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The Atari 5200 is a video game console version of the Atari 800 line of computers. All these machines share the same emulator with different machine types. Please refer to the atari800 entry for detailed instructions.

There are some severe limitations to the emulation of the Atari 5200 system:

• Analogue joysticks are supported only via hardcoded mouse inputs (bypassing RetroPad and default controls). The analog sticks of gamepads are NOT supported. This makes some games unplayable unless you connect a mouse.
• ROMs in the .a52 format require an additional selection of the ROM type at the start of the emulator and sometimes that selection screen is not visible and requires a blind button press. You can convert the .a52 files into a different format, .car, which contains additional information so that the selection screen is bypassed. The method of doing that inside the emulator together with a list of this information for all known Atari 5200 ROMs can be found here: Cartridge Type Code List
• Many required settings for the emulator are not exposed to RetroArch or Emulation Station but need to be set inside the emulator itself. You can access this menu with the L3 thumbstick press or the F1 key.