So a small update to my last article, with what I consider worth mentioning.
I am scrolling through the original article, to make “addendum” on everything I read.
- RetroBat made a couple of small updates over new 5.0, solving issues AND adding a couple of new supported systems.
- Another EmulationStation side-project, like RetroBat, is Batocera. Batocera used to be a stand-alone Linux based system, ready-made to fill with roms and metadata. This is now also a custom compile for Windows and we will see below why it is important.
- Launchbox always makes new releases. I don’t even consider it “news”. It is still the most actively developed front-end.
- CoinOps collections. The usual burst of weirdly named “collections”, more or less specialized, nobody knows why and how (as BP never explains and lets his followers discover why he made just another tweak every time). I don’t consider those worth mentioning. He is yesterday news, which I am glad, as I also don’t like the guy’s character AT ALL (and for which whoever hasn’t discovered, WILL do in good time, the hard way).
- CORE Type-R. It keeps growing way too fast to follow (like “update #30 of something”). This for some could be great, for others just too much hassle, especially since there is a mix of official 1G1R, official best-of, official base, unofficial etc.
Still, in the end, a VERY live build. There is a google sheet that tries to clean things up, which at this point is a MUST (and I insisted they created for long). - Complete Play. The shut down of public discord (only keeping Patreon support) does have an impact on the project. There is no easy way to even report a bug. That said, there is a more or less steady stream of Patreon-to-free packs, which is great. The collection is easily more than 12TB right now.
CP78 Patreon is not expensive and CP78 is probably the longest standing builder out there, so it not much of a risk either. - RBL. This RetroBat based collection is already more or less complete, but there is always some small surprise. Also they follow the updates of RetroBat and made a script that makes the smaller RetroBat updates not break RBL.
If you want something modern, clean, not too much hassle to follow, with VERY detailed “how to”, this is the one. - MBU-R! (Motion Blue Unified Revamped) A new build! A very new contender (started in 2023). This is based on Batocera (thus the mention above), which is great. Batocera itself is a very live project. MBU-R is right now based on a big 1TB base and a few (large) packs already released (which already make it around 5TB).
Definitely keep an eye on this.
On other news…
- Zomb hasn’t yet released 0.60 update to C64 Dreams (but seems to be “any day now”).
- Gruby just made the first 2023 release.
- There is a new MAME, which is the first release in two months (they needed to skip a release to make some core changes).
So, there you are, what I consider worthy updates over my last article.