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Atari 7800

Overview

The Atari 7800 application is an emulator for the Atari 7800 ProSystem game console.

Knight Guy in Low Res World: Castle Days by Vladimir Zuniga

Controls

The emulator supports up to two 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 1
Fire 2
Pause
Reset
Select The Right Shift Key.
Show Pause Screen
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		 + Hold the Control Key and press the Shift Key to show the webЯcade pause screen.

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for both controllers.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move  or 
Dual analog (if applicable) Player one's right analog stick can be used to produce input for player two's joystick (d-pad) for games that support a 2-stick mode (For example, the homebrew game TiME Salvo).
Fire 1
Fire 2
Pause
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.

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.

On-screen Controls

On-screen Controls

The Atari 7800 application includes an on-screen control which is detailed below.

Button Description
Pause (Show Pause Screen) Displays the webЯcade pause screen.

Whether this button is 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 7800 application's pause screen provides access to application settings.

Atari 7800 Settings Tab (Session Only)

The settings on this tab are Session only, meaning they will not persist between gaming sessions.

Field Description
Left Difficulty Switch Toggles between the A and B left difficulty switch options (is a physical switch on the 7800 console).
Right Difficulty Switch Toggles between the A and B right difficulty switch options (is a physical switch on the 7800 console).
Dual Analog Whether to enable twin stick style controls (player 1 uses player 2's joystick for firing, etc.).

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 7800 application instances can be added to feeds.

Types

Two Atari 7800 application types are available, each offering different trade-offs in compatibility, features, and system resource requirements. The type below marked with a ⭐ is the default, and is mapped to the 7800 alias. The default can be overridden globally in Settings > Applications, or on a per-item basis in the Feed Editor.

Type Cheats Shaders Retro
Achievements		 Low
CPU
retro-prosystem ⭐ ✅ ✅ ✅ x
js7800 x x x ✅

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the Atari 7800 application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
rom URL Yes URL to an Atari 7800 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.

(retro-prosystem type only)
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.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Atari 7800 application instance (type value of 7800). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent homebrew game TiME Salvo by Mike Saarna.

{
  "title": "7800 Feed",
  "longTitle": "Atari 7800 Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "7800 Games",
      "longTitle": "Atari 7800 Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "TiME Salvo",
          "type": "7800",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/q57y608mjqhoshr/salvo.a78"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

References

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