Atari 5200DS vs Atari800

Atari 5200DS is a free emulator for Atari 5200 games on Nintendo DS-family systems, including DS, DSi, DSi XL, and DSi LL. Its stated coverage includes the original 69 commercial releases and a couple hundred homebrews, hacks, and prototypes. Bankswitching cartridges up to 512K are supported, including Bounty Bob Strikes Back. Players can mark games as liked or loved, and the emulator saves up to 10 high scores per game to the SD card. Some controls are adjusted for particular games: Frogger and Q-Bert are patched for button movement, while Robotron can use ABXY to shoot and the d-pad to move. The emulator requires NTSC-compatible ROMs in a52/bin format and recommends the original 4-port 5200.rom BIOS for full compatibility. A built-in replacement BIOS works for some games with limited compatibility. The README says games run at full speed on DSi or newer systems, though complex conversions may lag on DS Lite or Phat. Quest for Quinta Roo will not start because of a known key debounce issue. Version 3.9 was released April 8, 2026.

Atari800 emulates Atari 8-bit computer systems and the Atari 5200 game console. It supports cycle-exact emulation of the 6502 processor and the NMI, POKEY, ANTIC and GTIA components. The emulator handles ATR, XFD, DCM, ATR.GZ and XFD.GZ disk images, with up to eight emulated drives. It can load Atari executable files and BASIC programs, emulate cassette tapes, and save files to the host computer through the H: device. Users can connect real joysticks or emulate paddles, light pens, light guns, mice and trackballs. Atari800 can save screen snapshots as PCX or PNG and write sound output to WAV files. It runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and Android; source and binary packages are available through GitHub releases, with Linux package instructions for Debian and Fedora. The project describes Atari800 as freely distributable, with source under GPL version 2. Its release notes describe NetSIO and FujiNet support for network SIO over UDP. Atari800 is written in C, and a BIOS is required.