T he animated intros, the sound effects, the wheel art. Stop if this sounds familiar. For the longest time, I thought Hyperspin was the bees knees of emulator front ends. When I first discovered it back in 2012, it looked out of this world. Although I’d been messing around with emulators for ages, I was still very green to front-ends. The idea of a full menu system that loaded all your games with pretty graphics, video previews and box art – it was some next level shit.

Fast forward 6 or so years later, and I hateeeee using HyperSpin. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the developers or anything like that. The amount of work and effort that the community does for HyperSpin is nothing short of amazing – it’s just getting HyperSpin to work and play nicely takes time, a LOT of time. Time where now days is probably better spent actually playing games, than looking at a menu screen with a rom list.

Sorry, it's a pain to setup

If you Google, “hyperspin tutorial” or something along those lines, I bet you $5 bucks and a cheese burger that you’re going to find hundreds of articles on the HyperSpin forums. There’s tutorials left right and center about setting up emulators, JoytoPad configs, Dir to XML programs, RocketLauncher, HyperBase and a multitude of other programs, not called HyperSpin.

HyperSpin major (or core) updates have been far and few between, so while development stalled for a bit, the community stepped in and developed a whole bunch of third-party tools to help get your setup going. As a result, to get the most out of HyperSpin you’ll have to jump around 5 – 10 programs just to get your collection to play the way you want it.

You don’t HAVE to use these additional applications, but they make getting your setup going a lot easier, especially since HyperSpin is already hard to deal with. I’ve spent hours mucking around with HyperSpin getting images to work, using XML generators, loading third-party programs on launch, and even adding new games. HyperSpin sure looks nice, but to get an all working config the way you want it, is soul crushing. I know a lot of purists HS fans will say, “well have you searched the forums, there’s plenty of documentation”

It’s not as simple as that – there’s a lot of nuances and things that come up that is expected in a sort of front end setup like this. More importantly its setting up the most basic things that HyperSpin simply doesn’t do (or do well), is where you’ll need to grab a small utility to help you along. You shouldn’t need 50 additional programs – sorry but it’s real talk. To make matters worse, looking for a tutorial for all these bits and bobs in the HyperSpin forums isn’t easy, there’s just shit everywhere.

It's time to move on

At the end of the day, a front end is a list of games that looks pretty, that you can launch roms from. That’s it. It shouldn’t be a complicated affair. The more time I started putting into HyperSpin, the more it dawned on me – why is this complicated?

I’m wasting all this time and effort for all these images, videos and menus that I spend literally seconds in, I’m here to play games! I’m not taking a stab at HS and how it looks, people love it, and that’s fine. I even know people who actually enjoy setting these things up, and again – that’s ok. But now days, I want something simple to set up, won’t take friggin’ years to get going, and just works. I’ve setup a dedicated HyperSpin setup before and when I plug it now days, I’m amazed how I even got it going in the first place.

Time to hunt for a new front end.

The criteria

I had a Sega New Astro City arcade machine that I wanted to convert into a MAME setup. I’m not going to go into the technical requirements for hooking up a PC to an arcade monitor (that’s another beast in itself) but I put in a PC in the bad boy and the machine was running, the front end was next.

My setup would only have arcade games and select console games. I never really got why people put every emulator under the sun on their arcade machine. 50% of games on other consoles don’t map well to arcade controls, and some just don’t make sense (N64 on an arcade machine, for example). Oh and also, thousands of games on lists won’t be a thing – this would have a refined selection of favourites. From all the 30,000 games MAME has, people only play maybe a fraction. If you like having everything at your fingertips, that’s your poison – but I wanted to have a solid selection of titles that wasn’t saturated down by rubbish that no one will play.

So based on my past experience of setting up HyperSpin, that was off the table. I made myself a hit list of things I wanted out of my next front end.  This was what I came up with:

  • Reliance on third-party tools to a minimum.
  • Relativity low system resources needed.
  • I can add and remove games, easily.
  • Ability to have a single list, but different emulators behind each game (not a list separated by emulators).
  • You don’t need a Britannica to know how to use it.

What about LaunchBox!?

Knew you’d say that, yes I’ve looked at LaunchBox and its pretty darn good. Don’t get me wrong, LaunchBox does do a lot of things that HyperSpin doesn’t. Give it a directory full of roms and it will automatically generate a list, and automatically download images! Friggin A+ right there, no additional program needed. It also has a ton of templates and import configurations for all the major emulators which makes setting up a breeze. The developers are also constantly updating LB with new features and their documentation is great. However to get the most of out LB, you’ll need to buy Big Box, which is what 99% of people will want if they want a front end.

Big Box is the full version of LB, which has the full screen menu with videos, wheels and tons more which I won’t get into. Not trying to sound like a cheap ass, but I didn’t want to pay for something. If I was running a mega rom collection on my arcade machine, I think it would be the clear winner especially with its rom management, but it was still a bit too, I guess heavy for what I needed it to do. Maybe later on when I make an emulation PC and I’ll tinker with LB more but for my arcade machine needs, it wasn’t exactly ‘it’.

So once my experimentation with LaunchBox ended, I started searching to see who the usual suspects were when it came to front end business. Much to my, not so much surprise, aside from LB there hasn’t been a lot of progress or new players in the game. There were still what I like to call ‘legacy’ front ends hanging around such as Mala, MameWah and a few other ones such as GameEx and Maximus Arcade, but 9 times out of 10, LB blew them away with features. If there was something promising, it was most likely behind a pay wall and that immediately was crossed out. I then came across Big Blue.

I think we have a winner

Big Blue is a free open source Windows based front end which fit the bill, almost to a tee. A one man project made by someone who had similar frustrations when it came to usability and features in an emulator front end, it seemed to address all the issues I had. The below is an except, verbatim from the home page.

  • Powerful GUI configuration utility with the ability to query MAME’s list XML data.
  • No dependency on emulator versions; won’t have to be changed continually with each new version of an emulator.
  • Supports any program that you can run from the command line; if you can run it from the command line, you can launch it from Big Blue.
  • Ability to choose programs (with parameters) to run both before and after the main game in your list.
  • Overrides Escape key behavior so that you can quit from any emulator by pressing Escape even if the emulator doesn’t natively support it.

First of all, let’s make no mistake – Big Blue is not a front end if you like flashing pictures, crazy sounds effects, animations and all that sort of stuff – it’s definitely a case of function over form here. You’re limited to 1 image and 1 video per game in the menu, aside from the SF2 theme the rest are a bit meh and it doesn’t give off the same sort of wow factor you get from say LaunchBox. But this is absolutely fine, if it does what’s written on the box.

I’m not going to break down every little component of Big Blue right here, nor is this a tutorial, I’ll save that for another article. The thing that sets Big Blue apart from other front ends is the design behind its lists. Unlike most other front ends which are usually broken down into systems or consoles, these lists can be anything you want – you’re not tied down to a single emulator.

Lists lists and lists

Say you want a list to consist of fighting games, but the games range from MAME, ePSXe to GameCube. Big Blue will allow you create a single list of games from all these different systems, regardless of what actually runs this in the background – you’re not forced to use a single emulator. Marvel vs Capcom from MAME, Dragon Ball GT from PS1 (yeeeah I got a softspot for that one) and Soul Calibur 2 from Gamecube can all appear within a single list, and launch flawlessly without needing to create separate wheels for different consoles. I know HyperSpin can do this with enough tinkering around, but being able to do it without another utility and easily? That’s where Big Blue has the upper hand.

You can manually add exactly what games you want with ease, allowing you to filter by genre, manufacturer, no. of players, all while happening incredibly fast. Also small but invaluable features like allowing you to removing duplicates, a migration tool for config files and the ability to clean up rom names (eg so there’s no revision numbers) just sweeten the deal.

Remember this is all within the front end itself, no additional program, no prior trickery or knowledge on what to do, its built right in. LaunchBox, I will admit has a great autofilter from the first time you import MAME games, but it doesn’t let you cherry pick them like Big Blue (aside from a favourites menu). Did I also mentioned that Big Blue is super lightweight? Clocks in at a measly 35mb zip package.

In under 1 minute, I was able to create 2 genre lists, and add multiple games from MAME. No external tools required. 

Why am I gushing at the about this? Well typically in say HyperSpin, if you wanted to only make a select list of games to appear, you’d have to generate an XML list based on these roms. To do this, you’d need a another tool or HyperSync to generate the XML (which is what HyperSpin uses to display roms), and it would consist of what’s in that directory. So if you wanted to add another or remove a game later on, you’d need to put the rom/s in that same directory, generate the list, and then replace the list that HyperSpin uses.

There’s so much more good shit underneath the hood with Big Blue, here’s a quick rundown of what’s possible:

Custom program templates

Define command line parameters of an emulator or program (pre and post also supported) Select the template, drag and drop your roms it BB and viola they’re added to the list with all the parameters you defined.

Force Close

No, it’s not a new Jedi power. Big Blue can force close any emulator via the ESC key, even if the emulator doesn’t support it. No need for a third party program, no complications.

Program agnostic

Completely program agnostic, you’re not tied to specific emulator versions, nor do you need to change anything when a new one comes out. If you can run it from cmd.exe, you’re good to go.

Stay focused

Disable inputs when launching a game. This may be small but a lot of front-ends don’t do this. Ever tried hitting controls when a game loads in a front-end? Yeah it will probably lose focus and fuck everything up.

HyperSpin is very much catered for the “I want every game ever in my list” crowd. I mean there’s a site dedicated to premade lists for almost every console (See HyperBase), which I find kind of ridiculous. You’re telling me I can’t just pick and choose what I want within the front end itself? I think this reason alone turns me off HyperSpin now days, the requirement to have every game ever isn’t my jam. But with Big Blue I can freely add whatever, I don’t need another program to do it for me, I don’t need to mess around.

A front-end that doesn't induce headaches.

As you can tell, I like Big Blue, a lot. It’s currently in my Astro City now and it works a treat. This basic philosophy of having lists and not being tied down by emulators and its MAME integration, is by far Big Blue’s major selling point. It is designed for a very particular sort of user in mind though. Like I mentioned before, it’s not about style here it’s about function and ease of use in the backend. If everything I just talked about above doesn’t exactly appeal to you and you’re fine with your HyperSpin setup – I’m probably not going to convince you to switch. But after all the time that I’ve wasted setting up emulator front ends in the past, Big Blue is a breath of fresh air. Again this all comes down to personal preference and what you want out of your setup.

This won’t be the last article I do on Big Blue, I’ll probably write a few tutorials on getting a basic Big Blue setup going and I do want to try make some themes. The developer has touched on what’s possible theme wise but there’s no solid documentation on what’s possible so it’ll be some tinkering around before I get figure what I can and cannot do.

Until then, give Big Blue a whirl, it might surprise you.

Sources: Big Blue homepage (external link)

C D C R U Z E

C D C R U Z E

Chad is someone who wishes arcades were still around. This also happens to be his site where he rambles on and on about games and emulation. He can also cook a mean cheese toastie.

12 Comments

  • Adam says:

    Love the review and love big blue!

    • C D C R U Z E says:

      Thanks man!

      • Justin Davis says:

        Terrible review, you can get setup in Hyperspin in one day following these vids,

        • Darren Bardsley says:

          No you can’t.

          Firstly, the videos you linked to are deprecated and largely useless, which pretty much says it all about HyperSpin. Every guide, tutorial, walkthrough, or instructable is either out of date or missing numerous importants parts for the utter shambles that is HyperSpin.

          IF you have a huge amount of free time, enjoy tinkering with executables, xml files, directories, sifting through page after page of poorly written documentation, making lots of notes, following link after link, trying to work out which of the vast amount of contradicting instructions are applicable to the particular version you may or may have of each of the many programs you’re trying to get to work, many of which have changed names, functions, etc, you might like the HyperSpin scene.

          If your time is precious, and you would prefer to spend it playing some of the classic retro games out there, HyperSpin is the worst possible mess you could ever entangle yourself into. You’ll be doing many different things, but you definitely won’t be playing games. HyperSpin was never really meant for that. Choose something else. You’ll be very glad you did.

          • Kyle says:

            Discovered that just recently. HyperSpin makes your head spin! (imitates Stan Freberg) There it goes!

  • Cash says:

    No mention of EmulationStation? It does everything Big Box does, for free. It could even do your single-list desire with a bit of finagling, though it’s absolutely designed to separate by console/emulator.

    For my use as an HTPC emulator for 16/32 bit consoles on my home TV, I really like the pretty interface. That’s the whole point, really!

    I use RetroArch for all of my emulation, and it’s got a fairly nice built in launching interface itself. The default theme is based on the old PS3 XMB but you can make it look any way you want. It also requires next to no configuration, while emulationstation does require you to type your folder structure into a config file.

    • C D C R U Z E says:

      At the time of writing I thought EmulationStation was Pi only thing, but I’ll def look into it again for Windows!
      I’ve used it with RetroPi setups etc but yeah I’ll see how it works with Windows stuff

  • JustDan says:

    Thanks for the review and input. I actually really LIKE HyperSpin, but the constant need to get other programs involved was annoying; further I spent a great deal of time in configuration only to dig deep into their site’s posts and find out that HyperLaunch is essentially dead in the water and I’d have to move over to RocketLaunch. *big headache* Why isn’t this integrated into a newer release? If I actually build a solid dual joystick console 70-incher setup for my garage, I’m sure I’ll just spring for Big Box, but for my living room with my wife and daughter playing and watching, I need something simpler yet intuitive. I don’t see my family generating XML files and creating exception lists just yet. Going to give Big Blue a chance, thanks again.

  • Kyle Hill says:

    Hyperspin people mostly do it for their cabinets and not on Windows. They have little care for Windows users and is like a 20 percent project.

  • Peter Bilson says:

    Hi, Chad do you have copies of the Big Blue downloads? as the original site download links are dead. Which download would you use stable or bleeding edge beta?

    Nice work on the theme, Hopefully some others might jump on the band wagon and get more themes created for Big Blue.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

C D C R U Z E is ..

Someone who wants to ramble on about games, arcade, emulation and design. Maybe a few other things too.

Where can you reach me?

I’m available on a few other social media platforms! Have a gander at the below.