Stella is Carbonized for Mac OS X.įor the best ROM compatibility, it is recommended that you also download the latest Stella Profile. It requires a PowerPC processor with a fair amount of horsepower, but the quality of emulation is superb. Stella is a public-domain Atari 2600 emulator which seems to run almost every Atari 2600 cart I've tried on it. However, the Atari programmers employed many devious tricks to get such an early machine to run therefore, a working, efficient emulator is very difficult to write. One would think that the weak Atari 2600 should be simple to emulate, because of its primitive architecture. Years later, Atari's stranglehold on the market would dissipate as the Nintendo Entertainment System redefined 8-bit gaming, but die-hard fans and collectors still continue to support the Atari. For many years, the Atari 2600 reigned supreme as the most popular game console on the market.