Emulators

I was reading Scorp's thread about Star Control, and it reminded me of a game I used to love playing about 15 years ago on a Commodore 64. Off to google, and I find that it is possible to download an Atari version, and also possible to download an emulator to make my PC run Atari games. Does anybody have experience with such things? Any advice or warnings?

Well, it depends on where you live. In the U.S., I believe it's legal to download an emulator, but illegal to download ROMS for that emulator. Some people say that you can download a ROM as long as you own the actual game, but even then only for 24 hours. I've never seen that in writing on any official document, so I can't make a claim to it's accuracy.

-J.

Some ROMS play to fast for current machines because of the difference in CPUs - depends on how the emulator works.

I've seen some that need a program like CPUKILLER to slow the box down enough to be playable. Often a problem with DOS games too. But there's shareware you can get for that, like the above mentioned CPUKILLER.

For 2600 games, I use Stella.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

Runs all the 2600 games I remember perfectly. Can't believe some of those games were only 5-6 kilobytes.

Not so long as no-one tries sharing roms in here.

I'm at work so am now about to go exploring that site here, however when I get home I'm sure this won't be a site with commercial games available for free download will it?

I still have a working Atari 2600.