Adding games & ROMs

Leaf reads your library from a set of clearly named folders on the SD card. Drop files into the right folder and they show up in the launcher; there’s no database to manage by hand. You can fill the folders by putting the SD card in your computer, or over Wi-Fi with the Central Scrutinizer app (see Features → Apps).

Bring your own games

Leaf does not include any games. Only add ROMs you are legally entitled to use.

Folder layout

At the root of the SD card you’ll find these user-facing folders:

Roms/<SYSTEM>/      your game files, one folder per system
Images/<SYSTEM>/    box art, matching each game's filename
Saves/              in-game saves
States/             save states
BIOS/               BIOS files some systems need (see BIOS & cores)

• Roms/<SYSTEM>/ - put each game in the folder for its system, e.g. Roms/SNES/Chrono Trigger.sfc or Roms/GBA/Metroid Fusion.gba. Games can sit loose in the system folder or tucked into subfolders (a folder per game, or your own grouping) - Leaf scans down into them, so Roms/PSX/Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy VII.cue works just as well.
• Images/<SYSTEM>/ - put box art next to the matching system folder, named to match the game. For Roms/SNES/Chrono Trigger.sfc, use Images/SNES/Chrono Trigger.png.
• Saves/ and States/ - created and managed for you as you play. See Playing games for how in-game saves and save states work.

System folders

Each console gets one Roms/ subfolder, grouped by maker below - one folder per system, not one per emulator. Different emulators or compatibility modes for the same console are a Core choice (see Options below), not separate folders.

Folder names are not case-sensitive, and most systems accept a few aliases (Roms/NES, Roms/FC, and Roms/FAMICOM all land in the same place), so the name shown is just the recommended one. Older alias folders keep working if you already have them, but new games and box art should go in the recommended folder.

Nintendo

Folder	System
NES	Nintendo Entertainment System
FDS	Famicom Disk System
SNES	Super Nintendo / Super Famicom
N64	Nintendo 64
GB / GBC / GBA	Game Boy / Color / Advance
NDS	Nintendo DS
VB	Virtual Boy
GW	Game & Watch

Sega

Folder	System
MS	Master System
GG	Game Gear
GENESIS	Genesis / Mega Drive
SEGACD	Sega CD
32X	Sega 32X
SATURN	Saturn
DC	Dreamcast

NEC

Folder	System
PCE	PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16
PCECD	PC Engine CD / TurboGrafx-CD

SNK

Folder	System
NEOGEO	Neo Geo (needs a BIOS; see below)
NGP / NGPC	Neo Geo Pocket / Color

Sony

Folder	System
PSX	PlayStation
PSP	PlayStation Portable

Atari

Folder	System
ATARI2600	Atari 2600
A7800	Atari 7800
LYNX	Atari Lynx

Other

Folder	System
WS / WSC	WonderSwan / Color
COLECO	ColecoVision
VECTREX	Vectrex
PICO8	Pico-8
DOS	MS-DOS
EASYRPG	EasyRPG (RPG Maker 2000/2003)
ARCADE	Arcade (FBNeo, recommended for most arcade sets)
PORTS	Ports (native game ports)

Advanced arcade users can also use Roms/MAME/ for MAME 03+ zipped ROM sets. Use that only when your set is built for that core; otherwise put arcade games in Roms/ARCADE/.

A system appears in the launcher once its emulator core is available on the device. If a folder’s system isn’t showing up, its core may not be installed; see BIOS & cores.

A second SD card

The Pocket 1 has two microSD slots. The card Leaf boots from is the Primary; a card in the second slot is picked up automatically as an extra Secondary source of games.

Give the second card the same folder layout as the first - Roms/<SYSTEM>/, Images/<SYSTEM>/, and so on at its root. Leaf merges both cards into one library, so a system’s games from either card appear together under that one system, and you don’t need to browse per card.

Format it FAT32

The second card must be partitioned and formatted FAT32. Leaf mounts it as a vfat volume, so an exFAT card (which is how most cards over 32 GB come formatted out of the box) will not mount at all. Reformat it as FAT32 first.

You can add or remove the second card while the device is running: Leaf notices the change and rescans on its own. Before pulling it out, use Settings → General → Unmount Secondary SD so nothing is mid-write.

Removing the second card doesn’t throw away anything Leaf knows about its games. Those games become temporarily unavailable and disappear from the lists, but their favorites, recents, playtime, artwork, and per-game settings are kept. Put the card back and the same entries return. That also holds if the two cards change places or content moves between them, because Leaf identifies a game by its card and its path within that card rather than by wherever it happened to be mounted.

Box art

You can add box art two ways: drop it in yourself, or let Leaf fetch it.

Add it yourself. Name each image to match its game file (same name, image extension) and place it in Images/<SYSTEM>/. For Roms/SNES/Chrono Trigger.sfc, use Images/SNES/Chrono Trigger.png. Leaf pairs them up automatically and shows the art in the game list.

Let Leaf fetch it. Leaf can download box art from ScreenScraper.fr. Sign in once under Settings → Accounts → ScreenScraper.fr, then start a scrape. For a single game, press X on it and choose Scrape Artwork. To do whole systems at once (or every system), use Settings → Game Art → Scrape Artwork, which lists All Systems plus each system with its missing-art count. Fetched art lands in Images/<SYSTEM>/ exactly as if you had added it by hand, and appears in the list as soon as each download finishes. Which image type and region it picks is set under Settings → Game Art (Artwork Priority and Region Priority).

Options menu

Press X on a game or a system in the launcher to open its Options menu. This is where per-item actions live, so they stay out of the main list:

• Display Name - rename how the game or system shows in the launcher.
• Core - choose which emulator core runs this game or system, when more than one is available.
• Performance - set a per-game or per-system performance profile that overrides the global default.
• Scrape Artwork - on a game, fetch and replace its box art. While that scrape is queued the row reads Cancel Scraping. To scrape a whole system or every system at once, use Settings → Game Art → Scrape Artwork instead.
• Reset Overrides - clear the custom name, core, and performance settings you set above.

Scraping runs in the background, so you can leave the menu, keep browsing, or even play a game while art downloads.

Multi-disc games

Leaf handles multi-disc games (PlayStation, Sega CD, and the like) for you. Name the disc files with the usual (Disc 1), (Disc 2) tags, drop them in the system folder - loose or in a subfolder of their own - and Leaf groups them into a single .m3u playlist automatically. The game then shows up once instead of once per disc, and RetroArch reads that playlist to swap discs from its in-game menu.

Prefer to manage it yourself? Add your own .m3u listing the disc files and Leaf uses it as-is - it never overwrites a playlist you made by hand.

Arcade names

Arcade ROMs are named by their short internal ID (mslug, 1942, sf2ce) rather than the full title. Leaf recognizes these for arcade and Neo Geo sets and shows the friendly name instead, so mslug reads as Metal Slug and your arcade list looks like the rest of your library. There’s nothing to switch on; it happens as your games are scanned.

To override a name, drop a map.txt in that system’s folder (for example Roms/ARCADE/map.txt) with one romname = Your Title line per game - the romname is the zip’s name without its extension. Your entries win over the built-in list.

BIOS-dependent systems

Some systems need a BIOS file you provide yourself (Neo Geo, for example, needs neogeo.zip in BIOS/). Arcade games are also picky about ROM-set versions. See BIOS & cores for the details.