What is ES-DE & how did we get here?
EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is a highly popular graphical frontend that allows users to seamlessly browse and launch games across hundreds of retro consoles and multi-platform collections from a single, unified interface. Cathode is a custom user interface theme I designed specifically for this software to completely overhaul its visual experience. Crafted as a tribute to the golden era of CRT displays, it introduces 230 rendered video backgrounds, multiple layout styles, and customizable ambient sound packs to create a deeply immersive retro atmosphere for players browsing their game libraries.
My initial goal was to build and release something completely anonymously in a vacuum to see if it could resonate with a wide audience organically, driven entirely by the merit of the creative design alone. It did exactly that. A little over a year after release, Cathode officially surpassed 450,000 users—meaning it is now actively used by more people than the entire population of my city of Long Beach. Today, Cathode proudly stands as one of the top three themes on the entire ES-DE platform, serving as a testament to the power of community adoption and design-first thinking.
Why is Cathode special?
Nostalgic aesthetics and heavy attention to detail
Cathode was designed to evoke a deep sense of nostalgia for the classic CRT gaming era. By blending 230 rendered video backgrounds with finely curated soundscapes, it creates an immersive atmosphere unlike anything else on the ES-DE platform. Beyond the aesthetics, meticulous attention was given to information design and layout, ensuring essential details remain clear and accessible. Even the smallest UI elements—down to the bespoke placeholder media for folders, files, videos, and logos—were thoughtfully crafted to maintain a completely cohesive experience.
12 themes, 26 variants, and custom audio for each
Cathode features 12 distinct color themes and 26 layout variants, empowering users to truly make the interface their own. Pushing the platform's technical limits, it also became the first ES-DE theme to dynamically change system sounds alongside these color themes, creating a fully cohesive audiovisual atmosphere. Here is just a handful of the many possible combinations.
Hardcoded to fit today's most popular screens.
Because the ES-DE platform does not natively support responsive design, every single screen dimension must be meticulously coded from scratch. For a robust theme like Cathode—which encompasses roughly 200 unique pages—this presented a monumental structural challenge. Ensuring the UI remained cohesive, accessible, and pixel-perfect across different screens meant that coding and debugging new aspect ratios consumed approximately 70% of the entire development cycle. That immense effort ultimately paid off: Cathode proudly supports seven of the most popular aspect ratios used today, delivering an uncompromised, native-feeling experience on everything from pocket-sized 4:3 retro handhelds to ultrawide desktop monitors.
Give it a spin with your arrow keys
Arcade
Recent Growth and Development
The ongoing push to refine the theme as more people discover it
past 14 days
past 8 weeks
What the Community is Saying
Cathode's immediate success triggered a wave of glowing feedback and enthusiastic feature requests from our community.
Thank you
