The History of Atari 5200 Emulators - Part 1

Atari800 (1995)

Atari800

The first emulator for Atari 5200 was created by David Firth in 1995 to mainly emulate the Atari 800 computer. Its first release took place in June 1995 for UNIX (also running on Linux and other systems). In version 0.4.5 of July 1996, it began to support the Atari 800XL, 130XE computers and the 5200 console. In the next version in September 1996, it also began to release the emulator for Amiga and MS-DOS. It operated in two ways, either by command line, or by X-Windows, an interface system that created windows in UNIX systems for running the emulator. David had already created a compiler for the Atari800 in 1985/86, and even a game had been released for it, called Enigmatix, by Page 6, but despite the existence of a modern PC emulator, called PC Xformer, he wanted his own emulator based on its compilation and that would run on a system that was easily portable to others, which was UNIX.

Atari800 (Moon Patrol/Options)

In April 1997, version 0.8.0 was released, where it began using the Pokey Sound emulator by the famous sound emulator creator, Ron Fries, bringing a substantial improvement to the emulator's sound. After this version, there was no update for a long time. Third parties, upon seeing this hiatus, began to update each version of the emulator on their own, thanks to the project being open source. These programmers were Stephen Firth, with the Amiga version, Rich Lawrence, with the X-Windows version, Perry McFarlane with the MS-DOS version. In June 1997, David returned with another version, taking another hiatus without updates, and returning in January 1998 with another version. In this version, he added support for the Atari Falcon thanks to the Czech Petr Stehlik, Joy. From this version forward, the emulator was simultaneously released for UNIX, X-Windows, MS-DOS, Atari Falcon and Amiga. In February 1998, David released his last two versions of the emulator, for a total of 45 releases in all, and ended the project.

Atari800

That same month, Stephen, Rich and Perry, creators of the ports for Amiga, X-Windows and MS-DOS, joined forces with Thomas Richter, Radek Sterba, Robert Golias and Petr Stehlik (the latter leading the project and responsible for the Atari Falcon version) to create the Atari800 Development Team, developing the project from then on. Before it was formed, David Firth was contacted by the group and approved the continuation of his project. In July 1998, it also began to run on Atari ST and Atari TT PCs. Its Windows version was released in November 2001, also known as DirectX. This version also began to support WinCE (Power PC) systems by Vasyl Tsvirkunov and SDL by Jacek Poplawski.

Atari800 (Options/Bruce Lee)

Other ports appeared, such as for BeOS in December 2004, for Dreamcast in April 2006, Java in March 2009, Android in April 2011, Raspberry PI in April 2014 by Andrey Dj and libatari800 in December 2019 by Rob McMullen, in addition to unofficial ports, such as Android, Windows, MacOS, PSP, PS2, Nintendo Wii, GP32, GP2X, GP2X Wiz and others. In March 2009, the Windows-SDL version began to be released, replacing the Windows-DirectX version in March 2013. The emulator was updated until May 2022. A total of 64 versions were released between 1998 and 2023. The emulator was also part of the OpenEmu multi-emulator for MacOS from 2015 onwards. The group currently consists of Petr and Perry, alongside Piotr Fusik and Tomasz Krasuski. Its latest version is released in December 2023.

Virtual Super System (1996)

Virtual Super System

VSS, or Virtual Super System, was released in September 1996 by Dan Boris for MS-DOS, who later created the first emulator for the Atari 7800. One of its main supporters was Ron Fries, creator of the sound emulator used in the program, TIA Sound. At first, VSS supported a few games. Over time, the list of supported titles grew. By April 1998, it supported 85% of them, followed by 90% in February 2002, and 95% in April 2004.

Virtual Super System (Dig Dug)

The VSS runs the following titles almost perfectly: Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, K-razy Shoot Out, Frogger, Frogger II, Jungle Hunt, Astrochase, Berzerk, Blue Print, Centipede, Defender, Gorf, Gremlins, Kaboom, Missile Command, Pengo, Space Dungeon, Super Breakout and Bounty Bob. The only games that did not run on the emulator were Mr Do's Castle, Decathalon, Pole Position and Real Sports Soccer. The emulator ran on a 486 with 2MB of RAM, but ran without crashing on a 133MhZ processor and a PCI video card. The emulator used the famous Allegro library as the basis for building its system, a library created in 1990 for creating games, similar to the also famous SDL created in 1998.

Regal Beagle 2000

Brazilian Atari 5200 Frontend

The emulator works on a command line basis, ie, MS-DOS style commands, without a GUI/front-end to facilitate access. In view of this, around 1999, Todd Lawrence created the Regal Beagle 2000, which created an interface for the VSS, as well as for the V7800 of the Atari 7800, also created by Dan Boris, in a Windows version. The Brazilian Atari 5200 Frontend was also released in 2001 for the emulator. The emulator was updated between 1996 and 1998, taking a hiatus for a while and returning in 2001, and then taking another three years on hiatus and having its last release in April 2004.