Atari 2600

Pengo on Virtual 2600 on the AcornThe Atari 2600 is a very old little console from years ago, based on the 6507 CPU. It has rather poor graphics (by even late 80s standards) but has a myriad of games available for it. The 2600 only had 128 bytes of memory, and relied on plotting direct to a TV rather than to screen memory like most modern consoles.

One major bonus of the Atari2600, is that since the system is so old, and its capabilities were quite low, there are a vast number of very playable games, taking up practically no disk space, that can be downloaded from the web (often in batches), to all extents and purposes, legally!

David McEwen has ported the multiplatform Atari 2600 emulator Stella (named after the graphics chip in the Atari 2600 IIRC). This initial release is still under development, since there is no frontend, sound and a multitasking mode will hopefully follow soon. It runs on a StrongARM at over 60fps. The emulator is originally written by Bradford Mott in 100% C++ and versions have been made for Unix, Windows, DOS and Mac as well as finally the Acorn.

One of the nice features is that VCS files are setup to configure each game so that you can tweak individual settings to be optimised for each game. The current version will only run in 320x256 mode, with no room for alteration, but David is working on updating it soon, and if other platforms versions are anything to go by, this will soon overtake v2600 as the best Atari 2600 emulator on the Acorn.

Ian Molton has done a port of the multi-platform Atari 2600 emulator, Virtual2600 by Alex Hornby to the Acorn. Since the 2600 works is such unconventional ways, for example plotting direct to the screen, it's emulation is quite complex and often rather slow. Since the emulator is also written in pure C, rather than assembly (lucky, since otherwise a port would be impossible) it requires a StrongARM to run at full speed of about 50 FPS. Also the emulator will only run on a RISC PC, since it is coded to take advantage of a redefinable 256 colour palette and would slow down even more on anything else. Unfortunately the CPU core is not easily optimisable with ARM code, since it was not designed to be 'plug-in-able'. The emulator now has control, with keyboard and mouse, perfect palette, and sound, as well as a multi or single tasking option.

The top screenshot, is of Pengo on the Virtual2600 on an Acorn. The lower screenshot is of a the game Atlantis (that was the filename at least) running on v2600 on a RISC PC 600 at quite a respectable speed for a desktop program.

v2600 Speed Rating: ARM2 - Fails, ARM250 - Fails, ARM3 - Fails, ARM610 - Very Slow, ARM710 - Slow, StrongARM - Nearly Perfect
Stella Speed Rating: ARM2 - Fails, ARM250 - Fails, ARM3 - Fails, ARM610 - Very Slow, ARM710 - Slow, StrongARM - Perfect

Emulators:
Acorn Virtual2600 homepage
Ian Molton's (porter) homepage
Virtual2600 main project page

Stella v0.01 (151Kb Zip file)
Official Stella Homepage

Software:
Atari 2600 nostalgia page
Dave's Classics 2600 ROMS
ROM reviews - which of the several hundred are worth playing.


The Acorn Emulation Page by David Sharp