Emulator Atari 2600 - Stella

A long time ago, I played with my cousins ​​in the Atari 2600 clone (pirate without cartridges, but who then cared), brought from Germany. At that time it was something surprising, but then Dendy, Sega (all also pirated) appeared and, finally, a computer on which all this is wonderfully emulated. I recently remembered Atari and want to talk about its emulator - Stella

Stella - OpenSource emulator, the assembly of which is available under Linux / Windows / Mac systems. It is also ported to run on J2ME, PSP, Dingoo A320 and a bunch of platforms and consoles. I use it on Linux, since the assembly is in the Mandriva PLF repository, but even if there is no package for your distribution, there is nothing complicated in the assembly from the source.

The main window of the emulator in combination is the window of the choice of rum. Unfortunately, the interface is not standard, as with most GTK applications. It is borrowed from another great project - ScummVM. Google says there is a frontend for KDE - Kstella , but I did not watch or check it.

The user has a bunch of settings. For some reason, Stella didn’t want to work with the OpenGL renderer (everything is fine in other applications / emulators / games), saying ERROR: Unable to open SDL window: Couldn't find matching GLX visual , and I could not experience the video effects, but I would like to. Okay, we will be content with Software, it will be even closer to the original.

I didn’t find any problems with setting up the gamepad, as it wasn’t even needed. All 4 directions and a whole one button worked by default. Unless you can bind Start and Reset to some buttons on the gamepad.

The rest of the settings are nothing particularly interesting.
If we want to play fullscreen, but press Alt + Enter during the game, but do not forget to go back, otherwise after closing the toy an unpleasant resolution of 640x480 awaits us.
Although the console has been around for more than 30 years, the emulator is still developing (the last commit in SVN was 3 days ago).
The emulator supports zipped roms, but swears at 7z, which is rather annoying, since all Good2600 roms are clamped in 7z.

Below are a few toys that I could remember:
Pac-Man
The debut of the good old pacman on home consoles. Not the best port with Arcade machines, but it’s clear that this is the best that they could squeeze out of Atari.

Boxing
Simple boxing, you can play together. It took me 10 years to understand that these are not two 3 digits, but two boxers with a top view.

Pitfall!
We called her Mowgli) We run, jump over the barrels, cling to the vines, crossing over huge puddles that can sometimes disappear, beware of snakes and scorpions.

Keystone Kapers
We run a cop along some supermarket, jump over obstacles, ride an elevator and an escalator. As a result, we catch up with the thief and begin a new level with new obstacles. And so, as in most games, to infinity.

Sneek 'n peek
It is possible that the only game in its genre, I have never seen such. This is hide and seek. You can play together. One closes his eyes (in both the real and virtual worlds), while the other seeks a place to hide. You can even leave the house.

Galaxian
sequel to Space Invaders and a prequel to the well-known NES Galaga. We protect ourselves from flying enemies above - space ships. And what to explain, they themselves saw 100 times.

River Raid We
fly on a plane, shooting down enemy helicopters / planes / ships, and sometimes refueling. Touching the wall leads to an airplane crash. Do not forget to refuel while flying over FUEL.


And there was a bunch of flyers on planes, board games, logic, arkanoid, even a simulator of a fireman, medic, rocketman, builder, three piglets, etc. All these wonderful games will not fit in this article, and I don’t know their names in English and never knew, maybe I played in the Chinese clone with erased copyrights. You can download all this in the Good2600 collection , since a whole romset of 2687 games weighs only 3.4 mb.