Atari 2600 Emulator - Stella

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

Stella is an OpenSource emulator whose builds are available for 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 build is in the Mandriva PLF repository, but even if there is no package for your distribution, there is nothing complicated in the build from the sources.

The main window of the emulator in combination is a window for selecting rum. Unfortunately, the interface is not standard, like most GTK applications. He borrowed from another great project - ScummVM. Google says that there is a frontend for KDE - Kstella , but I have not watched and tested it.

The user has a lot of settings. For some reason, Stella with the OpenGL renderer did not want to work for me (in other applications / emulators / games, everything is fine), saying ERROR: Unable to open SDL window: I could not experience the video effects, I would like to. Okay, let's be content with Software, it will be even closer to the original.

With the setting of the gamepad, I did not find any problems, it wasn’t even necessary. All 4 directions and the whole one button worked by default. Unless you can bind Start and Reset to any gamepad buttons.

In the rest of the settings, nothing particularly interesting.
If we want to play fullscreen, but press Alt + Enter during the game, but do not forget to go back, otherwise the unpleasant resolution of 640x480 awaits us after closing the toy.
Although the console is already more than 30 years old, the emulator is still being developed (the last commit in SVN is 3 days ago).
The emulator supports zazipovanye roms, but at 7z swears, which is pretty annoying, because all the Roma on Good2600 are clamped in 7z.

Below are a few toys that I could remember:
Pac-man
The debut of the good old pakmena on home consoles. Not the best port from the Arcade machines, but it is clear that this is the best that could be squeezed out of Atari.

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

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

Keystone kapers
We run a cop on some supermarket, jump over obstacles, ride the elevator and the 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 met such people. This is hide and seek. You can play together. One squeezes his eyes (both in the real and in the virtual world), while the other is looking for a place to hide. You can even leave the house.

Galaxian
The sequel to Space Invaders and the prequel to everyone known by NES Galaga. We defend ourselves from the enemies flying from above - the spacecraft. Yes, and what to explain, they themselves have seen 100 times.

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

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And there was also a lot of letalok on planes, board games, logical, arkanoid, even a simulator of a fireman, a medic, a rocketman, a builder, three piglets, etc. All these beautiful games will not fit in this article, and I don’t know their names in English and never knew, because I played on a Chinese clone with erased copyrights. All this you can download in the Good2600 compilation, the benefit of a whole romset from 2687 games weighs only 3.4 mb.