Atari 7800 Emulation

The Atari 7800 emulation scene is still very young. The system was only recently emulated, and the scene remains relatively small. Not all of the ROMs have been correctly emulated yet, but we have included them here in case any programmers want to grab them to try and get them working.We'll stay on top of the situation and post new ROMs and emulator developments as they become available.

If you're new to emulation, we suggest you read the Beginner's Guide to Emulation to give you an idea of what you're looking at.

Computer transformation... Atari 7800




Game ROMs:
ROMs are binary versions of your favorite classic games, they contain the actual code of the original cartridge. In order to enjoy emulation, you will need to download an emulator and the game ROMs that you want to play. 7800 emulation is still being developed however, and some of the ROMs may be only partially functional in an emulator, or completely non-functional. We will always strive to have the latest version of a ROM archived, so that people may download and examine it if need be. If you have a question about a particular ROM, please it in the message board instead of emailing us.

Click here for our extensive searchable ROM archive.


Emulators:

There are two 7800 emulators in active development, M.E.S.S. and EMU7800. At this point, M.E.S.S. is fairly mature and will run most 7800 titles without problems and is the emulator we recommend. You will also need the 7800 OS, which you can download elow.

M.E.S.S. - Multi Emulator Super System. Emulates many systems including the 7800
ProSystem Emulator - A new and promising 7800 emulator for Windows
EMU7800 - An Atari 7800 emulator for Windows using Microsoft's .NET platform
7800 OS (NTSC) - Needed for 7800 Emulation
7800 OS (PAL) - Needed for 7800 Emulation


Emulator Tutorials:

Tim Warner has written several emulator tutorials to help you get started playing games on your home computer, including a tutorial on how to use the popular M.E.S.S. emulator:

M.E.S.S. Emulator Tutorial


Utilities:
Utilites are not a necessity, but can sometimes help an emulator function better, add features, or change the user interface. If all you want to do is play games, you just need to pick an emulator and download ROMs.

Good 7800 - ROM renamer/fixer by Matt Cowering, contains all known 7800 games/hacks/versions


You can help AtariAge:

We're looking for the following ROM files - these ROMs have not been made publicly available and one of our goals is to preserve these games in binary format due to the possibility of bit rot on actual cartridges. If you have any of these ROMs, please contact us so that they may be permanently archived with other 7800 ROMs:

Prototypes:
- Skyfox
- Sirius
- Plutos
- Missing in Action

We have the ability to extract the ROM (or EPROM) from a cartridge, so if you have an actual prototype cartridge we can work with you to preserve the ROM. We can also read EPROM chips that are not sitting in a cartridge or on a board.