Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYURhEuQX7s
Atari 2600+ Ultimate Test - CRT, 7800 PAL Games, 2 Button Controller, Flashcarts & Lightguns!
Introduction
The 2600+ is a brand new reimagined version of the iconic 1977 games console from Atari. In this review I check out some possibilities that the other reviewers may have missed - like Atari 7800 PAL compatibility, hooking it up to a CRT monitor, flash carts, the 7800 2 button controller - and perhaps the most important question of all - will it work with a lightgun!?
Script
Please Note: This is an automatic transcription of an unscripted video.
It probably goes without saying that I have far too much Atari stuff. I mean - this is just a representation of my own personal 2600 and 7800 collections. …and that’s an obsession that started way back in 1989 when I was 5 years old.
It was Christmas day, we were at my uncle’s house and my cousin had just received his very own brand new Atari 2600jr console for Christmas. And yes, of course, I had to pick one of those up at some point as well! I vividly remember playing two games on it, which were Keystone Kapers and Frogger, which I think were the only two games he actually had for it.
We ended up spending the entire day in his bedroom well away from the adults, which I’m sure they very much appreciated. That whole event set me up for a lifelong love and appreciation for all things Atari - of course, the company that basically single-handedly invented the entire video games industry. So I was very interested earlier this year to hear that the company currently calling itself Atari - or at least the people that own the rights to the name, the logo and the entire back catalogue - were going to be releasing a reimagined, new and improved version of essentially that console for the 21st century, which they’re calling the Atari 2600+.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, the embargo date was apparently lifted for reviews and it popped up all over the internet on various YouTube channels, social media influencers’ pages and gaming news websites all at once. Unfortunately I wasn’t on the list for one of those review units in the lovely big shiny white box with all of the accessories and stuff, but I really, really wanted to get my hands on one of these anyway. So I took matters into my own hands and I ordered one.
So this is the Atari 2600+ in its retail packaging. As you can see, it’s still sealed in the original cellophane - I haven’t even opened it yet! I also ordered the paddle controllers with the 4-games-in-1 cartridge and the CX40+ reproduction joystick so I could put those through their paces and compare them to the original hardware.
So what I want to do is to try to cover some of the questions that have come up since those initial reviews and some stuff that was perhaps overlooked by people who maybe don’t have the history that I have with Atari, and perhaps aren’t quite as familiar with the history of the console. Things like: does it work with flash carts? Can it be connected to a CRT TV somehow?
And if so, how about using it with an original lightgun? I also think that the most important thing to me is the compatibility with the 7800 console, particularly the PAL version that we got here in Europe. So I’d like to test that out as thoroughly as I can and do the original 7800 controllers work with it and indeed maybe some of the other controllers that I have in my collection.
So this is my review of the Atari 2600+ and I think we’ll start, as is traditional, with the unboxing.
[Music]
So here it is, the Atari 2600+ in its lovely retail box as you might buy it from a shop here in the UK or indeed probably anywhere in the world. I can’t imagine they’ve done different retail packaging for different parts of the world.
So let’s get into this.
[Music]
So just taking a look at the outside of the box, I think it’s actually very reminiscent of Atari box designs of the past without actually being a direct copy of any kind of those specific era which is really nice. It kind of has its own identity and as a big Atari fan I think definitely points there for the design and the branding of the box and I’ve just noticed this this logo is actually embossed, it has a gloss finish to it which is really nice as well as the cartridge here and the console and the joystick.
So really cool, it’s actually quite a sort of premium feeling almost and you can also see here that there’s a 10 games in one cartridge included which of course we’ll get into a little bit later on. And on the back of the box we’ve just got the details of some of the games that are included and a list of the accessories of course as you might expect and yeah actually yeah really liking this so far. I would be very happy to find this under my Christmas tree on Christmas morning.
So one thing that I will mention is that and this is something that I’m going to touch on a few times in this review because it is very important. The console doesn’t actually have any games included like built in. So you need the original cartridges obviously it comes with the 10 games in one cartridge.
Atari are also selling all other cartridges for it and I’m sure that range will be expanding into the future. All of the sort of historic cartridges with a few exceptions which yet again I will go into a bit later on do work with it and yeah so there’s certainly plenty of choice you can still pick up loose cartridges relatively cheap. So yeah wow so the premium feel continues inside.
I’ve genuinely never unboxed one of these before and I haven’t watched any other reviews. Oh look there’s me you can see my reflection. So yeah this is really nice.
Premium I guess you could use that as a dust cover if you like and of course we’ve got the console itself. I’ll just pop that out of the way and I think maybe we’ll start with the console just because it’s predominantly the primary thing here on the top. Let’s just pop this box to one side.
So this is the Atari 2600+ console in all its glory and let’s have a look why we’re here and why we have one to hand just how this compares to the real thing. So earlier on the table I had a heavy sixer which was the original 1977 version of the 2600. This is this is a light sixer which is a slightly later model but probably closer to the one that this was modeled on.
Now as you can see this only has the four switches whereas this has six and that is actually historically accurate there were also four switch models. I don’t actually own one it’s one of the few Atari things that I don’t have in my collection but the switches absolutely look spot on and they feel they do feel very authentic actually I’m very very impressed with the build quality of this and it’s got all the the lines in the right places and the the wood grain of course the shade is as you can you probably see on the camera there that the shade is ever so slightly different but there were different production runs of these that were made in different factories over the years so even the originals do have some natural variation to them so I think we can let we can let Atari off for that.
Another thing that I have seen mentioned in some reviews is that the text on here is all written in capitals whereas on the earlier 2600 consoles it’s all lowercase but the four switches that is actually historically accurate to the four switch version of these consoles they did actually have the text in capitals so that’s all good another thing we can let them off for.
So on the back we have a selection of ports in fact let’s compare the two side by side and again we’ve got the we’ve got the connection connectors on the top half of the case here whereas on the bottom half of the six switch now again this is actually historically accurate to the four switch consoles they actually had the joystick ports and things in the top half of the case and I really wish I had one to show you but there you go. Incidentally this one’s been modded and I’ve actually added a other side I’ve actually added a s-video connector and a composite video and audio output on this but we’re not talking about this console today we’re talking about this one. So this has as we can see we have a 16:9 4:3 switch on it which just switches between widescreen let’s get this out of the way now we’re done with that.
So the switch 16:9 4:3 switch just switches between the two different TV standards of course we’ve got widescreen and the old 4:3 TV standard we’ve got the joystick ports we’ve got difficulty a and b which of course is another thing that’s accurate to the original consoles and some games do use these difficulty switches sometimes for difficulty and sometimes to switch other things like game modes and things. We have the of course the HDMI in the middle I’ve got a bit of fluff on there we’ve got the HDMI in the middle which is of course plugged straight into a modern TV and carries the video and the audio so that’s really really convenient compared to an original console where you know nowadays you’d need something like a retro tink or an LSSC to connect that to a modern display. And finally we have the power port and I am told of course as you can see this is USB-C and I am told that Atari do plan to release firmware updates for this so any sort of compatibility issues with games and things can be addressed by updating the firmware.
I also know that this has some onboard memory and it wouldn’t surprise me at all, onboard storage I should say, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if hackers got into this and made their own custom firmwares and made it so you could actually install games and things on here and again I probably wouldn’t I wouldn’t be surprised to see this thing running doom before too long so you know that does seem to be the standard benchmark for these consoles but really, really lovely really authentic looking even underneath with these rubber feet and stuff let me just grab the old original again.
So we’ve got the original sticker on there and the rubber feet so evidently whoever’s designed this has put a lot of love and care into it and use the original as a reference and it’s just a really lovely thing to hold it’s a really really impressed with this you know, I was worried when it was announced that this was going to be cheap and plasticky and a bit half baked but even as a shelf ornament it is a it is a lovely thing so any extra functionality I guess is a nice bonus to have. Of course this being an unboxing we have to go through the rest of the contents of the box so let’s see what we have in here there’s a quick start guide which is on a nice nice glossy piece of card there it’s just got the box contents it’s got a QR code there which takes you to Atari’s website and presumably some instructions so that’s only one-sided but it shows you very clearly what goes into what port so we’ve got the display there the joystick the power which is really nice - of course not everyone is as tech savvy as we are perhaps the viewers of this channel and I’m guessing this is probably the joystick oh it’s got the cartridge in it as well so this is the 10 games in one cartridge that’s advertised on the outside of the box we’ve got some really nice classic games on here: Adventure, Combat, Haunted house - great game - Missile Command…
A bit of an odd selection… Video Pinball that’s a surprisingly good game as well and Yars’ Revenge which of course is a classic on the console. A bit of an odd selection of games but one thing I really love about this and this is something that other reviewers have kind of complained about but I love it is the original dip switches so back in the day they used to be able to get multi-carts that had dip switches like this and basically you’ve got a big memory chip in here and depending which combination the the switches are in different parts of that memory chip are visible to the console and are loaded by the console and because this thing is the way the slot slot works is so authentic to the original - the original consoles - of course the the cartridge has to work in the same way. That said there is a caveat when it comes to flash carts modern flash carts which don’t work with this I know I already know that for a fact but I’ll talk about that a little bit later when we get to that section.
But that’s the 10 games in one cartridge that’s included with the console so you’ve got everything here that you need to get started you don’t need to buy any additional games if you’re thinking of buying this as a gift or whatever and then we go through how does this open up uh-huh looks like a joystick connector so here we go look at that oh dear that takes me back well say takes me back I play with these things most weeks so takes me back to last week maybe I just very carefully reassemble this because they have done a done a lovely job of designing this it’s really nice so that’s the joystick that is a copy of the original CX40 joystick of course that Atari have been shipping uh since I was gonna say since the beginning but actually there’s a there was a slightly different version called the CX10 but let’s let’s not get into that this isn’t a lesson in Atari history.
But that’s the joystick - the CX40+ and I guess in here we must have the rest of the cables oh yes so we just got a uh bog standard HDMI cable there that doesn’t look very long so we’ll have a look and that is oh that’s USB so that’s a standard uh USB A to USB C cable what you don’t get is the the part that plugs into the wall which I guess part of the reason for that is obviously so they can ship the same version of the console all over the world but I think Atari have also actually put out a statement saying that it’s to reduce e-waste and because everyone’s got god knows how many devices that come with USB chargers already I don’t know if that’s a bit of a cop out but I certainly have a fair few of them so that’s not an issue for me. I’ve also heard that you can plug this into a modern TV which I don’t have here - I’m going to be trying it with a computer monitor.
But if you have a TV with a USB port on it you can actually plug this you can plug the HDMI into the video and you can plug the USB into into the USB port on the TV and it will actually be enough to power the console which is really cool so it’s kind of all sort of self-contained so this is the four games in one cartridge with the reproduction paddle controllers we’ll see how these feel compared to the original paddles very shortly and there’s a great selection of games on this cartridge actually: so we’ve got breakout we’ve got canyon bomber we’ve got night driver and we’ve got video olympics would have been nice to have seen warlords on there because that’s a really good paddle game of up to four players on that game as well but hey we’ll have to see if the original cartridge works in this console because perhaps that could be an option, but this is the box for the 4-games-in-1 cartridge, so let’s get that open and see what’s in there.
So we’ve got the cartridge on the top and a very very similar packaging I actually really like this packaging it’s quite nice it’s like a like a deck of cards it feels like but exactly the same concept as the 10 games in one cartridge which of course we’ve already seen that comes included with the console so you don’t need to buy this to be able to play games it’s only if you want the paddles and the paddle games that go with it so a nice little optional extra there and we’ve also got in the box here oh these are lovely oh wow oh wow so these are reproductions of the original paddles and I do actually have a set of paddles down here so let’s actually let’s compare these and see how they look so these are the original paddles as shipped in 1970 uh 1979 there was a different version that had like a car graphic on it that was like a driving controller but they’re identical it’s just a different sticker and this is the modern reproduction and they are these feel a little bit looser but maybe it’s just because they’re old and well worn but they’re basically identical they certainly look identical whether they work identically I should hope that these would work better because the old ones the potentiometers in them get really dirty over time and you have to sort of strip them down and clean them out with contact cleaner and stuff otherwise they’re they’re really sort of jumpy and finicky.
These the buttons you know, more points to Atari - they they look absolutely spot on so really good and finally we have the extra joystick just like the paddle games and the four-in-one cartridge this is an optional extra this doesn’t come with the console although there is one joystick included in the box of course to get you going but if you want to play with two players you’re going to have to buy one of these separately and again the branding it’s it’s Atari-esque without being a direct copy of any particular era of Atari so again I’m really impressed with this i think they’ve done a lovely job of the uh the design on it and we’ll just pop the box open I’m not expecting there to be much in here other than a joystick but it’s quite uh there we go it’s quite nicely packaged and it’s an Atari joystick they’re selling this as the CX40+ of course the original joystick was the CX40 although like I mentioned earlier there was an earlier model and this is it which is the CX10 and this uses a slightly different type of switch internally so it’s actually louder and has a different feel to it these later ones are quieter and a bit stiffer and we’ll see how that compares to the CX40 because i have a have a bit of a selection as you probably noticed in my intro!
So we’ll open this one up i think this is an earlier one and yes I think I’m gonna have to be careful not to get these two mixed up because they’ve done such a great job of replicating that original joystick obviously the bottom is slightly different but it’s very close this has got the modern fcc markings and stuff on it but the Atari CX40+ joystick really impressed with that really impressed with the packaging of all of this it’s presented very well so I guess we’ll have to see whether the uh the console itself lives up to expectations so here is the 2600+ hooked up for the very first time ready for its first test i’ve got it plugged into a computer monitor here which of course doesn’t have its own built-in speakers so i’ve also had to connect that to this bluetooth speaker which is just over a three and a half mil cable as standard so we can actually hear some sound out of this thing and that is one thing to bear in mind potentially it should I mean this should work perfectly fine with most normal TV’s and most people’s setups but there is no separate audio output from this no toslink or three and a half mil or whatever so you need to make sure that your setup can handle audio over HDMI but that’s that’s going to cover 99% of normal people I would have thought people using TV’s and speaking of the HDMI cable one thing that really made me smile when I was plugging this in I wasn’t expecting was the uh the Atari logos that are actually molded into the plugs not just the joystick plugs as you might expect but the HDMI and the power plug as well the USB-C power plug that comes with it.
They could have used very cheap off the shelf cables but they actually went down the route of getting their own molded and uh that’s really cool it’s a really nice little touch but anyway this uh it’s all set up and ready to go it’s got the uh 10 games in one cartridge in there which comes included with the console in the box and that is set to boot up to Video Pinball which is one of my favorite games on this console so let’s get it fired up for the very first time obviously the first thing you notice is that that light up Atari logo the original consoles didn’t do that but that’s a really nice touch I really like that and it does look really good of course you’ve got the Atari logo flushed up on screen there and it takes a few seconds to load the game I believe that was a lot quicker than i was expecting actually based on some of the reviews and there it is Video Pinball now as you can see that’s stretched out to fill the entire screen if that’s what you want the original aspect ratio would have been four by three obviously on an old old style square TV and the great thing about this is that we can actually switch it and we don’t need to reboot it or anything like that and it’ll instantly switch back into that mode and that’s going to be my preferred way of playing this just because I don’t like the original picture to be stretched.
Some people do - that’s up to you - but it’s nice to have that as a switchable option so this is a question that i’ve seen come up online so i thought i’d check and that is the resolution that this runs at and as you can see that’s 1280 by 720 which is a 720p signal which is not what most people would describe as full hd which would obviously be 1080p and of course we’ve got 4k nowadays as well although I didn’t expect this thing to be 4k so the rumors are true and it does actually only output a 720p signal now of course we’re dealing with 1970s and early 80s graphics technology here so it doesn’t really take away from that but just again, something to bear in mind and perhaps I was expecting a native 1080p signal from this thing but I’m going to play some games now and of course if I discover any compatibility issues or anything that doesn’t work I will let you know of course I had to test frogger like I mentioned earlier in the video this is one of the first games I ever played maybe even the first and the cool thing about this is that I happen to own both the US NTSC release and the UK PAL release so I can actually have a look at how the emulator on board the 2600+ actually handles the difference between the two versions.
Now of course region locking wasn’t a thing back in the late 70s early 80s when this game was new but of course PAL and NTSC both have their own quirks and standards for example PAL runs a bit slower it’s 50Hz versus NTSC 60Hz and of course the color palettes are slightly different as well we can actually which you can actually see here so it’s really cool to see that the emulation actually handles the two different releases properly and to my eyes at least this doesn’t look like for example a PAL game running on an NTSC system because the colors for example would be completely messed up so uh cool to see that it’s actually handling that properly and there’s another cool thing I discovered when I was testing this which is that you can actually hot swap the cartridges obviously with the original console you had to switch it off to uh swap the cartridges overall it would just crash horrifically but with this it actually detects that you’ve removed the cartridge and swapped it for a different one and it will actually restart the emulator and reload the new game that you’ve put in which is really cool and it seems I haven’t timed it but it seems that that actually saves some loading time as well so if you’re having a longer gaming session with the 2600+ and you want to check out a few different games all you need to do is just swap the cartridge and you don’t need to reboot the console every time which is perhaps quite useful to know So, here’s an interesting one. This is Star Raiders, of course, quite a popular game on the 2600, and this is the US NTSC release, which I don’t think will make much difference considering what I’m about to say. This game famously came with a second controller called the Video Touchpad, which plugs into the right-hand controller port.
And I had heard some rumors that it wasn’t compatible with the 2600+, so I decided to try it out. And yeah, absolutely, it does absolutely nothing, which pretty much makes the game completely unplayable. So if this is one of your favourites and one that you’ve been looking forward to checking out again and revisiting on the 2600+, that’s definitely something to bear in mind.
Again, hopefully something that can be fixed in a future firmware update, but as it stands with the 2600+, with the launch firmware, the second controller doesn’t work at all. So, buyer beware. So, this is the Atari 7800 console, which was released in 1986, and I think it’s a real underrated gem in Atari history and has some really interesting and unique games, as well as some really excellent quality arcade conversions.
And it’s probably one of the lesser-known consoles in Atari’s history. And the 2600+, of course, famously advertises compatibility with the 7800, which itself was backwards compatible with the 2600 games. Now, the 7800 famously came with a two-button controller.
In America, that was in the form of a joystick, and here in Europe we got a control pad, which was, I guess, designed to compete with the likes of Nintendo. And one thing that I wanted to test out was whether the two-button controller is actually compatible with the 2600+. Not all of the games on the 7800 take advantage of the two buttons, but there are quite a few that do, so I wanted to test those.
And of course, the joysticks that are available for the 2600+, are based on the old CX40, which is a one-button joystick. So, the games that do require two buttons won’t be playable with that joystick, so I think it’s quite important to test whether this pad works with the 2600+. So, I’m going to go through my selection of PAL 7800 games here and see how well they work.
And unfortunately, we’ve fallen at the very first hurdle here with Ace of Aces, which is not only a great game that I was really looking forward to testing out, but also makes great use of the two buttons on that two-button controller, so it would have been a really good test. And it’s also on Atari’s official compatibility list as working, so it’s really interesting to see that the PAL release, which is the UK and European release that I have here, doesn’t work on the 2600+, and that’s quite disappointing. Thankfully, I have had a lot more luck with Alien Brigade, which is one of the best games on the 7800, in my personal opinion, and I believe it’s also a platform exclusive, so the only place you can actually play this game.
And I’m very pleased to report that the game runs absolutely fantastically well. It’s a little bit slower to load than the 2600 games, obviously these are a bit bigger, so I guess that’s understandable. But still, it’s not completely intolerable.
And also, the really great news from this test is that the two-button pad works absolutely fine with the 2600+, so it’s really good to confirm that. Obviously, in this game there’s one button to fire the machine gun, and the other button launches grenades, and yeah, all working perfectly well. So really, really pleased with that.
Of course, this is one of the few games on the system that also supports the lightgun. Now, obviously I can’t test the lightgun with this monitor, because these only work with old CRTs, but I may have a solution for that, so stick around and maybe we’ll have a play with that a bit later on in the video. But for now, I’m going to carry on and I’m going to test the rest of these games.
Ballblazer, another great game on the 7800, and it’s one of the enhanced cartridges that has a pokey sound chip inside, so I was very keen to test this one out, and I’m very pleased to report that the sound does work, it works perfectly fine. But as you can see, the graphics are a completely different story. It’s flashing like mad and all the screens just screwed up and corrupted.
I have tried cleaning the edge connector on this cartridge with some contact cleaner, and it’s not made any difference whatsoever, so I’m not sure if it’s the cartridge. I’ll test it in my physical console, and of course I’ll put the results of that up on screen in the edit. But for now, I think this one’s going to have to go in the non-working pile.
So some very promising results there from my 7800 compatibility testing. We have a bit of a hall of fame here. These are all UK PAL releases that all work perfectly fine on the 2600+, no issues at all with those all very playable, which is fantastic to see.
Nice to see that the majority of my games do work with it with no problems at all, so that’s great. But perhaps more importantly, we have a list of games that I couldn’t get working. Now what I will say is that obviously these cartridges are quite old now.
Some of these are on the officially supported compatibility list, so they should work, although I think Atari only tested with NTSC games, so this isn’t necessarily definitive. But all of these games have been confirmed to be working at some point or other by me. I do test them when I buy them, but I have had a lot of them for quite a few years now, and of course these cartridges are all very old.
But I still think that’s a worthwhile result, because of course people will be using original cartridges with this console, that’s the whole point of it. And the cartridges are old now, and they do have issues, so just something important to bear in mind. And one thing that I thought was really good was actually seeing that two-button controller in action with the 2600+.
It’s fantastic to see that that’s fully supported and working great. But some of these games require the use of a light gun and don’t actually support the controller at all. And that really got me thinking.
And of course the modern lightgun solutions like the Sinden and stuff like that, I don’t think work with this, I don’t think Atari have worked with them to make it compatible. Maybe there’s a way to do it, I’m not really sure, I don’t own one, so I’d be interested in people’s thoughts on that down in the comments. But what I do own is the original Atari XE lightgun here, which does work with the 7800 console.
And that really got me thinking. And of course this isn’t going to work, this is a very stupid idea, but you have to try these things and somebody’s bound to ask the question at some point or other. So let’s get this thing hooked up to a CRT.
Well sadly it seems my 20-inch PVM has bitten the dust, it’s only displaying in black and white. It has always been very temperamental. I picked it up from a guy who told me that it was a bit on the dodgy side and it’s something that’s kind of rid its head a few times over the years.
Potential future repair video for the channel there, maybe, so every cloud and all that. But thankfully I also have this, which is my 9-inch JVC, which I covered in wood grain vinyl at some point. And yeah, it actually matches the 2600+ really nicely, so we shall continue using this CRT monitor.
And I’ve got this connected to the 2600+ using a very inexpensive Amazon HDMI to composite video adapter and I will link to that down in the description. I’ll make that an affiliate link, it’ll make me a few pennies if you buy one, you know, it won’t cost you any extra, but every little helps and all that. And I thought a good way to test this and to test the lag specifically would be to play some paddle games.
Of course I haven’t tested the paddle games that Atari are also selling, so two birds with one stone there. And if there are any serious lag issues at all with this setup then they will become immediately obvious. Obviously I’m not expecting it to be perfect, but is it playable and what do the paddles feel like compared to the originals?
So yeah, let’s play some Breakout!
[Beeping]
So that’s actually very playable and the paddle controllers feel absolutely spot on, so that’s really really cool. Definitely a setup I can recommend if you want to have a play with it just for a bit of fun.
So there’s another potential option. But of course with a CRT we also have the option of using lightguns. Now this isn’t going to work, I keep telling myself it’s not going to work and it’s going to be an absolute miracle if it does.
But let’s try it, we’ve got all the bits here so let’s try some of those 7800 lightgun games. Why not? [Music] So in a result that should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody at all, no you cannot use an original Atari light gun with the 2600+ using an HDMI to composite adapter.
It was never going to work. But hey, you’ve got to have a bit of fun sometimes and you’ve got to try these things, so why not? And I have to say my final sort of thoughts on this after testing it for two solid days now are, I love it, it’s great, it’s such a fun thing, it’s so well put together, it’s not perfect, you know, they could have used FPGA or they could have used a more powerful SoC, they could have added CRT shader effects and stuff like that.
Of course all of those things would have driven up the price, it only outputs in 720p, personally I don’t think that’s an issue at all with the kind of games that you’re going to be playing on this. And the compatibility with the range of Atari games, certainly the ones that I’ve tested with it, is generally very good, it’s not 100%, but hopefully that is something that’s going to be fixed in future firmware updates. Now one thing that does bear reiterating with this is that it is designed to work with original cartridges and indeed there aren’t any built-in games at all.
If you want something like that then you’re better off, and these are both very old models that I’ve had for quite a while now, but they are still making these as far as I know, I’m not quite sure what number they’re up to. These are the Atari Flashback consoles and of course they have games built in and they’re a menu system and some of them even take SD cards so you can load your own games on there as well. So that’s a better option if you don’t have the original cartridges or obviously you’re not looking to pick any up.
But yeah, for what it is, for what it’s designed to do, it looks great, it’s really well put together, it’s really authentic to the original design, it’s very cute and I think the price point is absolutely spot on for what it is and what it does and hopefully in the future obviously there will be more updates that unlock some more functionality and things. I did try the 2600+ with the Harmony Flashcart earlier for the Atari 2600 and perhaps to be expected due to the way that this thing loads the contents of the cartridge into RAM before running it, that didn’t work, obviously it doesn’t work in quite the same way as the original consoles. I think if you’re gonna go down the multi-game route then it’s gonna have to be the old dip switches like the cartridges that Atari have released and hopefully they’ll be releasing some more collections like that at some point in the near future that you can enjoy on this console.
But yeah, as it stands I love it, I can recommend it, obviously I’m a huge Atari fan although not necessarily a fan of the modern Atari but it’s nice to see them actually making some moves in the right direction for once. It is a toy, it’s not a serious gaming device, obviously there are FPGA things out there and you’ve got your Raspberry Pi’s running RetroArch and all of that kind of stuff and of course they are all options for playing the games on this but it’s a lot of fun and I like it, I like it and hopefully this review has helped to answer some of the questions that perhaps didn’t come up in some of those other reviews that are already out there. So that’s all I have on this for now, obviously you’ve seen the selection of games that I have in my collection, there’s a few that I haven’t shown as well so if there’s something specific that you want me to test it with please do let me know down in the comments, I’ll probably have a look for you if I can, I’ll try to test as many of those but obviously I couldn’t do them all in one video because it would be 10 hours long and I’d never finish it.
So thank you ever so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the review, don’t forget to do the old like and subscribe stuff as always and big thanks as always to my channel supporters, my patreons, my coffee supporters and my youtube channel members who help to fund stuff like this studio and buying silly things like this to review on the channel. So thank you ever so much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you again next time.
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