My impressions of the Retrobat emulation front-end

22 Nov, 2024

After installing Retroarch, I was skeptical that I needed an emulation front end. It was difficult for me to understand what was the advantage of a front-end. The things I read online were not very helpful. I decided to give it a shot anyway.

I installed Retrobat because my main computer runs Windows 10 and I did not want something too labor-intensive. Retrobat is made specifically for Windows. It is not available on any other operating system. Because of that, I assumed that it would have all kinds of makeshift QOL features a program can have when it targets a single platform.

Everything about Retrobat is straightforward and well-documented. After more than a month of using it, I never had to ask a question to an actual human. I am not a computer wizard so that is an excellent measure of the quality of a project and its documentation.

Configuring my folders was needlessly complex. I usually put some things in my OneDrive folder. I was also planning to keep my games on a frontend agnostic location. To achieve that one must use symlinks¹ on Windows, which are not as intuitive as on Linux.

After trying the command line I ended up installing Link Shell Extension to facilitate the creation of symlinks. Having used Linux for years, managing symlinks is not an issue for me. But most Windows users would find that too complicated. Instead, Retrobat could allow me to set my folders during the installation. If it is essential to have them all in one place, Retrobat could handle the symlinks for the user.

Because Retrobat is mostly a configurator for EmulationStation, it is not technically a frontend, but rather a set of tools and defaults for EmulationStation. EmulationStation will call whatever emulator runs the game you choose right after it overwrites the emulator settings to reflect the settings you made on Retrobat. If you never played a game for that system, the emulator will be downloaded and configured automatically.

The greatest advantage of Retrobat is its large set of sensible defaults. They allowed me to skip the grunt work of looking up all the best settings to achieve ideal emulation. If you wish to do that yourself, it is possible to prevent Retroarch from overwriting changes made directly to the emulator. That is almost never necessary, as the Retrobat user interface exposes most settings anyone cares about. Additionally, the default settings are marked as AUTO, making it trivial to remember how to reset them to the defaults. When you scroll the menus, there will be a small text below each entry showing exactly what you altered.

Looking at my games folder, I see:

• Atari2600
• GameCube
• GameGear
• MasterSystem
• MegaDrive
• NeoGeo
• PcEngine
• PcEngineCD
• PSX
• PS2
• PS3
• SegaCD
• Windows
• GB
• GBA
• GBC
• NES
• SNES
• Wii

For most of these consoles, Retrobat will call Retroarch. They usually run well without any changes. The main exception is PS3 games. They require previous decryption and, later, live compilation of the shaders. A Google search showed me that this is unavoidable for technical reasons I can't explain. RPCS3 will compile shaders for as long as you play the game. And the only way to render those shaders to cache would be to play the entirety of the game before you play the game. That doesn't make any sense. Although that may be different on a more powerful machine, to me PS3 games are a drag. Many of the PS3 games I would play are either available on PC or are originally PS2 games anyway. PS2 emulation is stellar, and I can easily upscale it to my 1080p monitor.

On a more personal note about my gaming habits, I have been working with my therapist to try to understand what I really want. I realized that, even in my leisure time, I am always trying to achieve goals and fill gaps, following lists of the things I should enjoy for one reason or another. That is not fun. In the beginning of my recent surge in interest for emulated games, I started trying to like Persona 3, then Final Fantasy X. I found them rigid and claustrophobic. So I installed Fallout 4, then Fallout New Vegas on PC, but the joy wasn't there. Then I installed Turtle WoW, a World of Warcraft private server. I played quite a bit of it and then lost interest. I suddenly had the urge to play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas which felt genuine. That may sound trivial but I have difficulty understanding and acknowledging my own desires. I will sometimes force myself to do things just because I feel that I should.

I decided to play the PS2 version of San Andreas. The Steam version would require me to do some modding to restore the cut content (mostly songs). I am a little tired of modding right now, and the Playstation 2 version was the one I failed to give a chance to back when I had an actual PS2. So I'm playing it now.

Funny story about my relationship with story-heavy games: I don't like them. In the generations before the PS2, most games were weakly narrative. They were all about gameplay, and if a game had a cutscene, it was a cutscene I could skip. When the PS2 came up, I felt left behind. Suddenly all games had a relevant story, often unskippable. Unlike most gamers, I couldn't care less about intricate narratives. The notion that even a mere platformer now wanted to be a film was, to me, infuriating. I already watched films and TV shows, I didn't need my games to be in that space. For decades, I rejected story games out of spite. I still think I was right, by the way. I don't care for cinematic games at all. They feel pretentious and stuffy. But maybe my rage prevented me from some valuable experiences. So yeah, I'm not skipping the cut-scenes in San Andreas. Let's see how long that lasts.

Caveats

There are a few annoyances that you might want to consider before choosing Retrobat. (1) Remapping global hotkeys is only possible if you wish to create your own fork and mess around with the C# source code. That includes global keybindings to create save states for example. (2) Remapping the gamepad for specific games and consoles will always require blacklisting it from Retrobat and managing its settings on the emulators directly. (3) By default, Retrobat will cycle between some very flashy videos on startup. You can disable that, but that serves to show that Retrobat is not really designed to minimize sensory overload. All Retroarch themes are very flashy and maximalistic. I couldn't find a single nice-looking theme that wasn't an explosion of colors and shapes. I ended up choosing one of the flashy ones and configured it to reduce the amount of motion, images, and vibrant colors.

Conclusion

I am very impressed by Retrobat. It almost feels too good to be true, and it shows how much the emulation scene evolved in the last decade. Back in the 1990s, when I played Pokemon on my parents' computer using the keyboard like a peasant, I could never imagine that the emulation of multiple platforms would one day become so easy and pleasant. Despite the unrelenting flashiness of its interface, I was able to achieve a look I can live with. Retrobat's limitations are unlikely to bother many users and are also a good tradeoff for those who seek simplicity and usability. In a market that constantly pesters us with needless subscriptions, Retrobat almost feels like something I should be paying for. It's a "steal".

Screenshots

A few screenshots of my setup. Click on the images for a larger version.

#emulation #en #gaming #review