BooBooMan Interview: 60TB Batocera Builds

Punks, if you have ever loaded one of our Batocera builds onto a Steam Deck and found every single game with its box art, logo and video sat there looking perfect, there is a fair chance you have BooBooMan to thank. He codes, he tests, he builds, he themes. What he does not do is DIY. By his own admission he cannot use a saw and has to google how to change a plug.

He is also, it turns out, a pharmacist. So the man who has spent years making sure your games list has no missing artwork spends his day job making sure everything else is labelled properly too. It all makes sense now.

We asked him the Meet the Maker questions. He answered them the way he builds: short, sharp and with zero filler.

Maker card

Maker: BooBooMan (25 years and counting)
Where: “Sunny England”
Age: “Old”
Three words: Cocky, Helpful, A**hole
Known for: Batocera builds, mostly for the Steam Deck, plus JRPG and Switch only builds
Runs on: “Everything from a toaster to high end PC”, Batocera mainly
Personal build: around 60TB
Day job: Pharmacist
Find him: “I will find you!” (some of you will know him from Facebook)

There are no stupid questions, just info you do not know yet.

BooBooMan

BooBooMan in his own words

What do you do in the retro and arcade world?
Everything and anything, from coding to testing, builds to themes (no DIY, I don’t know how to use a saw and have to google how to change a plug!)

What got you into the game?
FFVI.

Two words and a Roman numeral. We respect it.

What have you made?
Too many to list! Mostly Steam Deck builds uploaded but my personal build is around 60TB.

Your favourite thing you’ve made?
My personal fav was either my JRPG only build or Switch only.

If you want a taste of the JRPG side, his 35GB JRPG RetroBat base build is the newest one on the site, and the big brother is the 1TB JRPG Batocera build.

What do you use?
Everything from a toaster to high end PC, Batocera mainly due to it being so easy to build.

What do you love about what you do?
The art! Nothing better than scrolling through a games list and seeing no missing artwork.

A moment you’ll never forget?
My LG build…. what a POS! Totally messed it up missing half the settings 😀

We love a maker who owns his disasters. Every builder has one. Most of them are not brave enough to put it in writing.

What’s next

BooBooMan has three things on the bench:

An arcade build for his bartop.
An Xbox 360 build for the newly released Bad Avatar exploit.
“Maybe something to do with a little pair of (2) plumbers.” We have no idea what that could possibly mean. None at all.

And the dream build? “Complete PS2 build on a NVMe, in a powerful mini PC, some PS2 controllers and enjoy the best console ever made.”

Tips for new builders

Less is more sometimes! Don’t concentrate on adding 1000s of dupe, non-working games. One ROM, one game, complete artwork, test, test and test some more.

BooBooMan

That is the whole BooBooMan philosophy in two lines, and it is why his builds feel so clean. If you want to see it in action on a handheld, his 1TB Batocera CleanAF V2 is a good place to start.

Off the clock

In the real world he is a pharmacist. As for his favourite things, he kept it to one line and left no room for debate: “FFVII is the GOAT, anything else is just the wrong answer.”

Final Fantasy VI got him into the game and Final Fantasy VII is the greatest of all time. The JRPG builds suddenly make a lot of sense.

Our take

Ask anyone who has run a BooBooMan build and they will tell you the same thing: it just works, and it looks right. Cocky? Maybe a bit. Helpful? Absolutely. The third word we will leave to him. You can find every one of his builds on our BooBooMan’s Bits page, and if you need him, don’t worry. He will find you.

Which BooBooMan build lives on your Steam Deck? Tell us in the comments.