Recalbox don't show GBA games

[Costal]

(Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker) Recently I've downloaded a enormous rom pack for GBA, around 8000 games, tested a lot of them in my computer with mGBA, and they work just fine, but when I try to use them in my Recalbox, they simply don't show up, I tried so far to reduce the quantity (to about 1500 games), zip one by one, and use not compressed versions of the files, (note: when I compacted them in zip, I choose "best" for the compression rate or something

I'm using a Intel Celeron 847
2GB ram
Recalbox 8.0.x
160gb HDD

Note: every other system show the roms properly, just GBA that's giving me trouble

[Costal]

@costal

@costal said in Recalbox don't show GBA games:

(Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker) Recently I've downloaded a enormous rom pack for GBA, around 8000 games, tested a lot of them in my computer with mGBA, and they work just fine, but when I try to use them in my Recalbox, they simply don't show up, I tried so far to reduce the quantity (to about 1500 games), zip one by one, and use not compressed versions of the files, (note: when I compacted them in zip, I choose "best" for the compression rate or something

I'm using a Intel Celeron 847
2GB ram
Recalbox 8.0.x
160gb HDD

Note: every other system show the roms properly, just GBA that's giving me trouble

Update: I tried to use Skraper, and it also does not find any roms at the folder...?!

[Scavy]

@costal hello
what are the extensions of these roms ?

Read the readme file in the folder :

RECALBOX - SYSTEM GBA

Put your game boy advance roms in this directory.

Rom files must have a ".gba/.zip/.7z" extension.

This system allows to use compressed roms on .zip/.7z.
But, it is only an archive. Files inside the .zip/.7z must match with extensions mentioned above.
Each .zip/.7z file must contain only one compressed rom.

[Costal]

@scavy I tried using .gba and .zip, so far no good

And they are in R:/SHARE/roms/gba

And they work in my windows PC with mGBA...

[Costal]

@costal
update about skraper, I was using it wrongly, so that was my fault, but still, no GBA roms showing in recalbox, only the pre loaded (those that come with the installation)

[Alvin]

@costal said in Recalbox don't show GBA games:

Recently I've downloaded a enormous rom pack for GBA, around 8000 games

This tells me everything

Are there realy 8000 Games for the Game Boy Advance available ?
Even Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Advance_games
lists only 1538 Games, meaning that over 6000 (!) Games are missing !

Here on the Board it says the new Filesystem of Recalbox is exFAT and that this Filesystem is case sensitive with Filenames.

Here
https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/emulators/handhelds/game-boy-advance/libretro-meteor
here
https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/emulators/handhelds/game-boy-advance/libretro-gpsp
and here
https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/emulators/handhelds/game-boy-advance/libretro-mgba

it shows that the File Extensions must be in Lowercase Letters (Example: Game.gba)

So it yours are in Capital Letters (Example: Game.GBA) change them to Lowercase Letters and see if that works.

[Costal]

@alvin

Theres that much games because, they are in a lot of versions, like:
Pokemon fire red 1.0 (Japanese)
Pokemon fire red 1.1 (Japanese)
Pokemon fire red 1.0 (USA)
Pokemon fire red 1.1 (USA)

And it has some moded roms as well
(Probably if you remove the "copies" it would be around 750 games, I guess)

And yes, they're all in lower case

[Scavy]

@costal okay, if the extensions are fine, that may be your gamelist.
Check that you are not on "gamelist only" in the menu.
Delete your current gamelist.xml, reboot your recalbox. See the result.

Do you have the problem only with the gba roms ?

There are 1706 gba games if i'm right, including proto games.

[Costal]

@scavy

Ok, I'm going to try this now, and yes, only with GBA, every other system works just fine

[Costal]

@scavy

I looked here and I'm not in gamelist only, even tried to reload the game list
And there's no gamelist file in the "roms/gba"

[Alvin]

@costal
Did you try the "Refresh Gamelist" Option from
Main Menu -> UI Settings ?

[Scavy]

@costal you should have a gamelist in the folder. It's the problem.
Do you have an other sd card ? Could you try to reinstall RCB on this card and retest ?

[Alvin]

@scavy
How many Games can a Recalbox-Gamelist for a single System handle ?
Maybe over 1500 Games are too much or it takes some Time to make a Gamelist out of these Files.

@Costal
I hope you got a Backup of all your Files.

1. Delete all Gamefiles in the GBA Folder of your Recalbox
   NOT the Readme.txt, NOT the Gamelist.xml (if there is one), and NOT the Folders (for Example "Media" or "Downloaded_Images) inside the GBA Folder.

2. Refresh the Gamelist
   Look here
   https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/basic-usage/file-management
   how it's done:

To make the additions appear:
• Update the list of games:
o EmulationStation menu with START.
o UI SETTINGS.
o UPDATE GAMES LISTS.
• Restart your Recalbox:
o EmulationStation menu with SELECT.
o Select RESTART.

3. Copy about 10 Games in the GBA Folder
4. Refresh the Gamelist again.
5. Look if the Games show up
6. If this didn't work reset your Recalbox to "Factory Settings"
   https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/basic-usage/features/reset-to-factory-settings
   and try again

By the way:
We don't know what kind of Files you've downloaded from which Source (and you shouldn't tell us because it's against the Rules of this Board) but maybe the Problem lies within the ROMs.
They maybe work great with mGBA but simply not with Recalbox.

[Alvin]

@costal said in Recalbox don't show GBA games:

@costal
update about skraper, I was using it wrongly, so that was my fault, but still, no GBA roms showing in recalbox, only the pre loaded (those that come with the installation)

@costal said in Recalbox don't show GBA games:

@scavy

I looked here and I'm not in gamelist only, even tried to reload the game list
And there's no gamelist file in the "roms/gba"

That seems strange to me.
If the preinstalled GBA Games show up there must be a Gamelist.xml File, because if there is none these Games wouldn't show up.

[Scavy]

@alvin said in Recalbox don't show GBA games:

How many Games can a Recalbox-Gamelist for a single System handle ?

there's no known limit.
I tested more than 7000 roms on a system (c64 lol), it works.

[Costal]

@alvin

Your last guess probably is the correct one, that's pretty weird, but even with 5 games, they don't show up, I'm going to try get the roms from another... source... and see if they work now

(And many thanks for everyone trying to help-me🤍🤍🤍)

[Costal]

@alvin

Yeah, I thought a about that as well (I'm gonna try post some images so I can show you better)

[Costal]

Roms look like this, needed to use a screenshot because my camera photos were larger than the 2mb forum cap

[Costal]

"No items matching the search" don't ask-me how it's showing the pre-installed games...

[Costal]

"R:" is my share partition

I'm going to send 2 more images showing the recalbox system

And if any of you want me to send a picture of any screen that might be helpful, don't be shy to ask