[Zpectre87]

So, I know there are the two big addons (Advanced Launcher and RCB), however, each has its own problems:

1) AL no longer supported, many skins have support for it but not the ones I want.
2) RCB very few skins have support for it. Aeon MQ6 is pretty awesome and supports it, but it's like the only good one that does (it and Aeon Nox). Many good skins don't support it since RCB ships with its own skin files, forcing you to use Confluence in addon settings.

There are other choices but I feel they may not be that great either:

3) Steam, but I don't want to be reliant on Steam... I use it but not for ROMs.
4) Advanced Launcher + link to frontend of your choice. EmulationStation seems pretty good, configuration isn't difficult, but no resolution toggle in app, requires command line to set, and splash screen looks ugly and distorted. There's also a new one called Big Blue, looks nice.
5) There's this new Hyperspin addon I haven't checked out, but Hyperspin is a nightmare to configure and the cool metadata costs cash to get (legally, of course).
6) Retroplayer, still in infancy, doesn't support much stuff ATM.
7) RetroArch itself, but I believe it's not "general purpose", the new GUI is a frontend for RetroArch not games in general.

What us gamers can do to have a nice gaming setup within Kodi?

[MaxMustermann]

Thank you for this question. I'm in the same situation and want to know if it makes sense to setup RCB with all its demands (file/folder structure among others). RCB seems to be the best option ATM, unless you want to use the RetroPlayer branch (based on Kodi 15.2).
AL is not working for me as it always tells me "Target category not found." (I am using Jarvis Nightlies).

Since kodi's game support is currently in heavy development, I guess that games will be handled like any other media in the future: one folder per game, sth like game.nfo, boxfront.jpg, fanart.jpg etc inside. IMHO this would be the better approach than splitting roms and artwork into separate folders, as seen in hyperspin, RCB etc.

I saw that RCB supports this approach somehow, but one has to change the nfo files manually that are generated by RCB. In each nfo file it is possible to declare full paths to artwork, so it is feasible to put the artwork inside the game folder and reference it accordingly.

[Zpectre87]

Nice reply, thanks.

RCB can get complicated with thousands of ROMs. That's where an automatic tool comes in handy. I don't really mind staying on Isengard for RetroPlayer but it seems it can't do saves yet, but I haven't messed with it much.

RetroPlayer is a great project. Lots of gaming outside Steam (we have GOG for example, source ports of old games, freeware indie games, and so on, heck, even EA with Origin), so a Kodi frontend for games makes a lot of sense and Steam won't make it redundant at all.

People have forked AL but not much news lately.

[zachmorris]

I will throw my addon into the list for this particular question.

Take a look at IARL. It's similar to RCB, but cloud based. All the setup of metada (images, videos, description, etc) is included, so the only thing the user has to do is setup external launching. It was designed to work with Retroplayer, but I've also set it up so you can use external emulators if you want to.

[Zpectre87]

zachmorris I didn't consider it because of the Internet Archive thing, but it seems a really really nice idea indeed! It may not be the goal of your addon but maybe adding local scanning of games could help, in the event you want to play a game that's not hosted in the Internet Archive for some reason (like, being commercially available). Though, judging by the number of games, it seems IA really got all the works, and it's a guaranteed source because, well, it's IA, it'll stay there for the remainder of the internet's existence (safer than Steam actually).

I actually forgot IA hosted the No-Intro sets (which are the best).