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Daniel De Matteis released today RetroArch 1.9, a new major version of the popular and open-source frontend for emulators, video games, game engines, and media players.
If you are a hardcore retro gamer, RetroArch is what you want to install on your GNU/Linux distribution to enjoy those awesome cool retro games that you probably played all day long when you were young.
The latest release, RetroArch 1.9 is a massive one, bringing lots of goodies for retro gamers. Highlights include a new Explore View for all playlists, which lets you search for content based on various criteria, such as genre, origin, publisher, system, release year, developer, and amount of players.
The developers note the fact that the new Explore View will only display search results based on the content that’s already included in your playlists. Also, the metadata is not yet complete.
RetroArch 1.9 also enhances the search functionality of the playlist, finally allowing players to perform multiple, continuous searches to further refine the search results, as well as to clear the last entered search filter by pressing the Cancel button.
A new “Load Content” startup notification option, which, when enabled, will display a short animation when launching new content from the menu or the command line. This feature can be enabled under Settings > On-Screen Display > On-Screen Notifications.
RetroArch 1.9 makes input remapping easier, especially for touchscreen devices, thanks to drop-down lists that support controllers and keyboards. Moreover, users will now be able to use the RetroPad start button to reset the controller keyboard remaps.
A lot of improvements in this release are around the main menu, which now lets users selectively disable or enable widget notifications, correctly returns the cursor to the previous position in the menu rather than the first entry, displays icons of the associated system on the Playlist screen, and features a new Import Content submenu consisting of the Scan Directory, Scan File and Manual Scan entries.
Last but not least, RetroArch 1.9 brings various enhancements to the built-in, FFmpeg-based video player, including a new progress overlay bar that will appear when navigating forward or backwards in the clip.
Under the hood, there are various improvements to reduce the memory footprint and disk I/O overhead, which translates to better performance while using less resources. For all the bug fixes included in this release, don’t hesitate to study the full changelog in the release announcement page.
RetroArch is compatible not only with Linux systems, but also with Raspberry Pi, Android, Apple TV, iOS, and Xbox One devices. You can download RetroArch 1.9 right now from the official website.
Image: RetroArch
Last updated 4 years ago
