The History of Atari 2600 Emulators - Part 1

Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack (1995)

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.

Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack 1 and 3 (Game Selection Menus)

Hero and Pressure Cooker

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. 

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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.