Virtual SuperSystem
An Atari 5200 Emulator

Virtual Super System (VSS) is an Atari 5200 Super System emulator for MS-DOS.  VSS can also be run as a DOS application from within Windows 95.  VSS needs a 486 or greater processor with 2 Meg of memory and a standard VGA card to run.  The emulator is still a little slow, so the faster the processor the better.  On a Pentium 166Mhz machine with a PCI video card, it should run at normal speed with sound and no frame skipping.

     
Screen captures of VSS emulating Choplifter!, Q*Bert, RealSports Tennis, and Super Cobra
Click on images to enlarge

VSS was written using DJGPP a free 32bit C/C++ development system.  VSS uses Allegro, an excellent game programming library for DJGPP by Shawn Hargreaves.  POKEY sound emulation was done with POKEY sound V1.2 by Ron Fries.

The following games run almost perfectly:

VSS works with Sound Blaster and compatible cards. Be sure to have you BLASTER environment variable set (see your sound card manual for more info). VSS should automatically detect your sound card, if it doesn't it will disable sound emulation.

NOTE: VSS is a DOS program that has a series of command line options, which can be confusing.  It can, however, be run from within Windows 95 with no problems.

Todd Lawrence has written an outstanding Win 95/98 front-end utility called Regal-Beagle.  It can be found here.

Virtual Super System
Go to the VSS homepage

This emulator can be downloaded directly from it's homepage.

NOTE: In order to run this emulator, you must have the emulator itself, and a copy of the ROM's from the original system.  The emulator itself is Freeware.  The ROM's are copyrighted by the programmer or the manufacturer. You are only legally entitled to do so if you own the actual game, or a PCB/ROM Cartridge from the game that you are emulating. If you decide to download ROM's to test out an emulator, you must delete the ROM's within 24 hours unless you own the equipment mentioned above.

ROM's may be found at many sites, including EMUCLASSICS.