I agree with you. I don't begrudge the 2600+ but it's not one for me. It seems to me that compatibility with any cartridge would require a recreation of the ac

I agree with you. I don't begrudge the 2600+ but it's not one for me. It seems to me that compatibility with any cartridge would require a recreation of the actual VCS hardware. That sounds expensive to me and is probably why Atari haven't gone down this route. But as you say, that leads to a half-baked solution. The other option is an emulator that can communicate with the cartridge in real time - but that doesn't exist and I doubt Atari have gone to the trouble of making one (we're all assuming they're using Stella at this point, but I don't think that's been confirmed).