with launchbox and the new retro arch integration it's easier than ever to get up and running your favorite retro games on pc with this setup so yeah within a few minutes you can have your first games imported this is the fresh build we imported some ps1 games some n64 games and with the free version it's definitely going to be more limited than the premium version but we can import as many games as we want and this video is really just to show you how easy it is to use the new version of launchbox to get up and running with emulation on your windows pc if you're interested in checking this out i will leave a few links in the description but i'm super excited about this new retro arch integration because for new users this is just going to make it as simple as possible but that's gonna wrap it up for this one i really appreciate you watching if you're interested in seeing more advanced launch box tutorials on emulation please let me know in the comments below and i'll do my best to create a tutorial for you.

Setting Up RetroArch

RetroArch is an open-source emulator that allows you to play retro games on your PC or console. It's highly customizable and supports a wide range of consoles, including NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, and many more.

To set up RetroArch, follow these steps:

1. Download the latest version of RetroArch from their official website.

2. Extract the files to a directory on your computer, such as `C:\RetroArch`.

3. Open the `RetroArch.cfg` file in a text editor, such as Notepad or Sublime Text.

4. Change the display settings to your liking, including resolution and frame rate.

5. Add the games you want to play by creating a new file in the `Games` directory, following the format: ` - `.

6. Save the changes to the `RetroArch.cfg` file.

Setting Up LaunchBox

LaunchBox is a front-end emulator that allows you to access and play your retro games through a user-friendly interface. It's designed to work seamlessly with RetroArch, allowing you to easily switch between consoles and games.

To set up LaunchBox, follow these steps:

1. Download the latest version of LaunchBox from their official website.

2. Extract the files to a directory on your computer, such as `C:\Launchbox`.

3. Open the `settings.cfg` file in a text editor, such as Notepad or Sublime Text.

4. Change the display settings to your liking, including resolution and frame rate.

5. Add the consoles you want to play by creating new files in the `Consoles` directory, following the format: ` - `.

6. Save the changes to the `settings.cfg` file.

Combining RetroArch and LaunchBox for Emulation

To use RetroArch and LaunchBox together, follow these steps:

1. Set up your RetroArch emulator by adding games and configuring settings.

2. Set up your LaunchBox front-end by adding consoles and games, and changing display settings.

3. Open LaunchBox and select the console you want to play from.

4. Launch the game using RetroArch, and enjoy playing your favorite retro games on PC or console.

Tips and Tricks

* Make sure to save often when setting up and configuring RetroArch and LaunchBox, as it can be frustrating if you make a mistake and have to start over.

* Experiment with different display settings and frame rates to find the optimal settings for each game.

* Consider using a USB keyboard or controller to play retro games on your PC or console.

* Join online communities and forums to connect with other retro gaming enthusiasts and learn new tips and tricks.

Conclusion

Setting up RetroArch and LaunchBox for emulation is a straightforward process that allows you to access and play your favorite retro games on PC or console. With these tutorials, you can easily get started with retro gaming and enjoy hours of nostalgic fun. Happy gaming!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today i'm going to show you one of the easiest ways to get up and running with emulation on your windows pc now it's been a little while since i've done a dedicated launch box video but recently it's been updated to version 12.2 and they now have retro arch integration which means you don't have to download any extra emulators except for the high-end stuff and the stuff that retroarch doesn't do and with this new version of launchbox you can be up and playing your favorite retro games in no time we're going to start with a fresh install and i'm going to show you how easy it is for this video here we're going to do a couple n64 games and playstation 1 games one main thing you might want to get a hold of before doing any of this is a controller personally i use a bluetooth xbox one controller but if you have a ps3 ps4 even the ps5 controller will work or an older wired xbox 360 controller personally i prefer these microsoft controllers because they're already pre-configured ready to go with retro arch and that's exactly what we're going to be using with this new version of launchbox so if you're ready to get the latest version of launchbox setup on your pc let's go ahead and get started now first things first obviously you're going to need some games unfortunately launchbox doesn't come with any games pre-installed and i can't tell you where to get them but if you do a quick google search you'll be able to find everything you need in a folder on my desktop i have some playstation 1 games personally i use pvp files but you can also use bin and q and when you start doing a little bit of research on this you'll know exactly what i mean i've also got some n64 games these are n64 and finally in this folder i have my playstation 1 bios because some of these games will require it with retroarch a lot of the stuff will work fine without a bios for ps1 but it's good practice to go ahead and add all of the bios's you're going to need the next thing we're going to need is launchbox you can head over to the official launchbox website i'll leave a link in the description we're going to be using the free version for this but they also offer a premium version which does unlock a lot of features for launch box and it unlocks big box which is a really awesome looking emulation front end totally customizable there's hundreds of themes over on the website but like i mentioned for this one here we're just going to be using the free version if you want to upgrade down the road it's totally up to you from here we're just going to download launchbox and with this here you will have to put your email address in it's going to send you a link to download the latest version of launchbox now for me i've already got this in my downloads folder and this is 12.2 as making this video this will be higher in the future once we have this downloaded we're going to go ahead and install it we're just going to agree to the terms and you can actually place this anywhere but the default location is going to be on your c drive or your main hard drive users username launch box that's exactly where i'm going to keep it but if you want to put it anywhere else you can always set it up with the brow section here next we'll just go ahead and go through the install let this finish up once it's finished installing it's going to start it up for us and you're going to see window that looks like this since this is a fresh install i don't have anything set up but like we saw i do have some playstation 1 games and n64 games so what i'm going to do here is start with n64 and i'm going to import rom files so we're going to choose the first option here it's going to walk us through the wizard i would recommend reading through everything but from here i'm going to choose next i'm going to go ahead and add that n64 folder that i have on my desktop with those games in it so i'm going to add folder i'm going to navigate to my desktop roms n64 and i'm going to choose this whole folder we'll choose next now it's going to ask us what platform are we importing games for and since i chose n64 it's automatically going to detect that but if it doesn't you can always use the drop down here we'll choose next and this is where those new features come in so would you like to automatically install and configure retro arch of course we would that's why we're using this we're gonna automatically install and configure retro arch from right here we'll just choose this next we can choose a location we want our roms to be if you just want them to stay in that folder we're importing from you can use them in their current location or we can copy the files into the launchbox games folder but remember it's going to copy those so it will take up more room but it's all going to be in that launch box games in 64 folder that it's automatically going to create for me i usually just choose the top one here copy the files into the launchbox games folder would you like to download metadata for your games of course we would so we're going to search for game information in the local metadata database we'll choose next now we have the option to download box art and a few other things for each game that way we can have a nice little list of games and it's just a really good looking front end i usually just leave everything checked here but if you're worried about space you can go through and deselect what you don't want to download next we don't need to specify any custom options for n64 so we'll choose next here it's going to parse the games and these are the games that we're going to be importing i just chose a few of them to make it quick for this video here finish and since this is the first time we're setting up retroarch it's going to go through that process real quick for us also so just give it a little bit of time so launch box has finished importing our games it's also downloaded retro arch in the background for us basically all we need to do is start up a game so let's go with uh banjo-tooie we'll just double-click it's automatically gonna launch it for us because it already set up retroarch and we're ready to play i mean it really takes no time at all to get up and playing with launchbox nowadays especially with this new retro arch integration so as you saw it was really easy to get up and running with n64 now we're gonna do one more here and we're gonna import some playstation one games and playstation one does require a bios so right up here we have these three little lines we're going to choose this we're going to go to tools import rom files it's going to give us that same walkthrough wizard i'm going to add a folder this time it's going to be that playstation 1 folder with all of my ps1 games in it we're going to select this one choose next it's automatically detected that it's sony playstation next we're going to be using retroarch because it's now installed and configured automatically and now what it's going to do is prompt us and let us know if this system in retroarch needs a bios and playstation 1 really does need a bios right here in order to play sony playstation games in retro arch a bios file called scph5501.ben is required at the beginning of the video i showed you where i had mine i'm just going to browse here we'll go back to my desktop roms bios scph5501.bend this is my playstation 1 bios launchbox is going to import this for us and put it in the correct location so we can use it when we start up a playstation game with retroarch i'm going to copy the files in my launchbox directory and we'll just go through the motions one more time i'm importing four games for playstation one we've already got retroarch set up launch box prompted us for that bios so all we need to do is click finish it's going to import those games for us download the metadata and then get all of the box art we need for each one of those games so it's imported them metadata is there in the background right now it's actually downloading the box art for us if we wait a few seconds we'll see these images populate so we'll get the box art for those playstation 1 games and there it is so we can start playing a game right now we'll just go with crash team racing it's going to start up retro arch for us we've got that bios in place it's using the duck station core and we're good to go so we now have n64 and playstation 1 set up with launchbox and the new retro arch integration it's easier than ever to get up and running your favorite retro games on pc with this setup so yeah within a few minutes you can have your first games imported this is the fresh build we imported some ps1 games some n64 games and with the free version it's definitely going to be more limited than the premium version but we can import as many games as we want and this video is really just to show you how easy it is to use the new version of launchbox to get up and running with emulation on your windows pc if you're interested in checking this out i will leave a few links in the description but i'm super excited about this new retro arch integration because for new users this is just going to make it as simple as possible but that's gonna wrap it up for this one i really appreciate you watching if you're interested in seeing more advanced launch box tutorials on this channel here just let me know in the comments below and i'll see what i can do if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today i'm going to show you one of the easiest ways to get up and running with emulation on your windows pc now it's been a little while since i've done a dedicated launch box video but recently it's been updated to version 12.2 and they now have retro arch integration which means you don't have to download any extra emulators except for the high-end stuff and the stuff that retroarch doesn't do and with this new version of launchbox you can be up and playing your favorite retro games in no time we're going to start with a fresh install and i'm going to show you how easy it is for this video here we're going to do a couple n64 games and playstation 1 games one main thing you might want to get a hold of before doing any of this is a controller personally i use a bluetooth xbox one controller but if you have a ps3 ps4 even the ps5 controller will work or an older wired xbox 360 controller personally i prefer these microsoft controllers because they're already pre-configured ready to go with retro arch and that's exactly what we're going to be using with this new version of launchbox so if you're ready to get the latest version of launchbox setup on your pc let's go ahead and get started now first things first obviously you're going to need some games unfortunately launchbox doesn't come with any games pre-installed and i can't tell you where to get them but if you do a quick google search you'll be able to find everything you need in a folder on my desktop i have some playstation 1 games personally i use pvp files but you can also use bin and q and when you start doing a little bit of research on this you'll know exactly what i mean i've also got some n64 games these are n64 and finally in this folder i have my playstation 1 bios because some of these games will require it with retroarch a lot of the stuff will work fine without a bios for ps1 but it's good practice to go ahead and add all of the bios's you're going to need the next thing we're going to need is launchbox you can head over to the official launchbox website i'll leave a link in the description we're going to be using the free version for this but they also offer a premium version which does unlock a lot of features for launch box and it unlocks big box which is a really awesome looking emulation front end totally customizable there's hundreds of themes over on the website but like i mentioned for this one here we're just going to be using the free version if you want to upgrade down the road it's totally up to you from here we're just going to download launchbox and with this here you will have to put your email address in it's going to send you a link to download the latest version of launchbox now for me i've already got this in my downloads folder and this is 12.2 as making this video this will be higher in the future once we have this downloaded we're going to go ahead and install it we're just going to agree to the terms and you can actually place this anywhere but the default location is going to be on your c drive or your main hard drive users username launch box that's exactly where i'm going to keep it but if you want to put it anywhere else you can always set it up with the brow section here next we'll just go ahead and go through the install let this finish up once it's finished installing it's going to start it up for us and you're going to see window that looks like this since this is a fresh install i don't have anything set up but like we saw i do have some playstation 1 games and n64 games so what i'm going to do here is start with n64 and i'm going to import rom files so we're going to choose the first option here it's going to walk us through the wizard i would recommend reading through everything but from here i'm going to choose next i'm going to go ahead and add that n64 folder that i have on my desktop with those games in it so i'm going to add folder i'm going to navigate to my desktop roms n64 and i'm going to choose this whole folder we'll choose next now it's going to ask us what platform are we importing games for and since i chose n64 it's automatically going to detect that but if it doesn't you can always use the drop down here we'll choose next and this is where those new features come in so would you like to automatically install and configure retro arch of course we would that's why we're using this we're gonna automatically install and configure retro arch from right here we'll just choose this next we can choose a location we want our roms to be if you just want them to stay in that folder we're importing from you can use them in their current location or we can copy the files into the launchbox games folder but remember it's going to copy those so it will take up more room but it's all going to be in that launch box games in 64 folder that it's automatically going to create for me i usually just choose the top one here copy the files into the launchbox games folder would you like to download metadata for your games of course we would so we're going to search for game information in the local metadata database we'll choose next now we have the option to download box art and a few other things for each game that way we can have a nice little list of games and it's just a really good looking front end i usually just leave everything checked here but if you're worried about space you can go through and deselect what you don't want to download next we don't need to specify any custom options for n64 so we'll choose next here it's going to parse the games and these are the games that we're going to be importing i just chose a few of them to make it quick for this video here finish and since this is the first time we're setting up retroarch it's going to go through that process real quick for us also so just give it a little bit of time so launch box has finished importing our games it's also downloaded retro arch in the background for us basically all we need to do is start up a game so let's go with uh banjo-tooie we'll just double-click it's automatically gonna launch it for us because it already set up retroarch and we're ready to play i mean it really takes no time at all to get up and playing with launchbox nowadays especially with this new retro arch integration so as you saw it was really easy to get up and running with n64 now we're gonna do one more here and we're gonna import some playstation one games and playstation one does require a bios so right up here we have these three little lines we're going to choose this we're going to go to tools import rom files it's going to give us that same walkthrough wizard i'm going to add a folder this time it's going to be that playstation 1 folder with all of my ps1 games in it we're going to select this one choose next it's automatically detected that it's sony playstation next we're going to be using retroarch because it's now installed and configured automatically and now what it's going to do is prompt us and let us know if this system in retroarch needs a bios and playstation 1 really does need a bios right here in order to play sony playstation games in retro arch a bios file called scph5501.ben is required at the beginning of the video i showed you where i had mine i'm just going to browse here we'll go back to my desktop roms bios scph5501.bend this is my playstation 1 bios launchbox is going to import this for us and put it in the correct location so we can use it when we start up a playstation game with retroarch i'm going to copy the files in my launchbox directory and we'll just go through the motions one more time i'm importing four games for playstation one we've already got retroarch set up launch box prompted us for that bios so all we need to do is click finish it's going to import those games for us download the metadata and then get all of the box art we need for each one of those games so it's imported them metadata is there in the background right now it's actually downloading the box art for us if we wait a few seconds we'll see these images populate so we'll get the box art for those playstation 1 games and there it is so we can start playing a game right now we'll just go with crash team racing it's going to start up retro arch for us we've got that bios in place it's using the duck station core and we're good to go so we now have n64 and playstation 1 set up with launchbox and the new retro arch integration it's easier than ever to get up and running your favorite retro games on pc with this setup so yeah within a few minutes you can have your first games imported this is the fresh build we imported some ps1 games some n64 games and with the free version it's definitely going to be more limited than the premium version but we can import as many games as we want and this video is really just to show you how easy it is to use the new version of launchbox to get up and running with emulation on your windows pc if you're interested in checking this out i will leave a few links in the description but i'm super excited about this new retro arch integration because for new users this is just going to make it as simple as possible but that's gonna wrap it up for this one i really appreciate you watching if you're interested in seeing more advanced launch box tutorials on this channel here just let me know in the comments below and i'll see what i can do if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching\n"