Running Games in Stella

Unzip a ROM file if neccesary so you are looking at the ".bin". (For better or worse, that is the standard file extension for games ready to run Atari 2600 games.) You could start Stella, navigate to where you saved the .bin, and play it, but I would strongly recommend associating .bin files with Stella so you can double click on them and start playing immediately. To do this, right click on the file, hit "Open With", "Choose Program", hit "Browse" to indicate where you installed Stella (C:\Program Files\Stella ?), double click Stella, make sure "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" is selected, and hit OK. (This was on XP... different versions of Windows may differ slightly.) By default, the arrow keys are mapped to the first player, and ctrl is fire. F1 is "Game Select" and F2 is "Game Reset" -- some games use those physical switches on the console to control the actual starting of a game.

Running batari BASIC

The best place to download batari Basic is bataribasic.com. On the left side should be a link to the download page, and the link is probably the first one listed: "version 1.0 for Windows/DOS" in this case.

This is a zip file you should unzip in a directory. For better or probably worse, things will be much easier if you unzip it to a path that has no spaces in the name. Yes, it's corny, but that's the way it is with some of these tools.

For now I'll unzip it to C:\Atari2600\bB\ (which is the default suggested by the README) but you're free to put it somewhere else ... just make the appropriate changes below (and if you don't think you'll be able to tell what the appropriate changes are, well, keep it in C:\Atari2600\bB\ )

You should get used to using the bad old "DOS command line". To get to it, from the "Run" menu type "cmd". Some people are frightened of this thing, but I swear to you it's pretty simple. (For the people who don't find it comfortable, you can start using the Visual batariBasic IDE, but I'm going to pretend you want to try it using the command line at least once.)

So the "README.txt" in your batari Basic directory lists a few steps to do:

• Using your file system, copy C:\Atari2600\bB\sed\sed.exe into C:\Atari2600\bB\ (i.e. move it up one directory) Read the readme.txt for why you have to do that.
• You need to tell the computer where to look for bB via "environmental variables" (well, the readme.txt lists a few other ways, but I think that this is the easiest.) You need to set the variable "bb" to "C:\Atari2600\bB\" and you add "C:\Atari2600\bB\" to the PATH variable. To do that:
  1. Right click on "My Computer" and hit Properties
  2. Click on the "Advanced" tab on XP, "Advanced system settings" in the sidebar on Vista.
  3. Click on the "Environmental Variables" button.
  4. For "bB", which you probably don't have, under System Variables hit "New" and enter Variable Name "bB" and "C:\Atari2600\bB\" for the Variable value
  5. Under "System Variables" you probably already have a "Path" Variable, so locate it, click it, and hit "Edit". The Path variable is list of directories, separated by the ";" sign, of places the computer will look to run your program... in this case, batariBasic. Add C:\Atari2600\bB\ to the end of the list (being careful not to delete what's there - hit cancel if you make a mistake and try again), preceded by the ; separator symbol.
• Alright, let's try it out and compile one of the batariBasic samples. From the Start button Run menu, type "cmd" to open up the DOS prompt. Type
  cd \Atari2600\bB\samples\
  At the same time, open up the folder c:\Atari2600\bB\samples (you can just enter the path into the run dialog)

  Now in the coomand line type:
  2600bas zombie_chase.bas
  
  (PROTIP: on most versions of Windows these days, "tab completion" is on, meaning if you're feeling lazy just type the first few letters of the directory or file you want and hit tab to have the computer fill in the rest... you may have to press tab a few times if there are multiple files starting with that name)
  In the window for the folder, you should see several files generated. At some point, you might want to read the .bas file for an idea of how batari Basic works... and sometime after that you may even want to peek at the .asm file, the raw assembly code batari Basic produced for DASM to turn into pure Atari goodness. But for now, double click on zombie_chase.bas.bin

  Zombie Chase is a cute little nod to the classic game Death Race, arguably the first controversial video game ever. It makes good use of the "2 sprite" kernel in bB, including one in color, as well as the playfield graphics, and even has 16 position sprite rotation... not bad! Fire starts and then accelerates, and your goal is to turn zombies into greasy spots.