Play Atari ROMs Without the Atari

Can’t find your 20-year-old 2600? Your desktop machine will do.

Chances are, you own a computer with slightly more graphics, CPU, and processor power than an Atari 2600. (Chances are, you can buy a graphics card with better specs for a nickel or so.) Is this a sign of bloat, waste, and the decline of Western civilization into conspicuous consumerism? Perhaps. Of course, it also means that emulating a 2600—imitating the exact hardware of the 2600 to run its games—is practical.

If you have a pile of 2600 cartridges in the closet, perhaps it’s time to revisit the nostalgia of the early ’80s (though see [Hack #1] for further discussion). If you don’t have any cartridges, don’t fret. There are still programmers producing new work for the grandfather of all modern consoles (see [Hack #6] ).

Maybe you’ll join their ranks someday. Maybe you just want to play Adventure again. First, you need an emulator.

Installing Stella

Bradford Mott’s Stella (http://stella.sourceforge.net/) is a well-maintained, cross-platform Atari emulator. It runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows through DOS, so it’s an excellent choice.

At the time of writing, Version 1.3 is the current stable version with 1.4 on the way. From the download link (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=41847), grab the appropriate file for your operating system. Windows users: download st13.zip. Unix users: fetch a binary package or the source code in stella-1.3-src.tar.gz. You may need to install SDL from http://www.libsdl.org/.

Follow the installation instructions (http://stella.sourceforge.net/docs/stella.html#Installation) in the user’s guide. If you’re a Windows user, fire up a DOS window, and run an unzip command; that’s as complex as it gets.

If you want to play games, make sure that stella.pro, the Stella properties file, lives in the right location. For DOS and Windows users, this is the directory containing stella.exe. For Unix users, this is either /etc or .stella under your home directory.

Fortunately, the latest versions of Stella include this file; older web sites may tell you to download it from Erik Kovach’s site. Unfortunately, it appears that he has disappeared from the Web.

Launching ROMs

Let’s assume that you’ve downloaded Piero Cavina’s classic Oystron ( [Hack #6] ) and want to play it. Using the Linux SDL version, the following command launches the program with the ROM:

$ stella.sdl OYSTR29.BIN

From DOS, the same command is:

C:\stella> stella OYSTR29.BIN

Press F2 to start the game.

From there, use the arrow keys to move your spaceship, and use the Tab key or spacebar to fire. When you’ve had enough abuse, use the Escape key to quit. Again, the user’s guide has a full list of keyboard options (http://stella.sourceforge.net/docs/stella.html#Keyboard).

Tip

Don’t know what’s going on? The OYSTRON.DOC file included with the download should slightly demurk the story. Shooting the slow asteroid sprites turns them into space pearls, which you can capture and plant on the left side of the screen. Planting eight in a row earns you a bomb. This is one of those games that’s much more fun to play than to explain.

See Also

Of course, launching games from the command line isn’t for everyone, especially if you want to set different options; perhaps you prefer to save snapshots to a different directory or to disable the volume on certain games. There are various frontends available.

If you’re interested in playing 2600 games on other platforms or other emulators, you have several options:

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