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Atari 2600

Overview

The Atari 2600 application is an emulator for the Atari 2600 game console.

Slide Boy in Maze Land by Vladimir Zuniga

Settings

The Atari 2600 Application includes a custom settings dialog.

To access these settings, display the "Pause" screen and select the "Atari 2600 Settings" option (See screenshot above).

Atari 2600 Settings Tab (Session Only)

The Atari 2600 Application's "settings" tab is detailed below. It is important to note that the settings on this tab are Session only meaning they will not persist between gaming sessions.

Field Description
Color Switch Toggles between the Color and Black and White switch options (is a physical switch on the 2600 console).
Left Difficulty Switch Toggles between the A and B left difficulty switch options (is a physical switch on the 2600 console).
Right Difficulty Switch Toggles between the A and B right difficulty switch options (is a physical switch on the 2600 console).

Controls

The emulator supports up to four controllers. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Keyboard support is only available for controller one.

Name Keys Comments
Move
Fire
Color/B&W Switch
Left Difficulty Switch
Right Difficulty Switch
Reset
Select The Right Shift Key.
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for both controllers.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move  or 
Fire
Color/B&W Switch
Left Difficulty Switch
Right Difficulty Switch
Reset Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Reset
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Select Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the View (Back) Button.
Select
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the Menu (Start) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 2)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 3)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 4)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.

Paddle Support

The Atari 2600 emulator supports paddle input via the left analog stick on gamepads.

The Feed Editor attempts to automatically detect and configure paddle-based games when they are added. However, you can also specify these settings via the game's Item Editor or via the Atari 2600 Feed Properties.

Feed

This section details how Atari 2600 application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Atari 2600 application is retro-stella-latest.

Note

The alias 2600 also currently maps to this application. In the future, the 2600 alias may be mapped to another Atari 2600 application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the Atari 2600 application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
rom URL Yes URL to an Atari 2600 ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
swap Boolean No Whether to swap the controller ports. This is typically enabled when games default to using port 2 (versus port 1).
zoomLevel Numeric No A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).

This property is typically used to hide the black borders that are present on some games.
port0 Numeric No The type of controller(s) to plug into port 0:

  • 0 : Joystick
  • 1 : Single Paddle
  • 2 : Two Paddles

Defaults to Joystick.
port1 Numeric No The type of controller(s) to plug into port 1:

  • 0 : Joystick
  • 1 : Single Paddle
  • 2 : Two Paddles

Defaults to Joystick.
paddleSensitivity Numeric No Adjusts the sensitivity of the paddle (range of -99 to 99).

Defaults to 0.
paddleCenter Numeric No Adjusts the center position of the paddle (range of -99 to 99).

Defaults to 0.
paddleVertical Boolean No

Whether the paddle should be horizontal (analog stick left to right) or vertical (analog stick top to bottom).

Defaults to false (horizontal).
paddleInverted Boolean No

Whether to invert the paddle input.

For example, if pressing left on the analog stick causes the on-screen object to move right.

Defaults to false (not inverted).

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Atari 2600 application instance (type value of 2600). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent homebrew game Blinky Goes Up by Jan Hermanns.

{
  "title": "2600 Feed",
  "longTitle": "Atari 2600 Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "2600 Games",
      "longTitle": "Atari 2600 Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "Blinky Goes Up",
          "type": "2600",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/kkqrl8av5pwvgn1/blinky.bin"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This example can be tested by adding a feed with the following URL within the webЯcade player:

https://tinyurl.com/2600-feed

References

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