

You may also see a "*.car" extension (bin files natively) on some which are Atari 800 series cartridge games with the appropriate header to tell the emulator automatically what type of cartridge setup to use.

Typically, it will be an xex, atx, atr, bin, or a52 (5200 cart) file. Game files have to be in format that Atari 800 emulator can read. It sounds like you said this isn't the issue and if that is the case then the issue is either a setup file issue in RA (Atari 800 is not easiest to setup), or the game files are not readable to the emulator. Check that your BIOS files have the same exact MD5 checksums noted in the RA page. As noted at the RA page you have to have the appropriate BIOS file (ROM) for the Atari 5200 and Atari 800 to run games from them. The Retroarch core for this uses an older version of the Atari 800 emulator and info on the setup for Retroarch specifically is here. Most of those cores are based on standalone emulators like the Atari 800 emulator. But overall, there is no "Retroarch rom set".

Lastly, the RA core works well enough for 5200 but the core that RA uses is an old version of Atari 800 (3.1 vs standalone 4.1), so can also be issues there as well.Įdited Jby Not sure where it would pop up with the note "for use for a real Atari". If controls issue then when launch the game open up RA settings window and check your controller type is set to Atari Joystick for things like Frogger. There are two useful tools to help with carts: Atari ROM Maker which takes BIN and ROM cartridge images and applies a header and Atari ROM Checker which just gives information as to if the file does or doesn't have header (search via Google with those names). If extension is "rom" or "bin" then it may or may not have the right header. Similarly, if an ATR extension should run since those are floppy disk images and don't have any header issue. Usually if you see an extension with ".car" then the header should be intact should likely run fine. Unfortunately, there is a mish mash of images floating around and hard to tell. Some emulators have a built in database that use a checksum to determine how to launch cart, but that isn't always foolproof (i.e., won't run). There also can be some challenges with cartridge based Atari 800 games in that the some sources didn't have the proper headers to tell the emulator what type of cartridge was being used. The path to those is determined by the file .atari800.cfg which is usually in your root Retroarch directory. If you have some games launching, then likely not the issue. My reference to Atari roms was that you have the appropriate machine bios roms required.
