Quick tip for RetroArch’s DOSBox-Pure core

If you’re trying to set up DOS games like Jetpack in something like RetroPie or Batocera, you might run into a problem where pressing the S key (“start new game” in Jetpack) doesn’t do anything, whether through a physical keyboard or through padtokey mappings.

This is most likely because RetroArch’s default hotkeys map S to one of the buttons on the virtual gamepad. (A decision which makes sense for consoles, where you need a gamepad and a keyboard is optional at best, but makes no sense for retro computers, where a keyboard is standard or even built-in, and a joystick is optional)

While I don’t know about RetroPie, under Batocera, the simplest solution is to add the following lines to your /userdata/system/batocera.conf to disable those mappings:

dos.retroarch.input_player1_a=nul
dos.retroarch.input_player1_b=nul
dos.retroarch.input_player1_x=nul
dos.retroarch.input_player1_y=nul

Then, if you do need mappings for DOS games, they probably go the other way (making the gamepad fake keypresses) and can be handled via padtokey mappings.

Quick tip for RetroArch’s DOSBox-Pure core by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.