# PC Atari Emulator

> PC Atari Emulator (PCAE) is an early Atari 2600 emulator for Windows, known for its fast hand-written assembly core. It has not been developed since 2002.

Web page: https://emulationking.com/atari/2600/emulator/pcatariemulator/
Page updated: 2026-09-26

- Developer: John Dullea
- Supported systems: Atari 2600
- Runs on: Windows

PC Atari Emulator (PCAE) is an Atari 2600 emulator for Windows, developed by John Dullea. It is now outdated, but in its day it was highly regarded for being fast and easy to use.

Its speed came from an emulation engine written almost entirely in hand-optimised assembly code, tuned for the Pentium processors of the time.

This tied the emulator to a single operating system, but gave it a significant speed advantage.

PCAE also offered full collision checking, support for the cartridge bank-switching schemes of the time, emulation of the Atari's wide range of controllers and a built-in debugger.

These features set it apart from other early Atari 2600 emulators.

Development of PCAE ended in 2002. For a modern, actively developed Atari 2600 emulator, use Stella.

## Latest builds

Download these from the web page: https://emulationking.com/atari/2600/emulator/pcatariemulator/#download

- for Windows: 2.6