Last updated 21SEP2020
Today I’m happy to share a new SimpleMenu theme that I’ve been working on. It is based on the ComicBook RetroPie theme from TMTturtleguy, which was first released a few years ago. In addition to changing the system and logo art for every system, I have made some coloring updates that blends the whole system together. I also updated the font to something that will allow for a lot of text while still being nice and legible on the screen.
This theme is compatible with the various layouts presented in SimpleMenu, such as Traditional, Custom, Simple Menu, and Drunken Monkey. I personally think the Drunken Monkey layout looks the best, so that’s what I’ve used for the screenshots in this post. I’ve also adjusted the top and bottom banners in each system to mirror the colors in the system logo; you can see here that the banners are the same purple as the SNES logo and buttons.
Table of Contents: Installation instructions Section_groups images Global naming conventions Systems covered
Installation instructions
To start, download the appropriate theme file here:
RG350 and RG350P version
RG350M version
If you already have SimpleMenu installed, simply unzip this file and place the “ComicBook” folder in the media/data/local/home/.simplemenu/themes/ folder of your internal SD card. The next time you boot up SimpleMenu, press START to get into the menu, and change the theme to “ComicBook”. As I mentioned earlier, I prefer to set the Layout to “Drunken Monkey”, but you do you.
If you don’t have SimpleMenu installed, you will need to install it first. Consult my SimpleMenu guide, and then come back here and add this theme.
Section_Groups images
In addition to updating the theme, I updated the section_groups images (the images you see when you switch between system groups). These are also included in the zip files above. To change them, replace the .png files found in /media/home/.simplemenu/sections_groups/ with the .png files found within the “place in sections_groups” folder in this zip archive.
Global naming conventions
For non-US users, I have also added global themes for naming conventions. I think I caught all of them, but if there’s something that is missing please let me know and I can make updates.
For systems like Famicom, Super Famicom, PC Engine, PC Engine CD, and Mega Drive, these systems have their own folders and assets. To switch to them, simply use the console name for that particular system, such as [FAMICOM] instead of [NES], in the .ini file for that particular section. To find the proper console names for each system, you can consult the theme.ini file found in the /media/data/local/home/.simplemenu/themes/ComicBook folder on your internal SD card.
For other systems, such as Super Nintendo and Sega 32x, the assets are in the actual folder of the other system, labeled with and “-alt” tag on the .png files. To change them, just go to the media/data/local/home/.simplemenu/themes/ComicBook/resources/ folder, find the system, and then swap the file names. For example, in the SNES folder, change the “logo-alt.png” to “logo.png” (and rename or delete the file that was originally named “logo.png”).
If you’re really interested in tweaking the theme, you can also adjust the top and bottom banner colors to suit your style (like if you don’t want to have purple banners for your SNES layout). As an example, if you want to change the color of the top and bottom banners from purple on your Euro-style SNES layout, you’ll need to go into the theme.ini file found at /media/data/local/home/.simplemenu/themes/ComicBook and make the following change:
Original: ; Super Nintendo Entertainment System ---------------------- [SNES] headerBackground = 7A479D ALT headerBackground = 58181A headerFont = FFFFFF bodyBackground = 272323 bodyFont = FFFFFF selectedItemBackground = 272323 selectedItemFont = FFD800 logo = resources/snes/logo.png system = resources/snes/system.png background = resources/snes/background.png Fixed: ; Super Nintendo Entertainment System ---------------------- [SNES] headerBackground = 58181A headerFont = FFFFFF bodyBackground = 272323 bodyFont = FFFFFF selectedItemBackground = 272323 selectedItemFont = FFD800 logo = resources/snes/logo.png system = resources/snes/system.png background = resources/snes/background.png
Systems covered
Here is a list of the systems which have their own resource folder, so you should be able to make a SimpleMenu group for each of them. Note that some of them (like Pico-8) didn’t have an original ComicBook theme, so I had to use other images (or create my own). If you’re having trouble configuring your SimpleMenu .ini files, be sure to check out my SimpleMenu guide.
amiga
amstrad pc
apple 2
apps
aracde
atari 800
atari 2600
atari 5200
atari 7800
atari lynx
atari st
audio
bbc micro
c64
colecovision
daphne
DOOM
dos/msdos
famicom
famicom disk system
favorites
final burn alpha
games/ports
game gear
game and watch
GB
GBA
GBC
genesis
images
intellisvion
mame
master system
mega drive
msx
msx2
N64
NDS
neo geo
neo geo cd
NES
ngp
ngpc
openbor
pc engine
pce-cd
pico8
PSX
satellaview
scummvm
Sega 32X
Sega CD
SG-1000
SNES
sufami turbo
super famicom
super grafx
turbo grafix 16
turbo grafix CD
vectrex
video
wonderswan
wonderswan color
ZX Spectrum
Retro Game Corps 