AttractMode : Give it a try..

[carlhungus74]

Hello,

I've been dealing with Retropie since more than one year now. During this period, I've tested several front-ends. Finally, I have switched for AttractMode, after months on ES (and others).
For whom it can be useful, please find below some pro/cons for the available frontends. Of course it's just my personal opinion. Feel free to comment.

1-EmulationStation
Pros:

• Great quantity of themes
• Performance is very good on PI, navigation is fluid and quick
• Good integration with Retropie, so for a beginner, it's good to have a turnkey solution

Cons:

• Themes are a bit "static".
• Many themes seems nearly "identical" because of the "philosophy" of ES
• Heavily based on XML for romlists, medias... Can be difficult to handle/customize

2-PegasusFE
Pros :

• Great modern look & feel. Very promising.
  Cons :
• Young project
• Very small amount of available themes
• missing some "base" features : sound volume control for example
• Based on "metadata" files for medias, which can be confusing (because it's rather different than in ES). Although it can use the ES configuration files.

Unfortunately I use it very little time, because of the lack of features, and the learning curve to understand the metadata/assets system.

3-AttractMode
Pros:

• Great quantity of themes (Can even use the hyperspins themes... not my taste, but many likes them)
  Themes are more dynamic with lots of effects available (spinning, zooming of images, videos and so on..)

• Lot's of customisation exists for each themes (spinning wheel, with or without animations), settings can be easily modified with just a button click

• No more XML. Only simple CSV file for each game list. Easy to edit with a text editor.
  Media management is clearly the big advantage of this front end. No need to modify XML to add flyers, or marquees, to point to the correct folder.
  Just put all your flyers in a "flyer" folder, all videos in a "snap" folder, and automatically when browsing the games, each media is displayed (same name of course). Each folder location can be customised for every system/emulation/gamelist.

• Each game list (emulator) can have a completely different theme. A theme for Atari2600, another theme for FBA and so on...

• Plugins integration. For example one very useful is to have a onscreen menu to execute linux commands (shutdown, restart and so on...).

Cons :

• Still in experimental section of retropie, so for a beginner it's difficult to play with.

• Some themes can be a bit too heavy for RPI, with some slowdown.

Now, you see AttractMode is my favourite one :)
The customisation of the frontend and the themes are quite easy, and it's already packed with lots of useful features.
Now when I show my bartop to my friends, the "wow" effect is guaranteed :)
And as a perfectionist, AttractMode can be tuned to each of my needs

If you don't know it yet, just give it a try.
Some links below on "classical" AttractMode themes in actions.