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Part One: Obtaining the Necessary Files
Part Three: Playing Atari 2600 Games
This quick-start guide will get you up and running in no time flat, playing Atari 2600 games on your Microsoft Windows-based computer by using Jeff Miller's StellaX emulator. If you require more detailed instructions than those that are contained in this guide, then please read Jeff Miller's wonderful StellaX User's Guide (I'll show you how to access the user's guide a bit later on in this document).
To play Atari 2600 games on your PC, you'll need the following files:
You can find StellaX at the following Web site:
http://www.emuunlim.com/stellax/
You can download Atart 2600 game ROMs from this site:
Once you have downloaded StellaX and your game ROMs, use a ZIP archive utility such as WinZip (www.winzip.com) to unpack StellaX to a folder on your hard drive. Place the game .BIN or A26 ROM files in the ROMS folder inside your StellaX folder. Your StellaX folder should look something like the following:
Once you are ready to begin, double-click Stella.exe to start the emulator. Assuming that you have game ROMs in your ROMS folder, you'll see these games in the StellaX interface window.
Please note that you can sort your game ROM files by clicking any column in the main file list. For instance, to sort your game ROMs on the basis of rarity, click the Rarity column heading. This is a very useful feature of StellaX.
Assuming that you've placed your games in the ROMS folder, there is really nothing much else to configure. Just for the sake of conversation, click Options to access the StellaX configuration options dialog box.
Back to the main window, now. To learn the default keyboard command mappings in StellaX, you should browse to page 12 in the StellaX User's Guide. You can read the user's guide by clicking Help in the StellaX interface, and then navigating to the Documentation tab of the Help dialog box. The StellaX User's Guide is in Adobe Acrobat .PDF format, and can be read directly by opening the file Stella.pdf in the DOCS subfolder of your StellaX installation folder.
I've taken the liberty of reproducing some of the graphics depicting the StellaX keyboard controls, from page 12 of the User's Guide. Here they are:
Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to change the default keyboard mappings. Bummer!
Now for the good stuff--playing the games. The easiest way to do this is to double-click the game you want to play in the StellaX games list. Alternatively, you can single-click a game to select it and then click Play. Once you are in the game, press F1 to select a game option and then press F2 to start play. When you are finished with a game, press ESC to return to the StellaX interface window.
That's really all there is to it. I hope that you found this quick-start guide helpful. Happy gaming!
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