need help picking a kid friendly front end

[rob1234]

I am building a mame cabinet for my 6 year old nephew and want a front end that will be easy for him to just pick his game and go. I would like there to be some type of screen shot of the game as well. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Howard_Casto]

Virtually any front-end out there.  Using the fes is seldom hard, it's the setup, which of course you'll be doing. 

[youki]

You can try mine .  AtomicFE  (http://www.atomicfe.com)

but as Howard said, virtually all front end could work. 

[Spartan]

I am building a mame cabinet for my 6 year old nephew and want a front end that will be easy for him to just pick his game and go. I would like there to be some type of screen shot of the game as well. Anyone have any suggestions?

I use mala and my twin boys have been using it successfully since they were 3.

[loadman]

I use mala and my twin boys have been using it successfully since they were 3.

..my youngest child (2.5 yrs) does not launch the games yet, she just gets a kick out of moving the joystick and having the pics/videos/leds change...mmmmm pretty

rob1234 : Howard nailed the answer!!! I would avoid mame32(with the built in front end) for really young kids as it does not hide windows and they could get in a mess.

 Try a few you.... http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Front-Ends

[dpz147]

I use mamewah for my 6 and 4 year old kids.  What I did (and think it would be key for any FE) is changed the default font to a much lager one and added screenshots.  They get around in it pretty easy.

[unclet]

The MALA front end is very nice for you and for the kids ...... it has a completely GUI interface and can use the layouts which are used for MameWah as well so it looks exactly the same.   

MALA is packed with features and is comparable to MameWah, but I know a new version of MALA is in the works right now and will have more functions which will result in it offering most all of the same features as MameWah (as well as other newer ones).....

Anyway, I started with MameWah, but believe I will end up using MALA since it is just so easy and fast to set up ......

[wrench]

my own 2 cents,gameex is the best one going,setting it up is a little intimidating at first but once you get a handle on how it works it's actually very easy.I don't think you will find another fe with better support either.

http://www.tomspeirs.com/gameex/

[unclet]

That one looks very confusing for small kids in my opinion ......

[Howard_Casto]

That one looks very confusing for small kids in my opinion ......

Agreed.... let a kid navigate windows media center and watch how bad they screw it up.

You definately don't want a fe that has submenus .... you want one you can just make one big list... have nice big text (preferably pictures) and requires up/down and start to operate.  Anything more complex than that is gonna be too hard. 

[wrench]

I meant that the setup looks intimidating at first until you get used to the configuration setup program.You can turn off all unwanted features and have a flat menu with nothing but a list to scroll through with the joystick to select a game.Give it a chance you may be surprised.I've had 4 yr olds using it and it's run flawlessly for me for the past 8 months since I finished the cab.

[Space Fractal]

It very depend, how you setup your fe.

In mamewah (example) can  controls do so simple, as they only need to scroll up/down and select the game. Other fe may could/should doing the same. Some FE's may been a bit hard to setup (and remove unwanted games).

It pretty the same tricks what I did with my own jukebox software (it only need 3 inputs to control the whole software), but it is a another history.