I remember downloading it like 6-7 years back and not liking it over individual emulators. Now though it's so easy to download cores and run so many different emulators under one application. It even has runahead latency reduction which is nifty, not to mention it's huge library of shaders.
Now the only problem I have is I can't find a good site for arcade roms that isn't some shady shit. Vimm's Lair, my usual go to, doesn't host arcade roms sadly.
Friendly reminder that the lead dev of RetroArch, TwinAphex, is a known transphobe who has a history of harassing and stealing code from actual emulator developers to pressure them into directly supporting RetroArch
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/siaegs/libretro_regarding_duckstationswanstation/?rdt=60174 is a good starting point regarding code theft and https://www.resetera.com/threads/there-seems-to-be-a-brewing-controversy-going-on-in-the-emulation-scene-involving-libretro-whats-going-on.348112/ is a good summary of the overall mess.
Regarding the directly anti-trans stuff: I won't be linking to that since it involved a lot of dead naming and claims of causing the death of a person and... yeah. You can find that with a bit of googling.
So, when possible, use the actual emulators. There has been a MUCH bigger push over the past decade or so to provide user friendly UIs and to actually care about UX. And there are other frontends that aren't libretro/retroarch.
they seem like an asshole, but i don't get the allegations of code theft, they branched a codebase under GPL to integrate into their own GPL codebase which is perfectly fair game and the whole point of licensing your stuff under GPL.
Knowing nothing about the allegations, "code theft" of Free Software is still certainly a thing. It commonly comes in the form of stripping attribution and taking credit for other people's work. This is more common than you'd think.
RetroArch is one of the pieces of software that I am willing to ignore the viewpoints and actions of the lead dev.
For one, they are not the only dev. Two, it's open source, and they are not making money off of it. Three, it's a genuinely great piece of software with features that standalone emulators don't have, like slang shaders, mass cross platform support (and portability of code), various lag reduction techniques, automated native resolution and refresh rate output for CRTs, Freesync for LCDs, Linux DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) support, automatic controller profiles, etc.
If it were proprietary, then yeah, I wouldn't be using it.
I had to use fbneo out of fightcade not too long ago and was pleasantly surprise by how straightforward it was to use, I have terrible memories of emulator UIs in the 2000s
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I must just have porridge brain but I still find the UI way too convoluted, especially if you use mouse and keyboard. For arcade roms you can just search for "mame roms" on archive.org or this site https://edgeemu.net/browse-mame.htm
I get that, I'm using a pad so it's pretty easy. Ah see I tried searching for the individual roms off archive and wasn't getting anything, thanks!
Archive.org is always your friend for Mame roms: https://archive.org/download/mame-merged/mame-merged/
And to make the abbreviated roms' name intelligible, I recommend this site: https://mame.spludlow.co.uk/
The best way to download MAME roms is to just download a full romset so you don't have to deal with the annoyance of missing some BIOS pack you needed to play your game. It'll take up a ton of space to download, but there are tools to help you get rid of stuff (non-working games, porn games
, paremovedo/mahjong/gambling games etc.).edit: lol, there's an inadvertent slur in there, but it's referring to a Japanese gambling thing where you launch metal balls.
It works!