The History of Atari 2600 Emulators - Part 3

PC Atari Emulator (PCAE) (1996)

PC Atari Emulator (MS-DOS)

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.