Pocket Launcher
A WHDLoad launcher for Amiga (OS 2.0+). It scans your disks, catalogs the slaves, and you launch them from a list with cover images. Ideal for large collections.
Requires AmigaOS 2.0+ — unpack and run. Latest: v33.323 (2026-09-07). Online auto-update, animated covers with sound (play/pause/stop) plus a public converter to make your own, a per-game cover picker, and a safer, simplified cover/animation naming scheme. v33.318 fixes animation playback: a leak that froze the picture after the first frame in Sharp scaling mode, a stray diagnostic call that allocated Chip RAM on every frame, and a direct path for RTG screens that draws a frame in one call instead of one per row. Runs on a bare 68000 (A500/A600, 68EC000 accelerators like the ACA500plus), not just 68020+. Full changelog in the README inside the LHA.
Older releases: v33.310 (2026-08-16) · v33.288 (2026-08-09) · v33.286 (2026-07-31) · v33.285 (2026-07-30) · v33.284 (2026-07-21).
What it does
It's a WHDLoad launcher, so you know the deal: it scans your disks, catalogs the slaves, and you launch them from a list with cover images. Ideal for large collections.
- A single binary, ~380kb. Copy it and it runs — nothing to install
- No MUI needed (iGame requires it), no datatypes, no guigfx, nothing off disk
- Uses only ROM libraries, so it runs on any bare WB 2.0+, on a CD32, and on 1–4 MB machines
- Smart auto-cataloging: reads the name embedded in the slave and the igame.data (title, genre, year, players, chipset, arguments), and tells games from demos on its own
- Multiple sources at once (up to 16 folders/volumes), detects mounted volumes and drops duplicates
- Add new ones: Update Index is incremental — it adds the new slaves without re-scanning everything
- Integrity check: finds the slaves that are missing (deleted or moved) and cleans them from the database, but keeps the ones on an unmounted volume — so you don't lose your DB if you unplug a CF, etc.
- A low-RAM mode and an optimized fast-(lots of) RAM mode
- Favourites: mark games from the menu and show only those with one checkbox. Stored by drawer name, so they survive re-indexing and even moving the collection to another volume
- Filters are remembered between sessions (language, platform, type) — can be turned off in Preferences
- Resizable window, minimum 640x200 so it still fits an NTSC screen. Every extra pixel of width goes to the title column: 29 characters before, 61 on a 1024x768 RTG screen, the full title on larger ones
- Decodes native IFF, no datatypes
- Laced, progressive (hires) and RTG modes
- Multi-IFF: you can view every .iff in the game's folder, not just one
- Two scaling modes: fill and sharp (pixel-perfect, no upscaling)
- Extra cover folders: point it at an image pack and those covers are added to every game, on top of whatever sits next to the slave. Nothing is copied — the images are used where they are
- Three pack conventions recognised: packs that ship a
.runscript next to each image (read by following the very path the script uses to launch the game — 99.1% exact matches measured against a real 29,326-file pack), plus the classic<game>_SCRn.iffand<game>-N.iff. All searched recursively - The cover box takes the shape of the image instead of a fixed aspect, so the black bars are gone — a landscape cover used to fill 40% of the box in PAL and now fills it completely. Never stretched, never cropped
- Settings: name mode (how slaves are named), search, low-RAM, thumbnails, scaling, multi-IFF
- Built-in tooltype editor — edit the .info from the app without opening IconEdit
- Run at startup and optional fullscreen
- Sortable table with columns (title, platform, genre, year, players)
- Filter by three combinable criteria: language (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and more), platform (OCS/ECS, AGA, CD32, CDTV) and type (games, demos, mags, cracktros, apps) — plus the title search, live or with Enter
- Fixed 640x188 window (works in PAL and NTSC) plus fullscreen with L-Amiga+F
- Iconify to an AppIcon with global hotkeys
- Same info as iGame (reads the same igame.data) but without installing MUI or a single library, multi-IFF, run-at-startup and a tooltype editor. One binary — copy it and go
Screenshots
