Skip to content

Atari Jaguar (Experimental)

Warning

The Atari Jaguar application is currently designated as an experimental application.

This designation has been applied due to the following:

  • The underlying emulator has known compatibility issues across the Jaguar game library.

Applications marked as experimental are flagged with an "Experimental" tag in the feed editor's Select Application Dialog, but are otherwise fully available for use in both the editor and the webЯcade player. There is no separate setting required to enable them.

Overview

The Atari Jaguar application is an emulator for the Atari Jaguar game console, a 64-bit cartridge-based console released by Atari in 1993.

Controls

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

Keyboard

Keyboard support, including the direct numeric keypad passthrough, is only available for controller one.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Move
Option
Pause The Right Shift Key. Displays the webЯcade pause screen.
Fire C Default mapping. Can be changed via the Mappings tab in the editor.
Fire B Default mapping.
Fire A Default mapping.
Keypad "8" Default mapping.
Keypad "7" Default mapping.
Keypad "9" Default mapping.
Keypad "4" Default mapping.
Keypad "6" Default mapping.
Keypad 1-9, 0 - Direct keypad passthrough. Presses the keypad key regardless of the Keypad screen being open.
Keypad *
Keypad #
Show Keypad The Left Control Key. Hold, then release, to open the on-screen Keypad screen.
Show Pause Screen
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		 + Hold the Left Control Key, then press the Right Shift Key before releasing Control, to show the webЯcade pause screen instead of the Keypad.

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for both controllers.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move  or 
Option Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

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

Press the View (Back) Button. Sends the real Jaguar Pause button press to the game (the same signal the real Jaguar controller's Pause button sends) — this is not the webЯcade pause screen, and what happens depends on the game.
Pause (Jaguar)
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Fire C Default mapping. Can be changed via the Mappings tab in the editor.
Fire B Default mapping.
Fire A Default mapping.
Keypad "8" Default mapping.
Keypad "7" Default mapping.
Keypad "9" Default mapping.
Keypad "4" Default mapping. Suppressed while held down for the Show (Grid) Keypad combo below.
Keypad "6" Default mapping.
Radial Keypad Move the Right Thumbstick in a direction to quick-select a key. See Keypad.
Show (Grid) Keypad  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick. See Keypad.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox.

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

Keypad

The real Jaguar controller includes a 16-key numeric keypad (0-9, *, #) used by many games for menus, codes, and secondary actions. webЯcade provides two different ways to interact with it:

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).
Press Key  or 

Grid Keypad

Grid Keypad
Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Show Grid Keypad  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Choose Key  or 
Press Key
Name
Keys
 Comments
Show Grid Keypad Hold, then release, the Left Control Key.
Close Keypad

On-screen Controls

On-screen Controls

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

Button Description
Keypad Opens the Grid 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 Jaguar application's pause screen provides access to application settings.

Pause Screen

Jaguar Settings Tab (Session Only)

Field Description
Disable Fast Blitter The Fast Blitter trades rendering accuracy for speed and is used by default. Enable this to fall back to the slower, more accurate blitter instead, for games with visual glitches.

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 Jaguar application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Atari Jaguar application is retro-virtual-jaguar.

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

Note

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

Item Properties

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

Property Type Required Details
rom URL Yes URL to an Atari Jaguar ROM file (.j64 or .jag) or a zip file containing one.
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.
zoomLevel Numeric No A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).
disableFastBlitter Boolean No Whether to disable the Fast Blitter (trading speed for rendering accuracy). Defaults to false. Can also be toggled per-session via the Jaguar Settings tab.
useRealBios Boolean No How the cartridge boots. false (default) has the emulator emulate the boot sequence itself (faster boot, skips the boot animation). true runs the actual Jaguar boot ROM, which some titles require. The boot ROM is built into the emulator either way, so no file is needed for either setting.
mappings Map of Strings (key-value pairs) No

Game-specific mappings of the gamepad's mappable buttons to a Jaguar fire button or keypad key. See Controls and Keypad for the default mapping.

The simplest way to set these mappings is to use the Mappings tab in the Feed Editor for the item (game).

The following is a simple example of a set of mappings. The key is the gamepad controller button (a, b, x, y, lb, rb, lt, rt) and the value is the Jaguar fire button (firea, fireb, firec) or keypad key label (0-9, *, #) that it is mapped to.

{
    "x": "firec",
    "a": "fireb",
    "b": "firea",
    "y": "8"
}
descriptions Map of Strings (key-value pairs) No

Custom display names for Jaguar keypad keys and fire buttons, shown in the on-screen keypad display and controls screen.

The key is a keypad key or fire-button label (matching the value of a mappings entry: firea, fireb, firec, or 0-9/*/#) and the value is the custom name to display.

{
    "firec": "Jump",
    "7": "Reload"
}

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Atari Jaguar application instance (type value of jaguar).

{
  "title": "Atari Jaguar",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "Atari Jaguar Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "My Jaguar Game",
          "type": "jaguar",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://<host>/mygame.j64"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

References

Back to top