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Atari - 2600 (Stella 2023)

Background

A port of Stella 6.6, the Atari 2600 VCS emulator, kept at its 2023 state. It has the high accuracy and wide compatibility of modern Stella; the up-to-date Stella core follows current Stella and has more controller types and core options.

The Stella 2023 core has been authored by

  • Stephen Anthony
  • Bradford Mott
  • Eckhard Stolberg
  • Brian Watson

The Stella 2023 core is licensed under

A summary of the licenses behind RetroArch and its cores can be found here.

Extensions

Content that can be loaded by the Stella 2023 core have the following file extensions:

  • .a26
  • .bin

RetroArch database(s) that are associated with the Stella 2023 core:

Features

Frontend-level settings or features that the Stella 2023 core respects.

Feature Supported
Restart ✔
Screenshots ✔
Saves ✕
States ✔
Rewind ✔
Netplay ✔
Core Options ✔
Memory Monitoring (achievements) ✔
RetroArch Cheats ✕
Native Cheats ✕
Controls ✔
Remapping ✔
Multi-Mouse ✕
Rumble ✕
Sensors ✕
Camera ✕
Location ✕
Subsystem ✕
Softpatching ✕
Disk Control ✕
Username ✕
Language ✕
Crop Overscan ✕
LEDs ✕

Core options

The Stella 2023 core has the following option(s) that can be tweaked from the core options menu. The default setting is bolded.

  • Console display [stella_console] (auto|ntsc|pal|secam|ntsc50|pal60|secam60)
  • Palette colors [stella_palette] (standard|z26|user|custom)
  • TV effects [stella_filter] (OFF|composite|s-video|rgb|badly adjusted)
  • Crop horizontal overscan [stella_crop_hoverscan] (OFF|ON)
  • Crop vertical overscan [stella_crop_voverscan] (0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24)
  • NTSC aspect % [stella_ntsc_aspect] (par|100|101|102|103|104|105|106|107|108|109|110|111|112|113|114|115|116|117|118|119|120|121|122|123|124|125|75|76|77|78|79|80|81|82|83|84|85|86|87|88|89|90|91|92|93|94|95|96|97|98|99)
  • PAL aspect % [stella_pal_aspect] (par|100|101|102|103|104|105|106|107|108|109|110|111|112|113|114|115|116|117|118|119|120|121|122|123|124|125|75|76|77|78|79|80|81|82|83|84|85|86|87|88|89|90|91|92|93|94|95|96|97|98|99)
  • Stereo sound [stella_stereo] (auto|off|on)
  • Phosphor mode [stella_phosphor] (auto|off|on)
  • Phosphor blend % [stella_phosphor_blend] (60|65|70|75|80|85|90|95|100|0|5|10|15|20|25|30|35|40|45|50|55)
  • Paddle mouse sensitivity [stella_paddle_mouse_sensitivity] (20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|32|33|34|35|36|37|38|39|40|41|42|43|44|45|46|47|48|49|50|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19)
  • Paddle joypad sensitivity [stella_paddle_joypad_sensitivity] (3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|1|2)
  • Paddle analog sensitivity [stella_paddle_analog_sensitivity] (20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19)
  • Paddle analog deadzone [stella_paddle_analog_deadzone] (15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14)
  • Paddle analog absolute [stella_paddle_analog_absolute] (OFF|ON)
  • Lightgun crosshair [stella_lightgun_crosshair] (OFF|ON)

Controllers

Each port is Automatic - the controller the game needs is picked from Stella's ROM database - or None.

Joypad

RetroPad Inputs Stella 2023
Up
Down
Left
Right
Fire
Select
Reset
Trigger
Booster
Left Difficulty A
Left Difficulty B
Right Difficulty A
Right Difficulty B
Color
Black/White

Other Atari 2600 cores