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Atari Launches Atari 2600+
- h2odragon 3y ago> Plays both Atari 2600 and 7800 game cartridges and they include one "10 in 1" cart already. Expect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes, assuming theres not already some direct facility for it to have an SD card or something. I suspect there's few people who own many original Atari 2600 or 7800 carts that really want to use them like this: surely that'll degrade their antique value? Its like "dont play with the beanie babies"... And emulation will be available with all sorts of extra features as well as fewer drawbacks.
- ramesh31 3y ago>Expect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes, assuming theres not already some direct facility for it to have an SD card or something. Well sure... but that defeats the entire purpose. Of course you could just run an emulator and not even need the hardware. The point is that people enjoy collecting old cartridges. Hence why used N64s now sell for $200.
- lexlash 3y agoIt is an emulator though :/ the specs say it’s a Rockchip with 256MB of RAM, not an FPGA. It’s also not 100% compatible with all cartridges.
- ramesh31 3y ago>It is an emulator though :/ Well that sucks. Honestly I'd be more surprised if it wasn't, given Atari's zombie status as an IP holding company.
- fleeno 3y agoIf it's really compatible with 2600 carts, SD card carts already exist and work great! Personally I've found 2600 carts to be pretty durable. Almost all of the carts I bought new still work, and I still use them frequently!
- BryanLegend 3y ago[flagged]
- lexlash 3y agoThey have a list published; it’s compatible with some, but not all, cartridges. It’s a Rockchip-based system, not an FPGA like Analogue’s stuff; my guess is this will work like the Hyperkin RetroN. Those systems dump the ROM off of the cartridge and then start an emulator it, which doesn’t work with SD card carts - the emulated ROM loads but can’t find the SD card because the emulator doesn’t actually talk to the cartridge hardware directly.
- plasticbugs 3y agoYep, there is a flash cartridge called the Harmony Cartridge. It’s great for playing Atari home brew games which in many cases are better than anything available on the original VCS. Pac-man 4k is a great example. https://harmony.atariage.com/Site/Harmony.html https://harmony.atariage.com/Site/Harmony.html
- dfxm12 3y agoExpect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes I get why a curious engineer would do this, but there are already so many devices we have laying around that can already hook into the TV and play atari (and other) games... I suspect there's few people who own many original Atari 2600 or 7800 carts that really want to use them like this: surely that'll degrade their antique value? History shows that if this takes off, it'll increase demand for carts and raise prices. Of course, prices on these carts aren't that high to begin with. There's a ton of them laying around, so the supply might be able to absorb the demand... True collectors pieces might be something CIB, and yeah, you wouldn't want to crack those open, but even some games like Galaga are only going for $20 CIB...
- HeckFeck 3y agoI was hoping they'd went the FPGA route, but this looks like another emulator in a box.
- tecleandor 3y agoYep, hardware says: Featuring a Rockchip 3128 SOC microprocessor with 256MB DDR3 RAM and 256MB eMMC fixed internal storage. Wired CX40+ Joystick with serial port connector. So probably Linux plus emulators. Hope they respect licenses. Thing is Atari has been through several bankrupcies and name changes, and I think currently they are just expliting IP and licenses, including failed business like hotels, NFT tokens based games... so I'm not expecting anything great.
- donatj 3y agoThe name has been owned and used by what had previously been Infogrames since 2003, twenty years ago. They’re legit, still pump out mainstream games and aren’t fly by night at all.
- tecleandor 3y agoThey release games but they've been for a while in the market of buying/selling IP too much, and has done weird things like Atari Token and Atari Casino. In fact, their investor site describes them as: Atari’s core businesses include video games, consumer hardware, licensing and blockchain. So I try to review slowly whatever thing they release before hyping too much.
- ilaksh 3y agoI feel like that CPU is way overkill for emulating 2600/7800 games. They might be starting from one of those "5,000 games" things and just deleting 8 of the emulators and all of the games and then adding in something to read the ROMs off the cartridges. Probably based on some existing modules that people have been using for years to burn them.
- 3y ago
- dangle1 3y ago"The system comes with a CX40+ Joystick which has been lovingly recreated to the same specifications as the original" I don't think the person that wrote this ad copy was alive when the original, fragile-as-glass 2600 joysticks were in circulation, or maybe they were and were able to slip this joke into the product description unnoticed.
- postmodest 3y agoWhen they say "lovingly recreated", the "love" is for money, not hardware.
- ttonkytonk 3y agoThey weren't that fragile, but did tend to wear out after maybe a couple of months of heavy use.
- prmoustache 3y ago> to wear out after maybe a couple of months That is my definition of fragile.
- raldi 3y agoFragile’s not really the right word. They often were flaky about reporting input, but were quite hardy when the player responded by smacking them against the floor in an effort to revive them.
- orev 3y agoMaybe they fixed it in later versions, but the controllers had plastic “fingers” inside that would press down on the metal dome button, and it was pretty easy to push the stick too hard where it would snap the plastic finger. I think that’s what most people remember about their fragility. I could also see that the electrical signal from the metal dome button probably wasn’t very clean/reliable, however I don’t think most people noticed that in the same way they would today.
- hank808 3y ago
- hackernoteng 3y agoNostalgic for older genXers such as myself who grew up with these things. Hard to imagine younger generations having patience or interest in such primitive games though. Needs to be played in basement on CRT TV with wood paneled walls though.
- hackernoteng 3y agoAlso need a mom in the background shouting that we should go play outside...
- etrautmann 3y agoI recently played a bunch of these classic games with my 7 and 10 year old nieces and they loved them. There’s something magnetic about the challenge and simplicity that seems timeless IMO
- xwkd 3y agoNeeds to be played on a CRT in general. For retro games, you can't beat the low latency and fantastic glow of an electron gun. No shader emulation comes close.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago...I find this hard to believe. A modern high-quality 4K HDR screen is exceedingly good at recreating all sorts of lifelike imagery. You're telling me the one thing it can't effectively recreate is a CRT television? Input lag is probably the biggest issue, but you can get very low-latency screens nowadays! None of them are actually 0ms, but neither were CRTs unless you're measuring only the top of the screen and not the bottom.
- Luc 3y agoIs Atari still the old Infogrames? Or did the brand change hands again?
- homarp 3y agoseems like it according to wikidia https://atari-investisseurs.fr/en/about-atari/ https://atari-investisseurs.fr/en/about-atari/ is less clear though
- lordfrito 3y agoHard to say. Atari has been cannibalized so many times it's hard to recognize what's what anymore. Much of the IP was parted out and sold off. As far as the company proper goes, the original Atari Inc from 1972 was broken up by Warner into two parts in 1984. The consumer division became Atari Corp, while the coin op division became Atari Games. Atari Games was partially owned by Warner/Namco for a while, then JTS, Hasbro, was at Midway Games for a while, but now is back at Time Warner / Warner Bros. Games. Atari Corp ended up at Infrogrames (IESA) in 2001ish. They bough up all public shares and took the company private in 2008. They then renamed IESA to Atari SA to better represent the brand. So IESA doesn't really exist anymore. It's all Atari SA now. Good news is that since 2020/2021 Atari SA seems pretty focused on restoring the brand. For a long time they didn't release hardware and simply regurgitated/licensed old titles. But recently they've released new hardware/software again. Their focus seems to be around being a "retro gaming" company, old style gameplay on newer hardware. For example, there's this [1] and this [2] Personally I'm excited that there seems to be an attempt to make Atari a "product company" again. They seem the most focused they've been since Jaguar. Who knows if it will pay off, but at least they're swinging. [1] https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump [2] https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump-2600 https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump-2600
- Luc 3y agoThanks, that's very helpful!
- baz00 3y ago1. Hey it looks like you're in the UK - click here to set the shipping options 2. Click 3. This product is only available for shipping in the United States. Why bother with (1)?!?!?!?!
- donatj 3y agoI’d imagine the option was a function of the larger store which has things actually for sale in the UK.
- fleeno 3y agoI wonder if that "10 in 1" cart will run on a real 2600?
- appstorelottery 3y agoIs that real wood on the front?
- prmoustache 3y agoAren't people interested with that kind of retro console really more interested in scoring an Sony Trinitron and the original console in the second hand market instead? I don't see the newer generation getting suddenly attracted by the primitive graphics. Only the nostalgic, hardcore retro gamers do really care about that. And these are the kind of people who want the exact real experience, which mean using a CRT TV/monitor and the real machine. Only concession they sometimes do is using a cartdridge with sdcard support. And it is not like those old Ataris are rare and difficult to find which would justify the existence of alternatives. I see a few ones available for around ~50€ in the local market, less than half the price of that thing.
- vikingerik 3y agoSome are, some aren't. I happily got the NES and SNES retro consoles when they came out and I play them on a modern TV or monitor. I don't care about the CRT scanlines and artifacting. (I do care about a CRT's lagless instant response time, which is an issue for some games. I do have HDMI monitors with as low lag time as you can get.) The old Atari consoles are common, but it's hit and miss as to whether they work well or at all, particularly the power supply and also the controllers. It's reasonable to spend a few bucks on some modern hardware if you want. I probably wouldn't play Atari games quite enough to justify it myself.
- kevstev 3y agoThis might be very subjective, but NES games were actually enjoyable. 2600 era games, while they were enjoyable for the time, were instantly obsoleted IMHO once the NES came around and you had games with stories, no matter how thin, and endings and such. The whole "high score" era of games, I personally have no interest in going back to those at all. Maybe one or two games of Grand Prix and River Raid, but I know I would get bored really quick.
- erickhill 3y agoI'd recommend some of the 2-player games, like Combat.
- mepian 3y agoI hope they will revive the ST microcomputer family, that's way more interesting to me personally.
- manicennui 3y agoIf they made it easy to write new games for it, with full documentation and a method to get the games on the console, I bet it would really take off with the fantasy console people.
- tehologist 3y agohttps://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=949 https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=949 http://8bitworkshop.com/v3.1.0/?=&platform=vcs&file=examples%2Fhello http://8bitworkshop.com/v3.1.0/?=&platform=vcs&file=examples... https://archive.org/details/StellaProgrammersGuide https://archive.org/details/StellaProgrammersGuide There is also batari basic, not sure how much more accessible or easy they could make it. The first link cartridges should work in 2600+
- Method-X 3y agoYes, I was thinking the same thing. A retro console with an easy way for novices to develop and distribute games. I can see that being a hit.
- cglong 3y agoNever tried it myself, but the Atari Flashback consoles [1] had an SD card slot that you could use to play your own ROMs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback_series
- glonq 3y agoUgh; that original joystick was not comfy to use. If this uses a standard connector I'd try find an old Wico or similar. Website says "joystick with serial port connector". Do they mean the original DE-9 connector, or is this something different?
- anonymousiam 3y agoI purchased the "Atari's Greatest Hits" iOS app for my (previous) iPad over 10 years ago. I also forked out the extra cash for ALL of the games, which included a bunch of 2600 games. The arcade game emulations are great, but the 2600 games are hardly worth playing. They are nostalgic for me because I had purchased a 2600 console as a gift for my sister on Christmas 1977, but the quality is shameful when compared against any computer game released since. It's pretty amazing what they could do with a one megahertz processor, four kilobytes of ROM (in the cartridge), and 128 bytes of RAM. https://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?8 https://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?8
- phone8675309 3y agoAnd no GPU!
- deafpolygon 3y agoI don't think Atari+ is worth 125 dollars, honestly.
- user00012-ab 3y agoand the games aren't worth $30 each either https://atari.com/products/berzerk-enhanced-edition https://atari.com/products/berzerk-enhanced-edition
- omoikane 3y agoMaybe it's worth it for people who still has 2600 carts, but compared to other classic console remakes that all came with more than 10 games, $125 doesn't seem like a great deal. $60 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Classic_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Classic_Edition $80 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_Classic_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_Classic_Edition $80 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis_Mini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis_Mini $100 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic
- gmosx 3y agoIt's a pity it's USA only.
- kramerger 3y agoNostalgic? Sure Do I actually want to play these ten really basic games today? Maybe for five minutes Is it worth $120? Nope
- amanzi 3y agoI wonder what "widescreen mode" means, I couldn't find any description of that on the page? I have a couple of Atari consoles and a bunch of games that I bought on a whim a few years back, but connecting them to my current TV is no longer possible. This would solve that issue with the HDMI connection.
- vunderba 3y agoThe system comes with a CX40+ Joystick which has been lovingly recreated to the same specifications as the original, and a 10-in-1 game cartridge featuring some of Atari’s most famous games: Adventure®, Combat®, Dodge 'Em™, Haunted House®, Maze Craze™, Missile Command®, RealSports® Volleyball, Surround™, Video Pinball™, Yars' Revenge®. What... no E.T.? Off to my local New Mexico landfill I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial
- dusted 3y agoThe fact that there's a cartridge compatibility list indicates that this is not a real machine, but an emulator which does not even do a good job of emulating the cartridge ports. I was so close. This is the same disappointment as the Ultimate64 that has a cartridge port, but one which does not actually simulate it completely. It's a shame, because it'd not have been too difficult to get there.
- musicale 3y ago> It's a shame, because it'd not have been too difficult to get there. Like the Atari FlashBack 2, which reimplemented the original hardware design as an SoC and was designed to be modded with a cartridge port? https://www.wired.com/2005/08/the-best-atari-yet/ https://www.wired.com/2005/08/the-best-atari-yet/