ABOUT SPAWK

I am a 40 something year old male. I was born and raised in Canada and I only speak English. I have been a "gamer" for... well for as long as I remember. 

Arcade wise, that's Space Invaders/Asteroids era and onward. Without the popularity of these 2 games Pacman, which is credited with starting the whole video game craze, might not have ever seen the light of day.  After all, at this point in history there was no real way to enjoy these games at home. This might beg you to ask the question: What was the first video game ever? A google search will lead you down a rabbit hole of sorts. Basically it will depend on your definition. If you are a few years older than me, you are screaming "Pong" right now. Confession, I have NEVER seen an actual Pong arcade cab (live) and never played it until it was ported to a home Atari system. But they are right, it does get my vote as first real video game (at least commercially where you had to insert a coin) so there is no denying it's iconic status.

While I do have memories of playing a few systems like Commadore 64, IntelliVision, ColecoVision, and at least 3 Atari's as a small child, my real home gaming experience didn't begin until the first system I personally owned, the NES. I've owned almost every North American home system since then up to and including my favorite system of all time, the PS2. At this point I stopped buying consoles. I did get a PSP and an NDS (original not 3D). I also briefly owned a PSVita but quickly sold it. As you can see, I am clearly a "retro" gamer. Near the end of the PS2's life cycle there were a couple of "online only" games and I really saw the writing on the wall. On the horizon: Cookie cutter, low content games with "on-line" play. Ok, the transition was a lot slower than I anticipated. And I actually find there has been a surge of decent single player games being made. But that's a story for a later time.

I am no stranger to PC's or emulation either. Been using them both since the Dos and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups era of computers (Pre Pentium: 2x86, 3x86, 4x86). I want to say that Mame was the very first emulator ever but I may have to check facts on that. Maybe it was just the first I was ever exposed to. In any event, it didn't take long til there were so many systems being emulated that you ultimately needed a "rom manager" to help organize your collection. These evolved over time. Some of the early ones acted like clrmamepro still does, where you can load 1 system (DAT) at a time and check for missing/wrong files and such. Into programs that would display a list of systems in a pane on the left so you could easily switch between them and details of each file within that system in the center pane. Eventually they added a right pane that would display snapshot and/or other information about the game. A lot like MameUI right? Yeah, and then was the last piece to the puzzle. In MameUI you could double click a file and it will launch. So they added the ability to launch games with an emulator (that you had to configure) in the rom managers. It was pretty rudimentary though so it didn't play nice with some emulators and such but all the elements are there, at least one manager at the time allowed you to browse the UI with a joystick even. I think is the point where gamers everywhere went "Yeah! This is what we need" and the idea of a GUI for retro gaming was born. Now I'll admit, I had a sort of "hiatus" from actually following the scene for a few years around this time. The idea of a "Game Center" as I used to think of it was alive and well though.

What lead me back to the "Frontend" (FE) as it's become known was an add-on for Kodi (then named XBMC) simply called "Rom Collection Browser". It's a very basic launcher that required a lot of manual set up from the user but it certainly wasn't easy or intuitive. Artwork in particular was very tedious to make sure looked ok and there are zero options. It may still be a viable option for users with only a couple of small collections and they don't mind taking the time to make it look good in their Kodi. Ultimately, it was a frustrating experience for me.

 

From what I remember, a google search around this time yielded three options: MaLa, GamEX and Arcade Maximus. The latter 2 being paid only. I can't remember if Hyperspin (HS) was even an option yet or I just lumped it into the paid category. Either way, I wasn't ready to actually pay for one of these so I chose MaLa as my next adventure. Unfortunately it's one of those programs that just... is! It was abandoned when I got to it and to this day nobody has ever updated it. It's a real shame too as it is still a very viable FE even today. I mean if you are graphically inclined (like PhotoShop or GIMP wise) you could probably create some amazing stuff with it. I am not though! I had pieced together a very crude setup with images found on google and such. When something(s) didn't work though, you were just beat. There was no bustling forums and nobody to ask. All in all I enjoyed my time with MaLa.

Like many users though, there were issues that we just couldn't get past so the search was on. Inevitably it became clear that even if I could miraculously create my own front end, I would need the videos from EmuMovies (an absolute must no matter what FE you use). I figured at this point, if I am going to actually jump into this and start forking out money, I should at least do it with one of the paid FE's. A lot of videos were popping up on youtube of Hyperspin with all it's flash. Quite frankly it was miles ahead of anything else. So this was it! Lifetime membership at both and I was off to the races. Hahahaha, not really. Like... it use to be really hard to set up! It still is sort of (hence this guide), but I remember just deleting everything and completely starting over! A couple of times!!!

 

That was ten years ago LOL. Needless to say I've learned a lot in that time. I am not saying I am an expert or anything. Even after all this time, there are features I have never used like "rom mapping". I would figure it out if I had to, but I just stay away from merged sets instead.
 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this page. Now let's see exactly what we can accomplish with HS shall we.

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