It was developed by John Dullea in 1996 only for MS-DOS. One of its first versions released that we had access to was 1.3 in November 1996 for MS-DOS. Version 2.0 came out in August 1997. In May 1998, version 2.1 was released, which brought screenshots in .BMP format, save state and reformulated and improved the sound system. The next version, 2.2, came out in November 1999. The releases were always very spaced out. Its first version for Windows, 2.3 came out in May 2000 along with the DOS version. The Windows version was known as PCAEwin. Version 2.4 was also released in the same month. The emulator is almost entirely written in assembly, with extra features in Pascal, and runs on computers compatible with the Intel 80486 processor, or just 486. It uses Ron Fries' TIA library, which at the time only worked on sound cards 100% compatible with Sound Blaster.
PC Atari Emulator (Windows)
Regarding other options in the DOS version, we have a wide range of configurations, such as keyboard, mouse and joypad, as well as several configurations for other types of controls, such as the Atari Video Touch Pad, Atari Indy 500, CBS Booster-Grip, in addition to the console's own standard joysticks, reset, pause and debugger. It also ran several ripped cartridges, such as cartridges with several games, such as the Brazilian Megaboy cartridge. In the Windows version, in addition to supporting all the items mentioned, it also had color and font changes for the menu, thumb for ROMs, various window sizes, TV type, fullscreen and video recording in .AVI.
PC Atari Emulator (Options)
In its early days, around 1997, the site was managed by Matthew Conte, who later created the NES emulator Nofrendo. Around 2000, John himself took care of the site. The latest version of DOS, 2.5, was released in December 2000. From this version onwards, it became possible to record videos in the emulator in .AVI format. The latest version of the emulator, 2.6, was released in March 2002 for Windows. In addition to PCAE, John also created the IntvDOS / IntvWin emulator for the Intellivision console in 1999.
Atari 2600 (A26) (1996)
A26
It was created by Paul Robson in 1996, as the first free Atari emulator for Windows. Its release was dated August 1996 for MS-DOS. The emulator was written 100% in assembly language, and emulated its games only on the sound card, at a time when many people used the computer's speakers to play games. Paul used the source code of Stella and VCS to create the A26. In December 1996, he released the last version of the emulator, leaving the project aside to dedicate himself to the NESA NES emulator. Seven versions of the A26 were released in total.
Z26 (1997)
Z26
Created by John Saeger in 1997 for MS-DOS and later for Windows and MacOS, it was the last of the Atari emulator boom. It was released in August 1997 for MS-DOS and MS-DOS of the Windows 95 system. Its emulator is based on version 0.15 of A26 from September 1996 by Paul Robson. It also had sound emulation based on TIASound, by Ron Fries, used in other Atari 2600 emulators, such as Virtual 2600, Virtual VCS, Stella, and others. Z26 has always made its source code available since its first version. In February 2003 it finally released its version for Windows. In June 2003 its last version for DOS was released and in July 2003 for Xbox, as Z26X. In May 2004 they began to release versions for Windows and Linux together.
Z26 (Other Interfaces)
Almost seven years without updating the emulator, a new version was released in March 2011. In May 2011, two updates were released, the first in version 2.16, which began using SDL mode, which improves video synchronization, and the second in version 3.00, which also added releases for Mac, and brought support for OpenGL, which improved graphic emulation, and aVSync, which improved synchronization between the video being played and the video being watched. In June 2011, they released their latest version, having gone eight years without updating. Their return was in July 2019, removing versions for Mac and adding versions for MacOS X, in addition to support for SDL 2.0, which allows greater flexibility in switching modes and video synchronization. The latest version of the emulator was released in August 2019. Z26 was the emulator with the most front ends, due to its long time of releases for MS-DOS on the command line. Among the front ends we have the AtariFrontZ in November 1998, Z-Type in February 1998, FEZ26 in August 2000, ZTron2600 in March 2004 and x26 in May 2004. The Z26 along with Stella is the Atari 2600 emulator with the longest lifespan.
JAVATARI and no$2k6
There were other Atari emulators, such as JAVATARI, no$2k6 and pyTari. Multi-system emulators, such as MESS (multi-emulator for PCs and consoles) and Ninth Star (which also runs NES) in 2000, Emu7800 (which also runs Atari 7800) in 2003, GuineaPig (for PalmOS, which runs Sega 8 and 16 bits and PC Engine) in 2004, MAME in 2007, Bee (which also runs Coleco and SMS) in 2009 and Z64K (which also emulates Commodore 65 and 128, and Vic 20) in 2015. It also ran on other systems, such as Pocket VCS for Pocket PC, Ataroid for Android, PVCS for PS2, GP2600 for GamePark GP32, and CS2600 for Dreamcast.
The Stella project was created by Bradford W. Mott in late 1995, alongside Aaron Giles, Seunghee Lee, Jeff Miller and Darrell Spice Jr. Its name is inspired by the codename that the project that created the Atari VCS (later known as Atari 2600) adopted at its beginning. The emulator was also known as An Atari 2600 VCS Emulator. Its first release was on May 4, 1996, under the name Stella 96, only for Linux and without running any games. Its second version, released in June 1996, was only for MS-DOS ported by Keith Wilkins and already running games. The third version, released in July 1996, in addition to coming with the Linux and MS-DOS versions, also came with the UNIX/X11 versions by Bradford, the Windows version by Jeff Miller and the MacOS version by Aaron Giles. This was a release pattern that continued until February 1997. In the third version, it also supported some games using the mouse. From September 1996, in its fourth version, the emulator began to be called simply Stella.
Stella (Windows)
In the fifth version of the emulator in November 1996, it began to support sound, adding the TIASound sound emulator by Ron Fries. In this version, it also began to support the OS/2 system by Darrell Spice Jr., also released simultaneously until February 1997, when the sixth version of the emulator was released. In January 1997, Jim Pragit, from outside the project, released the first front-end for Stella, called Game Menu for MS-DOS. This was a well-known front-end that supported several DOS-mode emulators of the time. It was available for download on the Stella website. Game Menu was updated until January 1998. The following month, the sixth version of Stella was released, adding VSync mode, which synchronizes video frames. In March 1997, the second front-end created for Stella arrived, called FEFA (Front End For ATARI), now for Windows, created by Israel Geron, also from outside the project. It also worked with the PC Atari Emulator. It was discontinued in July 2004. The DOS version of Stella was taken care of by Brandford from June 1997, due to Keith's lack of time for it. In the same month, its seventh version was released, which added two 6507 emulators (alternative version of the 6502) for different functions, the Supercharger expansion cartridge and support for pause for the DOS and UNIX versions. At this stage it also supported reset, and the Color TV options, adding the colors seen on a TV to the PC screen and Black And White, so that the game would also be black and white with the aspects that were seen on a television. In March 1998, Jeff's Windows version became StellaX, running on several versions of Windows and with its own front-end.
StellaX
After a year-long hiatus, Brandford released the first beta version of Stella in July 1998, 1.0b1. This version began to support joypads and other types of controls, the new emulation of the M6502 CPU, and palettes in NTSC and PAL formats. From October 1998 onwards, releases were made simultaneously for DOS, Linux, and UNIX. In that month, version 1.0 was released, with support for 320x200 and 320x240 resolutions for the MS-DOS version. In February 1999, version 1.1 of the emulator was released. In September 1999, John Stiles created another port for MacOS, specifically for PowerMacs, replacing Aaron's. In November 1999, its last front-end, KStella, developed by Stephen Anthony for Linux, was released and was updated until August 2004. In July 2001, John also began supporting MacOS X in his Mac port. The Windows version, StellaX, ended its releases in May 2000, launching the options menu, with the option of ROM path, use of mouse paddle and high resolution video selection mode.
Cyberstella
In April 2002, after three years without updates to the original project, Stephen Anthony from the Linux front-end KStella replaced Bradford as project leader and released version 1.2 of the emulator. In this version, he created a port of the emulator to SDL. I believe that this is when the Linux versions began to have KStella as the default front-end. In that month, he also migrated the page and the project to the development site, Source Forge. In May 2002, Stephen also began to take care of the Windows version, releasing Cyberstella. The emulator came with a completely new front-end. In February 2003, the releases for MS-DOS and UNIX ended. In July 2004, Stephen created another version for Windows, using Jeff's StellaX front-end. From that date on, the emulator releases began to be made simultaneously for Linux, Windows and MacOS X, the latter being created by Mark Grebe. The UNIX version is merged into the Linux version from this version onwards. The additions of this version are OpenGL driver selection (later becoming part of the renderer mode), volume increase, snapshot, save state, color/black and white mode, game difficulty mode, among others. In October 2005, Stella stops using the StellaX and KStella front-ends and creates a standardized front-end for the Linux, MacOS X and Windows versions.
Stella 2.0
As for its updates, from 2006 onwards, it supports video options, such as rendering through Direct3D, OpenGL and OpenGLES, screen zoom, fullscreen, option to change color palettes to the Z26 emulator, TV Effects, with texture and noise changes, resembling the TV screen and palette customization, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness and saturation. Sound, such as changes in output frequency and the original console sound, changes in hz, quality and fragments and changes in audio devices. Emulation, such as emulation speed, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, VSync and debugger. Game, such as cartridge information, changes in cartridge type, between stereo and mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type and screen format (ex NTSC). In addition to cheat mode, there is a menu specifically for snapshots, with several options for the function, changing paths for save states, cheats, palettes, ROMs and snapshots, save states, configuring various controls, changing the TIA, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customizing your own chip. Among many other functions.
Stella (Menus)
Regarding its front-end, it has undergone several changes over the years. I highlight the main ones, such as the size of the window and the expansion of menus from then on in January 2007. Changing the colors from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange in August 2007, becoming the standard colors to this day. Reducing the window and making the font smaller and not bold in March 2008. Increasing the font of the letters and ROM search on the main screen in January 2009. Modifications to the appearance of the options menu in December 2018. Bold returning to the letters in March 2020. Increasing the screen with a side option for snapshots and ROM information in January 2021. And lower buttons being grouped into a single button at the top of the front in June 2022. Basically the front-end remains the same for 12 years, between 03/08 to 11/20. The front end also began to receive interface changes, with GP2X mode on 01/07, Classic, Standard and Light modes on 12/18 and Dark mode on 10/20. There are also some dates of the project that are important to highlight, such as May 2008, with the addition of the AtariVox voice and music synthesizer. January 2009, with support for 64-bit versions of the emulator. July 2017, when the project website migrated from SourceForge to Github. And February 2018, when it began emulating the Atari 7800 console. Several other influencers helped the project over time, such as Ron Fries, with his TIASound library, Dan Boris, creator of the Atari 5200 Virtual Super System, with technical information about the Supercharger expansion cartridge, among others.
Stella (Game Selection Menu)
The emulator ended up becoming the most famous to emulate the Atari 2600, which made it gain many other ports, such as for the Atari Falcon, Atari ST, Atari TT and Amiga computers, Linux, Android and Windows Phone systems, as well as consoles such as Xbox, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Nintendo Wii and portables such as PSP, Nintendo DS and GP2X. Stephen currently takes care of the project together with Christian Speckner and Thomas Jentzsch, who make up the current Stella Team. The latest version of the emulator was released in October 2024. In 2014 it became part of the OpenEmu multi-emulator, which ran several consoles from Sega, Nintendo, Atari and NEC for MacOS. Stella has been released simultaneously for 26 years, with a total of approximately 108 versions released, being one of the emulators that has been in development for the longest time and with one of the largest number of versions released for a console emulator.
- Over the years, the emulator has undergone several changes, starting in December 2006, when it added the multiple snapshots option.
- In January 2007, the first major update to its front-end and the emulator itself was made, increasing the size of the front end and expanding its menus, with video mode, with screen zoom options, fullscreen, VSync and color palettes like the Z26 emulator, for example, in addition to bringing back the drive option (here called renderer) with OpenGL option, sound mode, with output frequency HZ control and TIA frequency (original console sound, in addition to fragment size (later called sample), input mode, with save state and configuration of various controls, UI mode, with option to change the size of the front-end window and change the interface to that of GP2X, groups the ROM path and snapshots functions in a single mode, the files and snapshots mode, the help mode with shortcut keys, in addition to the cheat mode and game property modes, among others.
- In August 2007, the front-end changed from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange, in addition to adding the file configuration mode, the old files and snapshots, with the paths to save state, cheats, palettes, roms, snapshots and others.
- In March 2008, it reduced the size of the front-end, removed the bold font and enabled the game property mode, inactive until then, showing cartridge information, with change of cartridge type, between stereo or mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type, screen format (ex NTSC) among others.
- In May 2008, it added support for the AtariVox voice and music synthesizer.
- In January 2009, it increased the font of its letters and added the rom filter option, to find the roms on the main screen more easily, in addition to starting to support the 64-bit versions of the emulator.
- In June 2009, TV Effects mode was added, with texture, noise and other options to resemble a classic TV screen. In December 2011, the file configuration mode was renamed to path configuration mode.
- In February 2013, only the default sound HZ control, the output, was left.
- In June 2013, a specific menu for snapshots was created, with several options for the function.
- In July 2014, Direct3D and OpenGLES 1 and 2 renderers were added.
- In July 2017, the project website migrated from SourceForge to Github.
- From 2018 onwards, the emulator once again had several additions in its updates, starting in February 2018, emulating the Atari 7800, the creation of developer mode, with the option of loading ROM and CPU, changing console (between 26k/78k), changing video effects and color, time machine option with changes in frames and others and debug mode.
- In June 2018, releases for MacOS X were replaced by those for MacOS.
- In December 2018, the change was mainly in the field of aesthetics, changing the UI mode to user interface mode, and adding a theme change between classic (the old black and green from 2005), the default (used since 2007) and black and white (called light), in addition to modifications to the appearance of the options menu, changing the ROM selection on the home page from green to red and adding resampling quality to the sound menu.
- In March 2020, the font of the ROM list was changed to bold, and the option to change the TIA (console video) in developer mode was added, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customization of a custom chip.
- In April 2020, the path configuration mode ceased to exist and the ROM path change was moved to the user interface mode.
- In June 2020, the video and audio modes were combined and palette customization was added, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness, saturation, and others, in addition to creating the emulation mode, with the options emulation speed, VSync, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, among others.
- In October 2020, the dark theme (gray and black) was created for the front-end in user interface mode and the option to change the audio device was added.
- In January 2021, the size of the front-end was expanded, leaving an option on the right side to display the snapshot and technical information of the ROM.
- And finally in June 2022, it groups all the old bottom buttons on the front into a single options button in the top left corner, as well as adding the Direct3D11 renderer, among others.
Come and discover Stella's story in video on our YouTube channel.
Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack (Cover and Back Cover)
It was a compilation that began to be developed in June 1994 by Michael Livesay for Activision, to emulate Atari 2600 games. Mike had worked at LTI Gray Matter since its inception in 1992, a division of his gaming company called Livesay Technologies Incorporated, which in turn was created in 1986. Mike had been in the gaming world since 1980, being behind several titles for computers. Later, he also worked with games for consoles. The Action Pack is considered the first functional emulation of a home console. The compilation was released around March 1995 for Windows 3.1. There were two versions of this compilation released for Windows 3.1, then re-released on CD-ROM with improvements for Windows 95, and finally re-released for Windows 3.1, 95 and Macintosh. The third collection was released only for Windows 3.1 and 95. All were released in 1995.
Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack 2 and 3 (Cover and Back Cover)
The collections were divided into fifteen games in the first edition, containing titles such as Boxing, Crackpots, Freeway, Hero, Pitfall and River Raid, fifteen in the second edition, with titles such as Enduro, Keystone, Ice Hockey and River Raid II, and eleven in the third edition, with titles such as Breakout, Combat and Night Driver. The emulator had pause, reset, difficulty change, keyboard and joypad control, PCM and FM sound and volume, and others. Only Packs 1 and 3 provided sound adjustment, with options for disabled, faster and more precise. The emulator also had Mom mode, which simulated the voice of a mother calling her child. Something to prevent the child from playing for so long. You could adjust between rarely (calling every 10 minutes) and constantly (calling every 30 seconds). In addition, it provided a summary of the game, how to play, tips, scores and the history of how each game was created. The emulator was developed with two internal emulators, the 6507 emulator, which is a cheaper version of the 6502 central processor, and a sound emulator based on the TIA sound library. To use the emulator, a computer with a 486 processor was recommended. A Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound card with the latest sound drivers was also recommended.
The Action Pack emulator did not allow the loading of external ROMs, only those that came with the CD. However, third parties created the Action Pack Plugin Hack, which allowed the execution of other ROMs in the emulator. This program was only compatible with the Mac version of the emulator. In 1995, Activision also developed a collection of Commodore 64 games for Windows. In 1996, they re-released all the Atari and Commodore 64 collections on a single CD for Windows. Mike returned to participate in an Atari collection, now not only as the emulator programmer, but also as the project manager, in A Collection of Activision Classic Games for the Atari 2600 (i.e., a collection of classic Activision games for A26), this time released for the PSX in 1998, with thirty games in total. The collection came with an intro showing the games it made available. On the selection screen, there was a very interactive interface, with the games on the right side like a table support for cartridges, the TV on the left side showing demonstrations of the same and on top of the television the console that had the tape modified each time you changed games.
Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack (Options)
Mike's last participation in the company was in the release of A Collection of Classic Games From The Intellivision for PSX in September 1999, where he also worked on the development of its emulator. At the time, the Intellivision Packs released in 1997 by Intellivision Productions had already been successful, so Mike's emulator did not appear in other releases. Activision released another Atari 2600 collection, Activision Anthology, in November 2002 for PS2, but without Mike's presence. This version is similar to the PSX version, but with more things on the table next to the TV and game holders, such as a radio, joystick, Activision magazine with the names of the collection's programmers, canned drinks, dial-up telephone and the video game in front of the TV. Another difference is the 80s pop/rock soundtrack that accompanies the games. All of this tries to immerse you in the console's lifespan.
Outside of the Atari 2600 emulation project, Mike has been in the gaming world since 1980, producing games for PCs and Apple IIs, such as Miner 2049er (1982), Ming' Challenge (1982), The Heist (1983), Miner 2049er II (1984), Bruce Lee (1984), and others. Miner 1 and 2 and The Heist were created by Mike's company, Livesay Computer Games, created in 1982. Around 1986, he created Livesay Technologies Incorporated, bringing games such as Security Alert (1990) for Commodore 64, Sid Meier's Civilization II (1999) and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999) for PSX, among others. In January 1992, a division of the company was created, called LTI Gray Matter, and it was through it that Mike created the Atari 2600 emulator. It was the company that also took care of the collections A Collection of Classic Games for Atari and Intellivision mentioned above, in 98 and 99, and the production of its own games, such as Gex: Enter The Gecko (1999) for PSX, as as well as games with Mike's presence, such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) for PSX, where he worked on production/programming/engineering, and the games Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) and Spider-Man (2000) for PSX, Spider-Man (2002) for PS2, X2: Wolverine's Revenge (2003) for PS2, where Mike participated in programming/engineering, among others. The last game released by the company was Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (2008) for PS3.
Come and discover the history of Action Pack in video on our YouTube channel.
X2600 / Virtual 2600 (1996)
Virtual 2600
It began to exist in early 1996, by Alex Hornby while he was still at the University of Warwick. Alex had the help of Dan Boris to create the project. Dan ended up launching the project first in MS-DOS version under the name Virtual VCS, lasting only 2 months, from June to July 1996. The first release of the X2600, still as a beta, occurred in August 1996 for Linux. At first it was called X2600, changing its name to Virtual 2600 in the second beta, also in August. In December 1996, the TIA sound library was added to the emulator. In February 1997, the Amiga version was released, ported by Matthew Stroup. Its official release, we can say, only occurred in March 1997 for UNIX, with a port to SVGAlib, which made the emulator work on Linux and FreeBSD.
Virtual 2600 ( Okie Dokie)
The MS-DOS version was ported in March 1997 by Dan Boris and also released along with the official version of the emulator on the same date. In April 1997, the version for RiscOS was released by Ian Molton. Versions for MacOS and BeOS were started by Rob and Triquet Benoit respectively, but were never released. Virtual 2600 was born as an open source project. It was a project that was still in the improvement phase. In the March 1998 version, it most likely began to support sound. It required a frame skip every second if it was run with sound, otherwise it could be run without this skip. In April 1998, it released its last version, when it closed the project due to lack of time.
Virtual VCS (1996)
Virtual VCS
It was released in June 1996, with a stable release in July of the same year by Daniel Boris, known only as Dan Boris. It was the first free Atari DOS emulator. The project was a port of Alex Hornby's X2600 emulator, later called Virtual 2600. It was the first emulation project Dan was involved in, and like his source project, it was also open source. The emulator fixed several of its predecessor's problems.
Virtual VCS ( Pitfall)
Interestingly, it ran ROMs that were executed in the Activision Action Pack. Despite its innovations, it was a very slow emulator and had no sound. The emulator was discontinued months later, due to the arrival of better emulators than its own, with its last version being in July 1996, totaling four releases in all. In 2003, it was resurrected by Fabrizio Zavagli, and ported to the GamePark GP32 handheld, as VCS32.
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