October 29, 2008by Chris

Stella is the best emulator for the Atari 2600. It is available for Windows, the Mac, and Linux.

Also noteworthy is the z26 Emulator for Windows and Linux.

Roms can legally be obtained from Atariage.com.

The widely admired Atari 2600 was released in October 1977, ran strong for 12 years, and is still produced today. Of Atari's initial entries into the growing video game industry, this console was revolutionary: a solid state system that easily connected to a television, accepted two joysticks, four paddles (Warlords anyone?) and featured multi-optioned gaming from a stack of cartridges that would reach to the moon.

The device was an intriguing novelty. To many people, the Atari 2600 was the introduction of next-generation video games or even video games in general - people were mesmerized when exploring the castles and dungeons in Adventure, when bouncing bullets through the blocks in Combat, or when guiding Pitfall Harry through the jungles and over the crocodiles.

Certainly, modern systems are exponentially more powerful (ie XBOX 360 is 5000 times faster), however, one of the fastest games ever was written for the Atari 2600 - Kaboom by Activision. This game got your blood pumping and it was unreal watching a skilled player whip through the higher levels making nanosecond decisions.

This was the machine that jump started the video game industry and remains near and dear to many of us.

CS 10-8