This is a simple frontend designed for an low resolution (15 kHz CRT) arcade monitor that allows the user to browse a selection of games and start one. It was designed to be a much simpler alternative to fully-featured frontends (like Hyperspin) for system that have a handful of games rather than thousands.
I refer to it as Lite because I previously made another game launcher which uses a high resolution GUI, while this one is simply a text menu with an arcade-style font.
Though it was designed for launching games, it can actually launch any type of executable.
It is written in C# using WinForms and is designed for very low resolution monitors (such as 15 kHz CRT arcade monitor).
The user is launched into a full screen application and can use the up and down arrow keys to move through a list of games. Pressing space (or other configured key) will cause the selected game to be launched.
The title, footer, and waiting labels can have customized text values and colors.
When idle, the frontend can be configured to launch a specific game after a configurable number of seconds. It can also launch a game immediately upon startup.
Make sure you have the Press Start K font installed before running (see resources/PRSTARTK.TTF).
Open the solution file src/GameLauncherLite.sln with Visual Studio 2017 community edition and press F6 to build or F5 to run.
To use in place of the default explorer.exe (Windows desktop) shell, edit or create the following registry key (type REG_SZ):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell
and set it to the path of the built GameLauncherLite.exe binary and re-login.
You can exit the shell using ALT+F4 or CTRL+ALT+Delete to open Task Manager (which then can be used to start an explorer.exe desktop if needed).
Several parameters such as resolution, emulator path, keybindings, and game list can be configured by editing the self-documented App.config file.
There is little to no error checking done on the configuration values, so if you encounter unhandled exceptions while running this app, first try reverting to a known good configuration file.
Released under an MIT license; see LICENSE for more information.