Odessey2/Videopac trouble in RetroArch

Hello, all.

This is my first post here. Over the last few days, I’ve been playing around with RetroArch in Linux (Lubuntu distribution).

I’ve got it working for Atari 2600 and Atari 7800. The Odyssey is giving me problems. I’ve just installed the typical Magnavox Videopac/Odyssey2 core from the Core Updated within RetroArch.

I’ve downloaded no-intro roms from various sources, always the same results. RetroArch scans the directory and adds the roms to a playlist. By the way, I’ve left the roms zipped up. But when I try to load an Odyssey2 rom, it will either take me to a black screen, or it will flash a black screen and then take me back to the menu with a “Failed to Load Content” message.

Also, and I don’t know if this is related, but no matter what rom I choose, whether it’s an Atari rom or an Odyssey rom, RetroArch will ask me which core to use before I can load the rom. It’s like it’s not auto-associating. But that might not be related.

Does anyone have an idea what I’m doing wrong regarding the Odyssey games? I will be happy to try anything you suggest and post the results, if that helps.

Thank you!

Do you have the bios installed?

it normally live in RA’s system directory, and they are the same as those used by MAME

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Thank you, te_lanus.

I just installed the Magaovox Videopac/Odyssey2 from the Update Cores menu in RetroArch. If the bios isn’t automatically installed by doing that, then it’s safe to say that I do not have the bios installed. I definitely didn’t do anything to manually install the bios.

I’ll investigate where to download the bios from and how to install it. If I don’t have the bias, then that would most definitely be my problem.

Thank you again.

te_lanus, thank you so much again!

I went and found the BIOS here: http://www.ozyr.com/rene/VP_O2-roms777.zip

After extracting the BIOS files (there are 4 of them, supporting various countries), I had to rename them to remove the “bios_” prefix.

Then I created a ~/.config/retroarch/system/ directory and pointed RetroArch to that directory.

I placed the 4 BIOS files in that directory, and then I restarted RetroArch.

And it worked! I can now play my old Odyssey games. Blast from the past, for sure.

Thanks again!

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