Atari 2600 with SNES controller woes

[projectrob]

Good day -

I have been enjoying setting up the RetroPie system and love the UX. Great system. I am running a Raspberry Pi 3 with a Buffalo USB SNES controller.

I started with two Atari games that I have from my childhood: Adventure and Big Bird's Egg Catch.

I used the default controller auto setup at the beginning of the boot and Adventure works fine but the Big Bird Egg Catch will not work. The Select and Start keys work in the Big Bird game but the D pad doesn't work.

The Atari 2600 config file retroarch.cfg file is blank, so is there something I should do to override the controller interface? Just not sure why the global one wouldn't work on one game but does on others.

Thanks!

[mediamogul]

@projectrob

It's a bad news/possible good news situation here. Leading off with the bad, 'Big Bird's Egg Catch' requires a special controller that is not emulated in lr-stella.

The possible good news is that if you switch your default emulator to 'Stella' when the launch menu appears, you may have the option to select this type of controller from it's options menu (TAB Key). I can't say for sure, because I haven't looked into it myself, but I've been planning to take a look at possibly adapting some paddle controls to it's more advanced handling of analog input. I'm heading out for the night, but am very interested to hear what you find. Check it out and give a post back if you would.

[mediamogul]

@projectrob

Stella is indeed the way to go. It's very easy to configure your controller to just about any scenario. I was able to play 'Big Bird's Egg Catch' by mapping my controller to what is called the 'Keyboard Controller' from the gui. I was also able to quickly map analog controls to my thumbsticks that allowed pressure-sensitive speed control for paddle games. Playing 'Video Olympics' was a blast set up this way and I look forward to checking out 'Kaboom' and 'Gremlins' tomorrow in the more reasonable hours.

[edmaul69]

With stella you can also buy a 2600-daptor II and use all the real controllers, keypads, trackballs, paddles and driving controllers on the raspberry pi. Works awesome!!

[mediamogul]

@edmaul69

I just noticed that this afternoon. I'm considering picking a few up. It's rare that an emulator has a controller adapter designed specifically for it. The only other example I can think of is the DolphinBar. Thanks for the heads up.

[edmaul69]

@mediamogul tom makes several cool adaptors. he has one called the ultimate pc interface which is a 2 player adapter that can use all atari 2600 peripherals except for the paddles, all coleco peripherals, coleco flashback controllers, sega genesis, master system, intellivision controllers, intellivision music synthesizer, intellivision ecs keyboard, intellivision flashback controllers, atari 7800 controllers, msx controllers, ti-99 controllers, fairchild channel f controllers, x68000 controllers, c64 controllers and possibly others that i might be forgetting all in one device. i have one hardwired into my raspberry pi modded intellivision flashback system and i love it. i modified snes, pc engine and nes controllers to work on it too. i modified an apple iie joystick to work on the 2600-daptor. i have all original controllers for all 39 consoles i have on my raspberry pi. i love being able to have great video and audio but still able to play with the original controllers. i might make a thread one day showing all the cool raspberry pi mods i have done. retropie is probably my favorite emulator mod devices i have used. only thing i wouldnt be able to use a pi in is my modified daytona usa 2 arcade machine that i have a modified xbox running on it.

[mediamogul]

@edmaul69 said in Atari 2600 with SNES controller woes:

i might make a thread one day showing all the cool raspberry pi mods i have done.

I'd like to see that.