October 2005
Beginner
501 pages
15h 5m
English
Content preview from Retro Gaming HacksBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Emulate the Atari 2600
Bring Stella back to life using only your computer.
It’s no stretch to imagine that the very reason you bought this book was to read this very hack. Even those of us who were born after the Atari 2600 (or Video Computer System, if you’re a purist) know what it is and what it signified for the video game industry. (And if you don’t, you can go read up on its history [Hack #3] .)
In addition to buying a classic system and games, there are many other ways you can get your old-school Atari fix these days. You can buy an all-in-one device that plugs into your TV [Hack #15] or buy a collection of classic games for your PlayStation 2 or Xbox hardware [Hack #16] .
And you can also use programs called emulators that run the classic games on your home PC. Even better, these programs let you run homebrew software that today’s programmers have developed for the old hardware, sometimes squeezing out unbelievable results!
Atari 2600 Emulators
In this hack, I’ll walk you through installing two of the more popular Atari 2600 emulators, then get you started on finding some freely distributed games to use with them.
Stella.
Named after the original code name for the VCS project (which itself was named after Atari engineer Joe DeCuir’s bicycle), Stella is one of the oldest 2600 emulators. It was originally programmed for Linux [Hack #43] , but has since been ported to many different operating systems. For purposes of this hack, I’ll discuss the Windows version. You can get it ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.