This is the year of awesome frontends. Independent developers, handheld enthusiasts, and app makers are all building something cool in the space. It was only recently that I finished writing about Socket, a frontend focusing on cartridge/disc art, and it was only a couple of days ago when I showcased DigitBitPlay, another frontend focusing on the physical side of digital retro games.
Now, a well-known retro-gaming YouTuber known as Ryan Retro has spent the last few months developing his very own Android frontend for emulators, again with a focus on the physical aspect of digital collecting. This seems to be a trend after Sony's big announcement of stopping the production of physical games.
Ryan is calling this frontend "Jump", conveniently named because of the application's ease of jumping to certain games in your collection. Ryan wants it to be a simple yet effective way to organise your ROM library using its box art, allowing you to resize, readjust and move around the collection in a way that's natural to you; heck, you even choose case view, which makes your cartridges look like they're in an old 2000s storage case surrounded by foam and your discs look like they're in a transparent sleeve.
There's a whole lot of customisations in here that make it easy for you to find a display that suits your needs; you can choose from Grid, Shelf, Tower and Case, and each allows you to change between light and dark themes, even going as far as adding a wooden shelf mode too, to keep things nostalgic. These views are kept when searching for your games using the keyboard too.
One of the craziest features though, is the fact that Ryan has built his own scraping service for box art and disc/cartidge art, so you don't have to pair this with any external app or service such as ScreenScraper, you literally press "download it for me" and Jump will automatically find, download and update your ROM library with box art images and cartridge/disc art so that your collection is organised visually straight after installing it. That's incredible, and kudos to Ryan for making it incredibly fluid. Just make sure your ROM files are named exactly the same as the game title for this to work smoothly.
You can also add multiple folders to a specific console, which is not typical of frontends, allowing you to take advantage of the internal and external storage at the same time. This syncs up your entire library wherever it may be. It works with an array of Android-based retro handhelds, and even dual-screen ones too such as the AYN Thor.
This frontend is locked behind a Patreon paywall, which is typical of indie-made frontends these days, so to get hold of it you'll have to throw Ryan a few bucks to get access to this frontend on Android. You'll also get updates and newer updates as the months go on without having to keep paying, so $3 will get you this app and its continued updates, which is awesome.
