EmulationStation Update: Why We Can't Have Nice Things 

Thanks for the clarification!

A shame indeed. Guess we are coming to Patreon.

Thank you for this front end - you are a rock star!

I guess this was for the best for everyone, I hope you get enough people to support your amazing work. I’ll be there as soon as my RG556 arrives.

Is there any chance, that you will expand ES into something like RetroArch at some point? Like RA and ES combined into one application?

I have about 4 of them 😅

Yeah... Amazon clearly doesn't care much about the law or doing what's right... they just care about profit. They're notorious for treating workers poorly, and they've created an entire ecosystem of Amazon-exclusive ways to scam customers, but they also ban people like ES-DE trying to do legitimate business.

Not just handhelds too, but R4s as well.

lets.....not draw attention eh they probably arent aware or are being purposefully dumb to avoid legal issues

​@@documentthedrama8279 Dummies gonna dumb. This is garnering unneeded attention to the emulation scene by a big company like Amazon.

They said exactly the same to me: "as a one off exception we can process a refund". My response was "I'm not happy that you're trying to make out you're doing me a favour by doing something that you are mandated to do by law"

Meanwhile, despite having spent like 15 years posting detailed reviews about products in a field where I have deep expertise, marked by thousands of people as "helpful", I'm now banned from posting Amazon reviews for reasons they refuse to explain. I'm guessing it's because I sometimes point out when the product descriptions are false, and give the actual correct specs.

companies always say this bs lol

@@ToyKeeper Wait, did I just stumble upon _the_ ToyKeeper of Anduril fame in these comments? I love my Anduril flashlights and they have unironically made my life as a visually impaired person just that little bit better, so thank you!

​@@ToyKeeperdoing god's work 🫡

I literally bought my RG351P that was preloaded with ROMs and BIOS files on Amazon, lol...

@@pieceofschmidtgamer its laughable because they say "facilitates piracy" thats so reductive and broad you could apply it to almost anything. Better not sell hard drives and sd cards. Better not sell computers. 😅

They even sell usb drives stuffed full of rooms even 😂

Those are older gen games. It's perfectly understandable for Nintendo to be touchy about its current gen being emulated so widely.

Allegedly

the irony right? LOL

They're happy to profit from things which are illegal or immoral, but as soon as something is actually good for the end user or threatens any big corporations, they pull out the banhammer.

And prohibited weapons

no, not amazon, check the seller again.

Nintendo managed to be worse than Oracle.

They're not exactly suing about the emulator. They're looking at their instructions on getting keys and such.

Doesn’t it tell you how to get the keys legally? Like from your own switch?

Wouldn't really matter. The apps don't need a storefront in order to be installed on your devices. You can just sideload it.

@@thatguywiththevoice2309 That's the question. It's not illegal or legal atm but Nintendo is arguing it's instructions to break their encryption so it should be illegal.

I know righ.

No, it's not good. Patreon is shit. They'll deplatform you just because

​@@alfwok Well, the truth is that Nintendo expects some level of piracy. But they are REALLY agitated by the likes of Valve and the SteamDeck. Also by the AYN Odin2 to some extent. That's who they really would like to target.

Also I think Nintendo is a lot at fault here with the NSwitch. Let's just say they made it pocketable.... well, now it's a different category of device. Or better yet, if they took my advice instead: use modern technology! If they had it with 8x Cortex A73, downclocked to save power, and with 256GB Storage and 8GB RAM to allow modern game development. And have the chipset built using 14nm FinFet instead of the 22nm-Planar silicon. Maybe make the iGPU decent to be able to pull off something like 720p, 30fps, Low Settings. Then when you attach it to the Dock, it does a few things. It Fast Charges the device, it cools it down with Fans, it ramps up the CPU clocks, and lastly it activates the eGPU. That way you this hypothetical "Kangal Switch" actually has decent performance behind it, and it gets ports for games that were also released for the XB1 and PS4. Also this higher ceiling of performance actually SLOWS the development and the speed of emulation. The Wii released in late 2006 and was cracked instantly. The Wii was much weaker than its direct competitor PS3, and that last one wasn't hacked or emulated until over a decade. In fact, the 2002 Xbox itself is much more powerful than the Wii, it is laughable. Nintendo saves BILLIONS by selling hardware at exorbitant prices whilst using cheap components. Greedy. Well the result of that is emulation. You can't have it both ways.

​@@alfwoknot true, read the document there is zero mention of a Patreon

You can sell emulators. There is no law against it. Stop simping.@@alfwok

Not only will people that don't already know hear, about it. This will prod people to dump their games and share. More specifically, a rush to download the entire Nintendo catalog, just in case.

⁠​⁠@@washuaisorry to burst your bubbles but there’s no streisand effect to this. The emulation frontend (NOT emulation) market on mobile OSes is still a niche market. Those who are really keen on using a frontend will most probably know how to sideload the app on Android then call it a day.

​@@arvs7356 These events bring unwanted attention to the emulation scene. The dev should have never had tried to sell his app through Amazon to begin with. Nintendo is already breathing down Yuzu's neck. Legacy sites like Vimms Lair are always in danger the more and more "influencers" talk about it. This is all very much related and not localized in the emulation frontend department.

I downloaded Yuzu for my phone (it works by the way, but coverage is spotty!) only after I found out Yuzu was shutting down

If you already own the app then you can update it on your device, but it won't be getting any future updates.

I dig Daijishou but I really don't like how there is no offline backup option and if you set it up on one memory card then later want to upgrade to a larger card, you have to set up directories all over again.

@@arbbo1675 yeah I totally see the benefit of that. It was easy to reinstall ES after it was dropped from Amazon. But I don’t change android devices often so setting up Daijisho is t the bothersome to me. Hopefully Daijisho will add this feature in the future. I also really like that all the setting are hidden in ES and with one button press you bring them up. Keeps the UI clean and simple.

@FireLordOzai001 My issue with Daijishou is not necessarily about changing devices, but changing cards. Daijishou doesn't give you access to it's database. I would like to be able to make an offline backup to go from one card/device to another without setting directories again. ES is also more of a standard and I have it on multiple devices and I have all the same games/artwork/themes on all of them.

You can choose which emulator to use per game from the metadata editor, it's available from the gamelist options menu.

@@ES-DE_Frontend thanks, I’m definitely going to try that out!!

yeah. emuparadise too, though that was a while ago

CDROMANCE Links are working again.

noticed that @@xFEARxPHOENIXx

There’ll be plenty of places that let you steal games popping up in the near future. Just like a hydra

and this is why it's important to own LOCAL external RELIABLE hard drives, stop using cloud online services and keep your retro gaming data offline from any prying eyes, i've already recently preserved my GB, GBA, GBC games onto reliable OFFLINE flash carts and a good old GBA SP IPS V2, no internet required

Daijisho, Does it give an error? I mean, do you ever have any problem using daijisho?

To an outsider, you just spoke gibberish lol. Like you're just saying nonsense if you know nothing about emulators

​@@heavenly2k I will rephrase because I use Google translate to better express my doubt. in some Front-Ends when you start the game they give errors... The daijisho from what I researched: when it doesn't open the game it at least opens the Emulator. My question is, did you experience any problems? Have there been any errors using Daijisho? I'm researching to find out which is the best Front-End...

Patreon is considerably less risky than google or amazon.

@@vexorian Agreed, but still ironic

Also it hasn't been updated in like six months, might be abandoned

​@@Bugsideits pretty feature complete and extremely stable, so even if its abandoned, it might be fine staying like it is for a while

I feel like the metal Retroid Pocket 3+ would have been a perfect fit for this use case, but sadly I don't see it on their store any more so you may have to look on eBay or Amazon to see if someone is selling one. It's generally under $200, premium feeling, and can play PSP at a 3x upscale. I made a video about it last year if you want to check it out! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DEdA11yN_fI.htmlsi=Uj-6Rg8g8z6-NmKd

Thank you! I'll give it a look!

You should be able to change rom path per emulator using the xml file

Thanks for the tips on this. Much appreciated. Like on my Odin2, i split my ROMS between internal and external storage. Do you know if the XML path modification can recognize both the internal and external path?@@1337brian2

@@1337brian2 do you know if using the xml to specify custom rom path, it can recognize both the internal and external storage on Odin2? I have had my ROMS split between those two unfortunately.

If they use the same signing keys and same internal app name, Android should let you install it over the existing app, so if you get it just try it and see what it does, unless the developer is specifically saying you need to uninstall it for some reason. If they used a different signing key it won't let you install it over the existing version (otherwise someone could install their own version over the top to access the app's private data), or if the internal app name is different, they will just coexist as different apps.

Go download it now and save the apk just in case

I used the windows screenscraper app to do this, i selected the videos, 3D box art, and metadata and then transferred it over to all my emulation devices that use emulation station :P you will never have to scrape again

Yes you can - I love this front end!

You are allowed to turn a profit. Bleem won their lawsuit against Sony. But they went bankrupt in the process.

​@@Bob_Smith19Bleem won lawsuit on completely different matter, not it being commercial. There was another emulator that won on profits stuff, but a lot has changed since then.

This is simply wrong. Nintendo is cracking down on emulation because it's popular. They are going to sue regardless of taking money. And we really need to stop discouraging devs from making a profit. At least thanks to their patreon, the yuzu devs got something in exchange of all their work.

@@Bob_Smith19 1. I didn't say they weren't allowed to turn a profit. What I'm saying is Nintendo doesn't like that. 2. It's clear Nintendo is trying to just make yuzu fold under pressure.

​@@vexoriandoes the "profit" cover the legal fees and stress?

For Windows, retrobat already exists for free and is the emulation station front end for retroarch

ES-DE is free on Windows.

Its funny that samsung has an insanely good and extremely complete game tracking in their gaming hub on their phones. Would love any frontend to copy this

Yes you can rotate the application internally 90, 180 or 270 degrees, there's a setting for this in the Other settings menu. Few themes will look good with that though, but the Slate and Tategriddy these will at least work fine.

@@ES-DE_Frontend Understandable, thank you! This project has really come a long way

When new versions come out, yeah you'll just download the new apk and tap on it, and it'll update and retain all your settings.

Thanks, Russ! I will give it a go. I was between this and Launchbox but this looks a bit more streamlined...@@RetroGameCorps

Patron sucks they get political

Both , daijsho for multi card locations and es for bread and butter emulation, SNES,mame . Of course if your collection is limited to one memory card , it doesn't matter

​@@monki_sudoyes it does because you need updates for new games

​@@chiquita683someone else will keep it going and exhaust Nintendo

they shouldn't have tried to profit from open source code that relies on use of a file like prod.keys that's widely pirated rather than legit dumped in 90% of end users cases, the reality is had they kept this purely NON PROFIT OPEN SOURCE and didnt turn it into a profiteering glutton situation Nintendo wouldn't be able to sue them but the reality is they charge money for their patreon and downloads using nintendo copyrighted encryption files and without it they couldn't run yuzu it wouldn't work. they got greedy and its gonna bite them in the ass. Bet on it.

Its opensource so someone will grab the code and keep evolving it probably under a different name. Opensource projects are unkillable

@@monki_sudoIt matters, because legal action hurts the creators, slows development, makes things harder for the users, and causes what lawyers call a "chilling effect" or a "SLAPP". It's enough of a problem that some places have "SLAPP-back" laws to protect people from this type of harmful lawsuit.

I'd recommend transitioning over to NetherSX2, it's a great upgrade from AetherSX2 and it will allow you to launch directly into the games: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HZcfVeNuKAE.html

@@RetroGameCorps Thanks for your quick reply ! Actually that is exactly what I did ! But still when I launch from NetherSX2 it works like a charm but when I launch from ES-DE I got a notification on the bottom saying the request is launch but the screen stays black and nothing is launch.

@@RetroGameCorps OK I found where my issue was ! I created the ps2 folder in ROMs but I wrote it in Uppercase "PS2". I deleted it and made a proper "ps2" in lowercase and that works like a charm !!!

Im curious to know too. Might compare between them and share the results later, but im too lazy to do so lol

I found it....

Ayn Odin 2