Play Old Atari 2600 Games Free In Windows
Written by Alan Wednesday, 17 November 2010 08:00
If you have fond memories of the good ol’ days of your youth with the old ATari 2600 and games like Asteroids, Centipede, and Donkey Kong then I have good news for you.
Meet Stella. Stella is a free, open-source emulator that runs on your Windows PC and allows to install all of those great old games, which are called ROM’s in the computer world. The best part is that it’s easy to set up and not only is Stella free, but so are the ROM’s. So this is a quick, easy, and economical project.
1. Go to the Stella website and download and install the latest stable release. As of this writing that version 3.3 which is available in both 32 and 64-bit versions and is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and 7.
2. Once installed, click Start and open Stella. On first run it will ask you to point to the location of your ROM’s. If you haven’t created a location then you can do so before clicking OK or Cancel.
3. You can put your ROM’s wherever you want, but I simply click Start => Computer => C: and created a new folder called ROMs.
4. Now, back at the Stella screen, click OK and then browse to the folder ROMs and click Choose.
5. Of course your folder is probably empty so now you need to add some games to it. There are a few good sites for that. I would start with AtariAge. You can look for others if you’d like.
6. Once you have added some games go back to Stella and, in your ROMs folder, you will see your game(s) listed.
7. Double-click the ROM you wish to select. Some games then require a “reset” which is the F2 button. The fire button is usually either the left control button or the space bar.
It’s pretty quick and simple to get up and running. Now you can begin collecting games and reliving your youth.
