HyperLaunch allows the launch and runs various emulators using the same interface.

A variety of emulators and programs let us play games from video consoles. For example, if we want to emulate the Super Nintendo game console, there are multiple emulators: ZSNES, Snes9x, higan, and more. Each one of these emulators has its graphical interface and its particular configurations. This is not a problem if we're going to emulate from time to time and only emulate a few consoles. However, if we can emulate multiple systems, it is convenient to have a tool that facilitates the execution of different emulators and their respective games.

HyperLaunch can launch different emulators without the need to configure them. This program is very useful when we use a frontend as HyperSpin. With the front end, we'll browse all systems/video consoles and games, and when we select a game, HyperLaunch will be launched, running the emulator associated with the selected game.

HyperLaunch configuration is not trivial, but it is worth configuring properly because we can use many emulators. The program uses the so-called “Modules,” which are files that run the emulators; for example, there is a module for MAME, MESS, Nestopia, WinUAE, No$gba, WinKawaks, etc. In this way, we can select the Nestopia Module to run the games from NES (Nintendo), and we don't need to launch manually the emulator each time we want to play.
If a game works better with an emulator other than the default, we can configure HyperLaunch to launch that game with a different emulator. This way, they will run with different emulators when we launch the games.

With this program, we can also use bezels in any system. For example, we can make a Game Boy image appear when we play Game Boy games, so on the Television or monitor, it will appear a full-screen Game Boy screen will display the emulated game. This makes the experience of playing old games a little closer to the original experience.

The program supports Keymapper. That is to say; we can set up a joystick or gamepad and use it in all the supported emulators (Modules). To use this function, we must use the configuration generated by any of these 3 programs: Xpadder, JoyToKey, or AutoHotKey. For example, we launched Xpadder and configured our Gamepad. This process generates a configuration file we need to copy into the HyperLaunch directory. What is interesting about this is that we can use this configuration file for all the emulators or create different configuration files for different emulators or even games. This way, we can use the Xbox360 gamepad to play PlayStation 2 emulator and a generic gamepad to play the Sega Mega Drive emulator.

Another interesting option with the program is support for 7-Zip compressed ROMs (games). This option makes it possible to compress all ROMs in 7z format and use it on any emulator, although that emulator doesn't support natively 7zip files.

The program configuration is done through text files, which makes the configuration process a complex task. To bridge this gap, a program called HyperLaunchHQ allows us to configure HyperLaunch options through a graphical interface.