Notes on RetroGaming Revision as of Sunday, 11 January 2026 at 17:39 UTC

Got myself a tiny 8BitDo controller for use with the excellent OpenEmu for macOS (can’t believe it’s free).

Many ROM sites appear to be broken but Vimm’s Lair appears to be active and offer quite a few. There’s also the Reddit /r/ROMS community.

Karabiner Remappings

Strictly optional.

The controller registers itself as a keyboard. I use the excellent Karabiner to remap the buttons so I don’t have to remember which letter, for example, the “Up Arrow” on the controller is (it’s c). Here’s my config. It goes into a list under profiles -> devices.

I also used the - and + buttons at the top for Select and Start respectively.

{
"identifiers": {
    "is_keyboard": true,
    "product_id": 36897,
    "vendor_id": 11720
},
"simple_modifications": [
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "e" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "left_arrow" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "f" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "right_arrow" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "c" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "up_arrow" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "d" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "down_arrow" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "g" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "a" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "j" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "b" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "h" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "x" }]
    },
    {
        "from": { "key_code": "i" },
        "to": [{ "key_code": "y" }]
    }
]
}