Favourites
Press R3 on any game or app to star it. A virtual Favourites page gathers every starred title from every connected device into one list — no matter which drive it lives on.
Quick start
Enable the Favourites tab
Open Settings → Device Settings and set Favourites Start Mode to Manual (or Auto). Save settings. A Favourites tab now appears alongside your device pages.
Star a game
Navigate to any game or app on any device page — USB, HDD, SMB, MMCE, anywhere. Highlight the title and press R3 (click the right analogue stick). A small star icon appears next to the title name to confirm it is starred. Press R3 again on the same title to remove the star.
Open the Favourites page
Switch to the Favourites tab. Every starred game you have, across all connected devices, appears here in one list. Cover art, per-game settings, Options — everything works exactly as it does on the source device page.
Launch normally
Select a title on the Favourites page and press Cross to launch it. The game boots through the same path it would on its source device (OPL core or Neutrino, depending on your per-game settings).
How it works
The Favourites page is a virtual aggregator — it does not copy or move games. Each entry is a live proxy to the original item on its source device list. Launching, cover art lookups, per-game config, and the Options/Info menu all forward to the source device as if you had selected the game there directly.
- Stars are visible everywhere: a small star mark is drawn next to the title on both the source device page and the Favourites page.
- If a device is disconnected (USB drive unplugged, SMB share unreachable, etc.) its starred titles are hidden from the Favourites list but are not lost — they reappear automatically when the device becomes available again.
- BDM devices (USB, MX4SIO, iLink) can move between bus slots; RiptOPL re-matches the item by game ID and title across all slots, so a favourite does not break just because a drive appeared on a different port.
- Rename and Delete are blocked on favourited titles and on any game accessed through the Favourites page. Un-star the game first if you need to rename or delete it.
Persistence and compatibility
Starred games are stored in favourites.bin, written into the same shared OPL config directory as
your artwork, themes, and VMCs — typically mc0:/OPL/ or the root of whichever device holds your OPL
config.
favourites.bin sits in the shared OPL folder, not in the RiptOPL-private settings area. If you
have an existing favourites.bin written by uOPL or wOPL, RiptOPL will read it
automatically on first boot and carry your starred games over. Your favourites will then be saved in RiptOPL's own
versioned OFAV format on the next write. That OFAV format is RiptOPL's own — uOPL and wOPL cannot read it back, so the carry-over is one-way only.The on-disk format uses an OFAV magic header, a version number, and an explicit record count,
followed by one record per favourite. Every field is written as an explicit scalar (no raw struct dumps), and the
reader validates the header, version, record count, and every text-length field before accepting a file — a
corrupt or truncated favourites.bin is rejected cleanly rather than causing a crash or out-of-bounds
read.
| Field | Value / limit |
|---|---|
| File name | favourites.bin (shared OPL config dir) |
| Format magic | OFAV (0x4641464F, little-endian) |
| Format version | 1 |
| Maximum favourites | 512 entries |
| Maximum title length | 255 characters + NUL (256 bytes) |
| Import from uOPL / wOPL | Automatic, read-only (one-way carry-over) |
Device Settings options
Favourites has one option in Settings → Device Settings:
| Setting | Values | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Favourites Start Mode | Off / Manual / Auto | Off hides the tab and disables R3 entirely. Manual (default) shows the tab but does not auto-start into it. Auto behaves like Auto mode on a regular device tab. |
Theme support
The Favourites page renders using the favsMain element family (which falls back to the regular
game-list main family when the theme defines no favsMain override). The star mark drawn beside favourited titles in any list uses the embedded fav_mark
texture. Themes can override the appearance of the Favourites tab icon via the fav texture slot.
App favourites (items sourced from the Apps tab) are handled specially: they use the apps theme element family (correct art box geometry and case overlay) rather than the game-cover family, so a favourited app looks right even on the Favourites page.
For full details on element families and texture slots, see the Theme Engine reference.
What happens to a favourite when a device is not connected?
The record stays in favourites.bin — it is never deleted just because the source device is absent.
When you open the Favourites tab, RiptOPL tries to resolve each stored entry against the currently loaded device
lists. Any entry whose device is not available (drive unplugged, share offline, etc.) is simply hidden from the
visible list. The moment that device is connected and its game list loads, the entry becomes visible again
automatically — no action needed on your part.
Can I favourite a PS1 (VCD) game?
Yes. PS1 titles shown in the VCD view (accessed with L3 on a device page) can be starred with R3 just like PS2 games. They appear in the Favourites list and launch through POPSTARTER the same way they do from their source device. See PS1 Games (VCD) for how the VCD view works.
Can I favourite a Neutrino-backed game?
Yes. Neutrino per-game settings are stored in the game's own per-game config file, not in the Favourites list. A favourited game that is set to use Neutrino will still launch via Neutrino when opened from the Favourites page, because the launch path proxies to the source device entry with all its settings intact.