Stella

Video games have come a long way over the decades, and there are some cases where the border between virtual and real is pretty foggy. It took a lot of work and ambition to get here, although many take it for granted nowadays. Triple-A productions cost millions of dollars to develop, hundreds of people to write the code, write the scenario, create the soundtrack, and finally bug test them in every possible way.

Stella is an emulator that allows you to play Atari 2600 games on your computer and experience a time when 3D was not even a term associated with the subject of video games. Sure, it may be more suitable for people who actually owned a VCS back in the day, but even younger folks can learn a lot from the games that came out before they were born. In short, this is the tool that can run basically anything that was ever released on the console in question.

To begin with, it must be mentioned that you obviously cannot use the old magnetic tapes in order to play the games. As a matter of fact, the application requires ROMs to function, which are basically digital files containing the information found on the tapes mentioned earlier. You can easily set up a special folder to keep the ROMs, as well as direct Stella to it and not have to worry about opening every individual file manually.

After the ROMs are organized and ready to be played, you might want to visit the Options panel and see whether everything is to your liking. The application holds a massive array of settings to play with, including video, audio and input settings. As such, you can pick the desired rendering device, tweak the audio sampling rate, or customize the controller options. Both PAL and NTSC modes are included, as well as the possibility to play the games in fullscreen with VSync activated.

One of the most impressive features that comes with Stella is the option to add TV effects over the image, in order to make the experience feel a lot more like it did back in the day. There are a couple of preset modes you can switch between, as well as a custom mode that allows you to manually input everything. Thus, there are sliders that enable you to change the brightness, sharpness, fringing and bleeding.

All these being said, it’s hardly a tough task to recommend Stella as one of the most complete emulators out there. It may only work with a very narrow range of consoles and games, but as long as you know exactly what you are after, this is the way to go.