Atari 2600 emulator for 360?

[johnon]

So, I haven't been here long, and I'm still learning Assembly Language, but I was thinking...there is already a working NES emulator available through XNA. There are working emulators for Atari 2600 on all sorts of home computer systems, and Stella has even recently been ported to the DS.

 

What if a group of us got together and created a portable Atari 2600 emulator for the 360 using XNA so that, if people wanted, and they had the required memberships (damn you, Microsoft!), they could easily package up any Atari 2600 game into the emulator and deploy it to the 360?

 

Not only could this be a way to play Atari 2600 games on yet another system, but for current Atari 2600 homebrew developers, the Indie Channel on Xbox Live could be another simple way to distribute their games, if they so wanted. Also, through XNA, it could easily be deployed for PC, as well, which is always a good thing if you just need an emulator wrapper for convenience.

 

If there's been talk of this before, forgive me for not looking hard enough. I'm just curious as to whether it has crossed anyone's mind before and if it would be inherently possible. I know I'd be pretty stoked if I had the option to put my game out for a low price on the Indie Channel.

[dooglehead]

I agree...

except I would like it to work on the zune HD too. I do not own a 360, but I do know some XNA and I created some simple zune HD apps. I know absolutely nothing about translating atari 2600 roms and I do not know a lot of XNA. If I knew how to, I would make it compatible with zune/xbox/pc and possibly windows phone 7.

[johnon]

I agree...

except I would like it to work on the zune HD too. I do not own a 360, but I do know some XNA and I created some simple zune HD apps. I know absolutely nothing about translating atari 2600 roms and I do not know a lot of XNA. If I knew how to, I would make it compatible with zune/xbox/pc and possibly windows phone 7.

Yeah, through XNA, it would be easy to simply add control schemes for Zune, PC and 360 and then just press deploy, allowing the same code to work on all 3 systems with the same relative performance (or at least that's how MS claims it works. It tends to work that way with PC/360, but I don't own a Zune). Given that it'd be an Atari emulator, I can't see performance being an issue, though.

 

I just think it would be a neat idea, as I don't know any Atari emulators for 360, much less any completed emulators done in C# that we could modify for XNA. I also just think it would be cool to see some Atari games hit the Indie Channel, lol.

Edited April 6, 2010 by johnon

[etschuetz]

You said Stella on the DS. are you talking about the dead project from about 2 or 3 years ago? If so, it isn't a bad emulator, but definitely not a good one. Would love to see it picked up by a new developer and optimized with better ROM name handling and a GUI or interface that works of some sort. Be honest, I am still waiting for a good 2600 emulator for the Android platform. Would love to kick it with Atari on my Droid.

[dooglehead]

I think someone made a 7800 emulator in c#. I would assume that it is compatible with 2600 games.

[+stephena]

You said Stella on the DS. are you talking about the dead project from about 2 or 3 years ago? If so, it isn't a bad emulator, but definitely not a good one. Would love to see it picked up by a new developer and optimized with better ROM name handling and a GUI or interface that works of some sort. Be honest, I am still waiting for a good 2600 emulator for the Android platform. Would love to kick it with Atari on my Droid.

I'm still waiting on a decent Android system to buy. Maybe if that ever happens, I'll take a stab at creating an Android port myself. As it's based on Linux, and Linux is my main development system for Stella, it seems it would be a good fit.