Daijisho Setup Guide

What is Daijisho?

Daijisho is an Android frontend launcher for all your favourite classic games, in case you've only seen the name and need to know what it is. You can start your games directly from Daijisho with cool themes, artwork, movies, and more if you tell it which folders your games are in and which emulators you have installed. Consider it similar to the UI when you turn on your Xbox, PS5, or Switch. Let's get everything set up; then, I'll show you some nice options and tips that should make using Daijisho easier.

I want to draw your attention to one item, particularly if you're coming from a Linux handheld with EmulationStation and other programs. Any modifications we make to Daijisho do not affect emulators since Daijisho doesn't alter their settings. Daijisho is merely a front with lovely graphics and simple Navigation to access all your games; they are distinct instances. Let's move on.

Preparation

Before that, install some games and emulators on your smartphone if you plan to follow along. You need those two things before beginning this instruction, but you can do that later if you'd like. See my Retro ROMs Beginner's Guide here if you need help figuring out where to find ROMS to play.

Let's get started. First, go to the Google Play Store, look for Daijisho by TapiocaFox, and install it.

When the download is complete, please open it and wait for the loading screen to conclude. A welcome screen with a download platform button will appear. This implies that Daijisho wants us to specify the platforms on which we would like our games to appear.

After selecting "download platforms," a lengthy list of platforms appears.

For the sake of simplicity, I will only select two at this time since I want to demonstrate how to return here later to add or remove more. However, you can choose as many as you like and click Import. I decided on Game Boy Advance and Super Nintendo, and as you can see, we get some additional buttons to deal with, along with a cool background image that reads GBA and SNES at the bottom. You would see all of the platforms—GB, GBA, GBC, SNES, and so forth—at the bottom if I included any more. Let's begin with GBA, though. After letting Daijisho know we have GBA games, let them know where to find them.

There are buttons on the right side. Click Play, Add Favorite, Detail for more details about the game, Grid view to turn the list into a grid, and Edit item to alter the title.

If Daijisho cannot locate the artwork, you may assist it here by scraping it. To get Daijisho to find the proper game, you should experiment with some of your game titles. Alternatively, you can activate aggressive scraping. You can add your material if you'd like, but occasionally, it simply won't discover it.

Let's select Detail. You can scroll through a video of the game that began playing in the background.

Why your games don't load

Since it accounts for 99 per cent of the problems I encounter with Daijisho and is typically what messes people up, there is one important point I want to make right now. The majority of users will now launch a game. You will typically see an error regarding terminating package processes, which we will address shortly. However, after clicking "Confirm," you will see a black screen. What on earth is this, and why is it occurring?

We informed Daijisho of our platform and the locations of those games, but we still need to specify which emulator it should use to play them. Daijisho just said, "I don't know, let me choose one at random." Let's address that. To be clear, you must do this for each and every platform you add. Make sure to include this section. Clicking the pencil icon on the main platform page allows us to edit platform information.

However, if you scroll down to Player Settings, you will find that Daijisho chose a random core for RetroArch for GBA games—not the one I installed—under the default player.

You can navigate a complete list of all the platforms you have installed in Daijisho by clicking the small arrow. Since I now only have the GBA and SNES, I can only see emulators and cores for those systems; however, if you had included several platforms initially, you would see them all. Please ignore the first number; you want to identify the platform, which is GBA, followed by the emulator. I know I have RetroArch 64 installed; I'll select it from that area, as I'm using the mGBA core for GBA games. It's up to you to decide which emulator and core to use for which platform, so I advised setting everything up before beginning the process. That's outside the purview of this specific article, but it should be helpful. Click "Save" now.

Let's return to a game and attempt to load it now. Verify the process killing. And see, the game loads and functions flawlessly. Remember that, nine times out of ten, you have the incorrect core or emulator selected if your game isn't loading or is loading to a black screen from Daijisho.

After returning to Daijisho, let's look at a few more items. Since Daijisho is a frontend frontend and something you wish to boot into when starting a device, you can access Android and Daijisho's settings from the Settings tab. We want Daijisho's right now, so go to the library. As you can see, we offer the ability to download platforms, so if you'd like, you can add more platforms. If you have added any new ROMS or platforms, you can select Sync to sync your library and obtain artwork, information, and everything else. Delete things that are no longer there. Take a few things out. Let's go to the settings that are important to me, but you may read the descriptions to see if that's what you want. In essence, I'm asking Daijisho that if I remove a game from a folder, it should be removed from your list. The first is that I want to clear all disjointed objects on Sync. I will only allow aggressive scraping if you're experiencing problems locating game artwork that Daijisho might need help locating. We wish to turn off player warnings, namely, the ones that kept popping up about destroying processes. Don't worry, it won't harm anything; turn this on, I promise. I prefer the sync icon at the top, so I'll click it to sync my collection and ignore the others quickly.

Go to the Appearance menu and choose Dark theme to enable Dark. If you'd like, you can also enable the Pure Dark theme. Let's fix this white mode since it's hurting my eyes. However, a wallpaper pack with a theme is at the top. Do you recall the GBA and SNES wallpaper? You can browse and select from the community-made wallpapers available for all Daijisho systems. Daijisho needs to offer a decent way to view this. However, this website allows you to compare all of them and select the theme of your choice. In any case, you must pick one, click Download Pack, and confirm changing the current one. You'll see some awesome new wallpapers when you go to your platforms.

I don't touch anything else in this part, but feel free to browse and see if you want to see anything. Now that you're back out go to Navigation to change the look of your home page. I leave it as Widgets. I rarely change any of the other settings on this page. Go to Sounds and Video. Thus, remember that I previously stated that Daijisho will scrape media and include a video, as we saw on the information page. I will turn off the audio and videos because I don't like them.

We go to Retro Achievements after backing out. Log in if you have Retro Achievements, or visit retroachievements.org to find out more. It's fantastic; it's an achievement for older games. In a moment, I will demonstrate why this matters. The final setting we want to examine is backup and restore, which uses Google Drive to backup or restore your settings. Normally, I allow this, but it's up to you.

Since I'm employing time travel, it can take a little for your end to update, but we can now see Retro Achievements information here. Let's return to the Platforms page, and I'll go to Detail again. It displays the number of them you've finished, their percentage, and even a rating.

Since I typically spend most of my time on the Widgets page, let's speak about that now. In Daijisho, widgets are essentially collections of shortcuts to various games and other items. Let's begin with the Retro Achievements one first. To access a cool widget, click New Widget in the upper right corner, followed by Retro Achievements. A list of the games in which you have gained retro achievements will appear, and you can click on any of them to learn more about that particular milestone.

Let's give it another go. When you pick Activity this time, a few activity widget alternatives appear. The last game I played can be swiftly continued if I select Continue play. Go back; I also want the time grid, which displays the games I've played recently, to display the items I've played. I may move or remove any new widgets I add by pushing and holding on to them. I prefer to add pin and play to pin my favourite games here, but you may add whatever widget you like. The random game widget is cool. Personalize as you like.

The Apps tab is the final item I wish to display. If we go there, you can run anything from here and see all of your installed Android apps. Remember that this is a frontend frontend; you can use Daijisho as your home app to accomplish anything on Android. I'll walk you through setting it up as a home app momentarily. However, we may further tweak this here. Click on all apps to the right to filter only games or go back to all apps if this device is only used for gaming. You may also mark an icon as a game so that it appears in that filter by pushing and holding on to it. If not, you can sort by recent, reverse, and alphabetical. You have the freedom to alter this as much as you wish.

As promised, if you installed Daijisho on a specialized gaming handheld device, as I did, you would want it to boot directly into Daijisho at launch and return to Daijisho after using any games or apps. The next step is to go to Settings, System Settings. This will vary depending on the Android device, but you want to go to Apps, Applications, or something similar. You should see something similar to Default Apps there, and if you navigate to the Home app, you should see it. After you click that, you can switch to Daijisho as your home app and be finished.

That's all I can educate you about Daijisho.