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Atari 5200

Note

Single player only (core does not support second fire or keypad for player 2). Some newer homebrew titles are not supported (unsupported mappings in core). Analog quirks: holding the analog stick in a direction prior to a level starting can cause odd behavior in some games (Centipede, Missile Command, probably others).

Overview

The Atari 5200 application is an emulator for the Atari 5200 game console.

Adventure II by The Square Trio Team

BIOS File (Optional)

In addition to Atari 5200 ROM files, an optional Atari 5200 BIOS (typically named 5200.rom) can be specified globally within the feed (See the Feed Properties Dialog and Atari 5200 Feed Properties sections).

File Hash (MD5)
5200.rom 281f20ea4320404ec820fb7ec0693b38

Controls

The emulator supports one controller. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Standard Controls

Keyboard

Keyboard controls are listed below.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Move
Bottom Fire
Top Fire
Start
Show Keypad Display The Right Shift Key. See Keypad section for more details.
Show Keypad Display
(Alternate)		 Hold, then release, to open the on-screen Keypad screen.
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad mappings are listed below.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move
Move Analog input when analog mode is enabled.
Move (Player 2) When twin stick mode is enabled.
Bottom Fire
Top Fire
Start Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

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

Press the View (Back) Button.

See Keypad section for more details.
Toggle Keypad Display
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox.

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

Keypad

The following section describes how to interact with the Atari 5200 controller's keypad buttons. webЯcade provides two different ways to interact with it (the Radial Keypad is not available while twinStick mode is active):

Radial Keypad (quick-select)

Radial Keypad

Moving the right analog stick in a direction brings up a 12-key radial (pie-menu) selector, arranged clockwise from 12 o'clock: 1, 2, 3 (top), 4, 5, 6 (right), 7, 8, 9 (bottom), *, 0, # (left). Point the stick toward a key and confirm with either the Left or Right Bumper to press it. Releasing the stick back to center dismisses the selector without pressing anything.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Show Radial Keypad / Choose Key Suppressed while the Left Trigger is held down (to avoid conflicting with the grid keypad combo below), and while twinStick mode is active.
Press Key  or 
On-screen Keypad Display

Gamepad (Virtual keypad)

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Show Keypad Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the View (Back) Button.
Show Keypad
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Close Keypad
Choose Key  or 
Press Key The key button will continue to be pressed until the button is released. This is important as some games require long presses for the key to be recognized.

Keyboard (Virtual keypad)

Name
Keys
 Comments
Show Keypad The Right Shift Key.
Show Keypad
(Alternate)
Close Keypad
Close Keypad
(Alternate)
Close Keypad
(Alternate 2)
Choose Key
Press Key  or 

Keyboard (Direct mappings)

The key button will continue to be pressed until the keyboard key is released. This is important as some games require long presses for the key to be recognized.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Press key (0-9) -
Press key (Asterisk)
Press key (Pound)

On-screen Controls

On-screen Controls

The Atari 5200 application includes a set of on-screen controls which are detailed below.

Button Description
Keypad Opens the on-screen Keypad screen.
Pause (Show Pause Screen) Displays the webЯcade pause screen.

Whether these buttons are always displayed, or only displayed once touch, mouse, or keyboard input is detected, can be configured via the "On-screen controls" field on the Display Settings tab.

Pause Screen

The Atari 5200 application's pause screen provides access to application settings.

Display Settings Tab

Field Description
Screen size The screen size to use when playing a game.

Options include:
  • Native : The application's native resolution
  • 16:9 : Widescreen resolution
  • Fill : Fill the entire contents of the screen
Bilinear filter The type of bilinear filter to apply to the output display.
On-screen controls Toggle whether the on-screen controls should always be displayed, or only displayed once touch, mouse, or keyboard input has been detected.

Feed

This section details how Atari 5200 application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Atari 5200 application is retro-5200.

Type Cheats Shaders Retro
Achievements		 Low
CPU
retro-5200 ⭐ ✅ ✅ x x

Note

The alias 5200 also currently maps to this application. In the future, the 5200 alias may be mapped to another Atari 5200 application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Feed Properties

The table below contains global Atari 5200 feed properties. These properties must be specified in the props object of the feed's Feed Object.

Property Type Required Details
atari5200_rom URL No (optional) URL to an Atari 5200 BIOS file or a zip file containing the BIOS file.

Item Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the Atari 5200 application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
rom URL Yes URL to an Atari 5200 ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
cheat URL No URL to a cheat file for the current ROM. See the Cheats Tab in the Item Editor for details on assigning cheat files.
swap Boolean No Whether to swap the controller ports. This is typically enabled when games default to using port 2 (versus port 1).
analog Boolean No Whether to enable analog mode on the controllers.
twinStick Boolean No Whether to enable twin stick style controls (player 1 uses player 2's joystick for firing).
mappings Map of Strings (key-value pairs) No Game-specific mappings from the Atari 5200 keys and buttons to the gamepad.

The key in the map must be one of the following:
  • a: A button
  • b: B button
  • x: X button
  • y: Y button
  • lb: Left bumper
  • rb: Right bumper
  • lt: Left trigger
  • rt: Right trigger
The value in the map must be one of the following:
  • Keypad button: 0-9, #, *, start, reset, pause
  • Controller button: topfire (Top Fire), bottomfire (Bottom Fire)
descriptions Map of Strings (key-value pairs) No Provides game-specific descriptions for the Atari 5200 controller keys and buttons. Shown when the keypad or game-specific controls are displayed.

The key in the map must be one of the following:
  • Keypad button: 0-9, #, *, start, reset, pause
  • Controller button: topfire (Top Fire), bottomfire (Bottom Fire)
The value in the map will be the description for the key (keypad or controller button).
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 Atari 5200 games.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Atari 5200 application instance (type value of 5200). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent homebrew game Adventure II by The Square Trio Team.

It is also worth noting that the Atari 5200 BIOS location (atari5200_rom) is specified globally within the Feed Object's props object.

{
  "title": "Atari 5200",
  "props": {
    "atari5200_rom": "https://<host>/5200.rom"
  },
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "Atari 5200 Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "Adventure II",
          "type": "5200",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks2wbcizcoe9fqw/adv2a.bin?dl=0"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

References

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