I would love nothing more than to play Defender or Yar's Revenge, but I can't bring myself to execute arbitrary binaries downloaded off the internet. Any safe place where one can download or buy roms? If whoever owns Atari now were smart, they'd sell them through a legitimate online marketplace so we could safely run them on very nice 2600 emulators like this one.

EDIT: Found an answer, waking up half my family in the process (Yar's revenge is not a low-volume game). Atari does, in fact, both sell and offer some of their old 2600 games for free: http://atari.com/arcade/arcade/yars-revenge

So, uh, you're afraid that someone has introduced malware in Atari 2600 machine code, that can break out of any arbitrary emulator and do Real Damage to a hosting system, and hidden that in what appear to be vintage game ROMs on the Internet?

That would be quite the malware, indeed.

Use a virtual machine.

That's true, I run XP on virtualbox (linux host) almost every day, and could just make a throw-away copy with no network access. I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that.

Thanks!

Console emulators are virtual machines. I'm not sure what the GP is concerned about.

Virtual machines can be insecure if they contain bugs. When it comes to providing a secure execution environment, I trust Virtualbox more than I trust any JVM, most of which I trust more than I trust any console emulator.

The Java Virtual Machine is a virtual machine.

So you feel comfortable executing arbitrary Java off the web?

Awesome interface! You have to find your own ROM files to play, but its easy... Just drag and drop ROM links from websites directly over the screen and BAM!

Such a nice project, but both the name and logo infringe on Atari trademarks. Why risk it?

Thanks - been many years since playing the 2600 and brings back memories!

Playing space invaders at the office with friends right now

Wow that IS vintage :-)))

COMBAT!!