Stella

The Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS), introduced in 1977, was the most popular home video game system of the early 1980's. Now you can enjoy all of your favorite Atari 2600 games on your PC thanks to Stella!

Stella is a multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Stella was originally developed for Linux by Bradford W. Mott, and is currently maintained by Stephen Anthony. Since its original release several people have joined the development team to port Stella to other operating systems such as AcornOS, AmigaOS, DOS, FreeBSD, IRIX, Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Unix, and Windows. The development team is working hard to perfect the emulator and we hope you enjoy our effort.

On this site you'll find information about downloading, installing, using, and enhancing Stella. You'll also find useful information about the Atari 2600, emulation and homebrew development.

What's New

• Enhanced ROM launcher to allow multiple images per ROM.
• Made heaps of additional images available for the ROM launcher.
• Added searching by filename for ROM launcher images.
• Added option to start random ROM.
• Added automatically enabled phosphor modes.
• Enhanced Game Properties dialog for multigame ROMs.
• Added 2nd UI theme and hotkey for toggling UI theme.
• Added bezel support (incl. Sinden Lightgun).
• Added optional type format detection based on colors used.
• Added Joy2B+ controller support.
• Added auto detection for QuadTari attached controllers.
• Enhanced Kid Vid support to play tape audio.
• Added port selection, used for controller default mapping.
• Added missing PlusROM support for E7 bankswitching.
• Enhanced movie cart (MVC) support.
• Accelerated emulation up to ~15% (ARM).
• Added limited GameLine Master Module bankswitching support.
• Added 03E0 bankswitching for Brazilian Parker Bros ROMs.
• Added WF8 bankswitching used by some certain Coleco white carts.
• Added JANE bankswitching used by Coleco's Tarzan prototype.
• Added ELF mapper for Mattress Monkeys.
• Added BUS bankswitching support for some older demos.
• Fixed broken 7800 pause key support.
• Added developer option for random hotspot peek values.
• Added user defined CPU cycle timers to debugger.
• Removed 'launcherroms' option, since it was causing some issues.
• Codebase now uses C++20 features, which means a minimum of gcc-11 or clang-10 for Linux/Mac, and Visual Studio 2022 for Windows.

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