Stella - RetroBIOS¶
| Type | libretro |
| Source | https://github.com/libretro/stella2014-libretro |
| Version | 6.6 |
| Profiled | 2026-03-18 |
| Cores | stella, stella2014, stella2023 |
| Systems | atari-2600 |
No BIOS or firmware files required. This core is self-contained.
Stella is an Atari 2600 (VCS) emulator. The libretro port available is stella2014, which is a fork frozen at the 2014 codebase. The upstream "stella-libretro" repo redirects to stella2014-libretro. There is no separate stella2023 libretro core published at this time.
The Atari 2600 console has no BIOS ROM. Games run directly on the hardware with no boot firmware.
The Starpath/Arcadia Supercharger add-on had a 2K BIOS ROM on the physical hardware. Stella does NOT load this BIOS from an external file. Instead, the core contains a built-in dummy BIOS (ourDummyROMCode, 294 bytes in CartAR.cxx) that simulates the Supercharger load sequence. The initializeROM() function copies this dummy code into the ROM bank (bank 3) at reset, sets up the 6502 reset vector to 0xF80A, and handles multiload via a hotspot at address 0x1850.
The "fastscbios" setting (offset 109 in the dummy ROM) controls whether the SC load progress bars are shown (0x00) or skipped (0xFF). This is toggled automatically during ROM format detection (Console.cxx:119-120).
The real Supercharger BIOS ROM (MD5 4565c1a7abce773e53c75b35414adefd) is recognized in DefProps.hxx as a known cartridge entry but is not required or loaded as a system file.
The libretro interface (retro_set_environment) does not call RETRO_ENVIRONMENT_GET_SYSTEM_DIRECTORY and declares no firmware requirements. No core option references BIOS loading.
Generated on 2026-03-20T19:12:20Z