Atari 8 bit on Android

[DKWITT]

First things first, apologies if already covered, but I have searched and couldn't find an answer. Maybe it is here and I didn't look properly, maybe it is scattered.

 

I want to use my android box with a bluetoothed gamepad to play Atari 8 bit games. Ideally I want to be able to use the same app to play games on other platforms, old arcade classics plus Megadrive games. So, I tried Retroarch. Managed to get Sonic up and running but every Atari file I tried crashed Retroarch. I tried various filetypes, everything crashed the app.

 

Can you use Mame4Droid to run Atari programs? How is it set up? Can I just select "Breakout 1979 Atari.atr" and it will run it, or do I have to run an Atari emulator and then somehow use DOS to load the disk image?

 

I've been trying this for 5 hours (it's 11am!), installing and uninstalling, and I'm at a loss!

 

Probably a lie down in a dark room would be best but I am  sure that some clearer-headed experts could help out.

 

Thank you in advance

 

 

PS I tried Colleen but could not see how to set this up with a gamepad. Is that possible?

If I have to have multiple emulators then fair enough , but a single app would be better.

Edited December 27, 2019 by DKWITT

[mr_me]

I don't think retroarch has an atari 800 emulator.  If mame4droid is based on an old version of mame, it won't have an atari 800 emulator either.  Any Atari 800 emulator will need the atariOS system rom file to work.  There's an emulator for android called Colleen.  It's a port of the popular atari800 emulator.  Atari 800 disk image files should auto boot.

[mr_me]

http://www.retrox.tv

You can try this.  It has a port of droid800 which was a port of the atari800 emulator.  They added controller support.

 

You can also try asking in the atari 8-bit or 5200 sections of the forum.

[wittd]

Thanks for the Retrox tip. It looks as though that will do the job!

Although finding a MAME Asteroids that works is proving tricky. 

 

Thanks again and Retrox is definitely worth a look if you want to play multi-platform games on an android tv box. 

[mr_me]

If using an old version of mame you'll need an asteroids rom archive from a similarly old mame set.  The exact versions of mame used are documented.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by mr_me