jammadave

Hi all. Bear with me, this is long but I'll try to be concise. I have used MAME and have made MAME systems in the past. This time around it's a bit different, though, as I'm also wanting to get into PC gaming - I have the consoles, but it would be nice to be able to play damn near everything old and new on one machine. Trick is - for my entire household to WANT to play on the PC instead of the consoles, on the TV, it has to work JUST LIKE a console interface. No mouse, no KB, I want a gamepad-only experience here. Hell, if you can't tell Windoze is running, all the better. SO - I come to find GameEx. Can it do the following?: - Open from startup quickly, and to just a few choices visible: Games, Movies, Music, Internet (...ok, I'd use the keys and mouse for internet) - Have Movies show a single icon per movie. Right now, Media Center shows a folder for each movie, containing the video and audio TS files, instead of a single icon. - Have Games open to either a single list of all games regardless of type (NES, MAME, Steam/PC, all of them) or at least to a category list of those options. Also, have the option to run whatever game is in the optical drive, if I don't have it installed. - Have Internet open Firefox Also, more specifically, is GameEx compatible with gamepads by default? or would i have to use a program like JoytoKey regardless? (would want to just shift thru the lists with the directional pad, one button for "select" and one button for "back") - think a PC version of a PS3 controller. Actually, via BlueTooth, I have found, one can use an actual PS3 controller! I'm seeing threads here where people may or may not have issues running Steam apps - but as far as I can tell, DLing via Steam is one of the only ways to get around having to have the disc in the tray to play the game. Is that not true? I couldn't play, say, Darkfall on my friend's PC without having the disc in the tray. I'll have more questions as I noodle this through. I have a PC spec'ed out already, just need to make sure I would be happy with going that route. Cheers Dave