Explorer?

You're going to have to be way more specific about what you're looking for here.

Yeah, in Windows you can just have a folder on your desktop with shortcuts/pifs to all of you games.

I'm sorry, you are right.

I am looking for something that doesn't show as a windows folder, but instead you have all icons / posters of the games and you can just click one and enter the game. Think like having an arcade with several different games and you pick one.
I would prefer something that doesn't use the mouse, but could work with the gamepad 😀

LaunchBox is pretty decent, I've been using it for several months. It has a lot of useful functions, like grouping your games based on the series they belong to. It can be used to launch both native Windows games as well as emulated ones.

I went through a bunch of these programs myself recently. I found XBMC and Advanced Launcher looked nicest, but was inflexible and no longer developed. Launchbox seems good, but puts a lot of functionality behind its paywall with no free trial.

Laucnhbox seems to be a DosBox only thing?

Nah, it might have been at one time but now it works with Windows games, emulators or whatever.

BuckoA51 wrote:

Launchbox seems good, but puts a lot of functionality behind its paywall with no free trial.

It's not that bad. AFAIK paid version offers big picture mode and color customization, something that I don't need. I'm OK with the free version 😀 And yes, it's compatible with native Windows games, DOSBox and virtually any console emulator.

I've tried several and launchbox is in the best of breed tier, there are a couple of others, boxer that's only for osx and another which I don't remember the name of that's one of the listed frontends on the dosbox website that's now a dead link, it was the only comparable alternative to launchbox on windows. If I recall there might have been another one but again, dead link.

He does a little passive aggressive routine with defaulting graphic spacing on the large side with spacing adjustment behind his paywall, game manual access is behind his paywall as well, standard frontend functionality on all but his. If I recall correctly he may have made custom field additions limited as well, again, standard feature for everyone else. There's also some other fields behind the paywall like using steam graphics/field, but I'm not bothered by that, I don't really know the steam graphics enough to pine for them, I prefer using box, disk, maps, ads from magazines and box contents for graphics rather than custom present day stuff, my idea being the graphics on display represent/replicate what you would have seen back in the day and in use.

A distinguishing difference to me between best of breed and the rest is that content is the focus/front and center in the best of breed frontends while the frontend is front and center for the rest, contrast launchbox and boxer with d-fend and dosbox game launcher to see what I'm talking about.

Is this for win 9x ?
how about qtbar
https://sliwinski.com/qtbar/

Hey guys.

So a quick update on my gaming machine.
Seeing as I couldn't find a game launcher that suited my needs and since most of my games are sega games that were available for saturn, I decided to "customize" the machine a little bit. I added the Sega Saturn boot up sound to windows start and the saturn screen as the wallpaper. Made the icons of the games "gigantic" in the desktop (used to have them in the start menu) and now I have it launching as a saturn console and just use the mouse to select the game I wanna play.
It's not perfect (can't use the joystick to select the games, have to use the mouse) but it's a lot of fun and some people are actually fooled thinking it's a modified saturn console 🤣

Any ideas how I could improve it?
Does anyone knows if windows 98/95 can use a gif as splash screen when the machine is booting??

Congratulations on being one of 3 people left in the world that make Win95 Plus! desktop themes

and no, win9X can only take a color-cycled 320x400x8 BMP. though maybe it could be possible to run some GRASP-based Saturn bios intro program in the autoexec sequence (theory, i've never tried such a thing). The real obstacle is grasping onto GRASP's scripting and creating that 😀

(or if you're really lazy, there is a DOS 'build' of mplayer out there, in which you could use to just run a saturn avi/mp4 or so.)

Great! Who are the other 2? 😜
Well, too bad, I would like to have the animated intro when windows is booting but I won't be taking time and resources by loading mplayer in dos. I will just have the wallpaper and the intro sound then.
I will try to get a program that allows joystick to control the mouse and also some "segaish" cursor to replace the regular pointer of windows mouse.
Any suggestions?