Plex Arcade?

Has anyone been able to get Neo Geo AES roms to work? Been trying for an hour, nothing seems to work.

I think Plex Arcade is a super cool idea, something I’ve wanted for ages (to the people who keep asking “who even wanted this?” - hi! it was me), but this initial launch is a huge bummer. Aside from the super awkward setup process, there’s so much polish needed on this:

  • The issue where the Transcoder locks up after every game makes this borderline unusable
  • Scaling needs improving so games aren’t blurry
  • There really needs to be a way to download cores and set up the xml from the Plex interface
  • Additional platforms like PC Engine, Neo Geo Pocket, etc
  • Platform info in the main library view would be a big help - for example I have three games in a row named “Sonic the Hedgehog”, it would be useful to know which platform was which without having to select each one
  • I wish you could pull Boxart and Title screens from the Libretro database, I haven’t been thrilled with the results from IGDB
  • Also, a way to rename “Genesis” to “Mega Drive” would be great (I know that’s a silly little thing!)

I really love this and genuinely hope it improves, but unless there’s a roadmap or some transparency on what updates are coming, I’m probably going to cancel my sub after the trial and wait and see. The current implementation feels like a very rough beta.

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I’m kind of in the same spot. I like the idea of this feature. If implemented properly, it could have made me want to move all my media consumption through Plex. Right now I have both Plex and Kodi in my life. Kodi runs on my Nvidia Shield TV. This is used solely for local media file playback–no streaming services at all. I also run Plex for when I am away from home, but also for viewing media on my tablet or my kitchen Roku TV.

I have a retired gaming laptop with a GTX 980 that is now my Plex/Launchbox server. It is also connected to my TV via HDMI and runs Launchbox/Bigbox/Steam for gaming. This setup works well. If this Plex Arcade worked well, however, I would be happy to bring all my media under Plex and use the Plex client on my Shield TV.

But this is no Launchbox/Bigbox substitute. The metadata is not great. It’s sort of like the dollar store version of game metadata. Pretty sparse and junky in some cases. There need to be more features baked in like save states, etc. The controls need to be explained better. Jabbing on random keys to try to figure out that platform’s buttons is annoying. All the other hands on nitpicky setup that needs to be done is totally unacceptable in a paid product.

It needs ALOT of work. But I do like the idea, and would be willing to pay for it. But not now, not even close.

I’m using “fceumm_libretro.dll” and for the moment works good. (Mario bros 3, Megaman 2…)

That works much better. Thanks!

One more question. Any other core for genesis?

They don’t. I notice that your files have the extension NES (all caps). Try lower case. I’m not sure but the scanner might be case sensitive.

We are still working out some details. Turns out that the article published by Parsec refers to a Windows setup. They don’t have an equivalent for Mac. Does your card support HW transcoding for Plex? That’s a good first step to check.

Yeah, the Transcoder locking up after launching one game makes it unusable. I think I’ll remove this and come back to it in a few months when it isn’t in an Alpha state.

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Hey everyone.

After hours, and reading. This wasn’t an easy setup. I have gotten it all the work finally, however disappointed in its delivery. Even using the pre-loaded Atari games, I often found the mapping controls poor, audio and video playback jumpy, and random crashes. I’m using a i5 Intel 7600K, with an RX580 OC 8GB CPU and 16GB of RAM Windows 10. I can run Dolphin flawless, at 1080p setting, heck I can even stream games from Steam using Steam-Link better then streaming from Plex. This does have a lot of potential and I do like the idea, but its far from ready – especially with a monthly cost.

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It’s such a huge fail right out of the gate, that the arcade is not supported on linux, due to the fact that Plex has a substantial linux user base via desktop and most of the supported NAS platforms. People have been begging plex for years to integrate some type of gaming into the media server. Also, how do you (Plex) release a service built for a platform that is designed for mostly being used in the home, and not support playback on game consoles (Xbox and PlayStation have 200 million plus users) and smart televisions out of the gate?

There is absolutely zero chance that Xbox or PlayStation would allow people to play games that weren’t bought in their stores on their platform, especially emulators. Not much Plex can do about that.

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I don’t understand this kind of attitude. No one is forcing your to subscribe to the service and the existing model isn’t changing. Plex has been very clear about the state of the service when it rolled out. It was stated they consider the service in its current state akin to announcing the intention on Kickstarter. If people subscribe to the service and the interest is there by way of numbers Plex will grow and mature the service. I for one am happy to buy someone on the team a cup of coffee once a month and am excited to see what will become of Plex Arcade. Support your devs.

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Complete BS money grab here from Plex. LifeTime pass customer, seems that’s really not worth much. If the Arcade was enabled, but had premium content options, okay. Like Tidal, cool. But making this a premium add on where 99% of the usage will be the ROMs locally hosted is a really, really shady move, IMO.

Am I subsidizing that Atari product? Is Plex? Because reports on that product are reporting “nightmare uselessness”.

ProTip: add RetroArch support.

It’s weird, I’m actually pissed about this and I really shouldn’t be. But hey, here we are adding more and premium features.

Time to go back to Kodi perhaps.

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The plex app is on xbox one. You ultimately play the games through plex.

Devs are supposed to support the community and it’s usage cases in return. They should especially listen the voices of paying customers. That’s how you keep customers. Do you understand how crazy it sounds to require your paying customers to have to disregard and/or scrap their existing platforms and home server ecosystem to use a feature that the user base asked for so that they could utilize the feature on their existing platforms? Do you realize that businesses generally lose customers and in many cases even go out of business for participating in that type of practice? Plex labs has had to basically beg management to let them “try this out” because Plex overall has not been listening to its user base in regards to adding streaming of retro games at home, to its services in the first place. Also let me reiterate that Plex is on more than half a dozen Linux distributions that are used by millions across the world, which means that plex is in high noteworthy demand in the user space, otherwise they would not have bothered. Plex needs to stop ignoring linux users requests and needs.

I really really really hope this comes to Linux soon, it sounds amazing! They payment model does bum me a little bit (it’s not something myself or any of my users would probably even use more than once a month, so paying monthly stings a bit). If there’s ever a lifetime pass option then I’d definitely be willing to jump on it!

In the meantime, is there perhaps a way for me to tinker with this on a seperate Windows rig, and incorporate the games library into my current Plex server? I’m assuming I’d have to run it as a whole new server :confused:

Exactly, I’m sure that most plex users have home servers built on some type of linux implementation whether it was installed by them or commercially (pro).

Yes and you can switch between servers on your end client

I agree that devs should listen to and support their paying customers. That’s exactly what Plex has done here. They’ve listened to their user community and introduced an alpha-level service while correctly setting expectations at the start. Just because you’re a paying customer doesn’t mean you’re entitled to whatever you can dream up. Plex owes you nothing and no one is asking you to disregard your existing platform. I also think you’re grossly overestimating how many Plex users are running PMS on an true Linux based OS. I’d imagine Windows and MacOS make up the vast majority of PMS instances. Like several other Plex Labs products, this will mature over time, especially if people show an interest. The maturity will hopefully including being able to run Plex Arcade from a Linux based PMS. Again, no one’s forcing you to use the service or make any changes to your PMS(s). If you don’t like the service as it is right now don’t sign up for it. It’s as simple as that. My overall point is just be patient, chill out and lets see what the devs can do with Plex Arcade. You seem to be familiar enough with Plex’s humble beginnings of XBMC/Kodi as well as RetroArch so go play your games there for the time being.

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I get the black screen but still get sound when using PicoDrive for Sega Genesis/MegaDrive games. I tried killing the Plex Games Transcoder process as you advised. Still get the same thing. Switching back to Genesis Plus DX (which doesn’t support 32X), the games play fine.

Please explain.