Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWAmXlhaFW0
The NEW Atari 7800+ Is Here! Unboxing & First Impressions
Introduction
Last year Atari released the 2600+ console - a revamped, reimagined VCS for the 21st century. Now they’ve done it again with the lesser-known 7800 from 1986 - so let’s see what it’s all about!
Script
Today is a big day for this channel - because today is the day that I have finally become a #influencer! That’s right, after an entire lifetime of loving all things Atari, running this YouTube channel for five years, constantly singing their praises and educating people all about the history of the company and their fantastic computers and consoles, I’m apparently finally on their VIP list and have been sent a brand new thing to unbox for you in this very video!
So yeah, quite the milestone - and as you’ve probably worked out from seeing this thing all over your various social media feeds today, including here on YouTube, today is embargo day - and that means hundreds of grinning, clueless influencers, just like me, unboxing this thing and singing its praises because they want to be sent even more free stuff - so I suppose I better get on with it…
Okay, so joking aside, I appreciate this is something a little bit different for my channel. Atari did send this 7800+ to me for free, and I do get to keep it, and essentially it’s the same hardware internally as the 2600+, which I reviewed on the channel about a year ago now, and I actually paid my own money for that.
I did come across some issues with that, which have since been patched - it has had a few firmware updates since it was first launched, which did address some of those issues. Compatibility issues with PAL versions of games, and particularly 7800 games, interestingly enough - and I have sung the praises of the 2600+ on my channel, of course, plenty of times in the past year. I am a huge fan of that console, as you probably know - so I’m not expecting any surprises with this. They haven’t given me a huge amount of time to time to actually review this properly, as you might expect with a release like this. Of course, I will be having a proper look at it on the channel at some point in the near future so do make sure you are subscribed to the channel but yeah, let’s just have a bit of fun, let’s unbox this and see what actually comes in these VIP press packs and get it all set up and see if it works with my 7800 games, I guess - so, first things first…
Wow, look at this - this is very nice indeed!
It’s certainly well packaged - and just to give you a bit of behind the scenes information - I was contacted by them yesterday, this arrived today and today is the Friday - it’s the 22nd of November, and the embargo date is, of course, Monday - so I’ve got a couple of days to put this video together and not only that, but I’m actually out of the country next week as well so this is going to be a bit of a mad rush on my part. But I couldn’t say no to a 7800+, could I? Especially being such a big fan of the 2600+.
Look at that. Oh my goodness. They’ve done a really nice job on the packaging here - of course, this isn’t the retail packaging, this is the VIP pack - and how do we get into this? Oh, I see, all of the cartridges have fallen out! Okay, that’s a good start…
Let’s put this back together for you, shall we Atari? Oh, I see, so that’s supposed to hold those in there - and the other side’s fallen apart as well!
There we go, Atari. Now if I was a less scrupulous person, I’d glue gun those back on and I’d restart this whole unboxing from scratch, but there you go - so anyway, the important thing of course is the console itself and how well it works, the build quality and all of that kind of stuff - so I did actually do a video all about the Atari 7800 and the story behind it on my channel very recently, it’s a really interesting console, it was actually invented - or developed shall I say - by a third party company, GCC, or General Computer Corporation, under contract to Atari - and then- it all happened at the time that the Tramels were taking over Atari in the early 80s - and then there was this whole weird story about how Jack Tramiel tried to cancel the project, even though they’d manufactured hundreds of thousands of them and then they ended up sitting on them for a couple of years and releasing it to a market that very much moved on, which is why it ended up being a huge flop. But of course, that was the original 7800 and this is the new one, the 7800+ - and my goodness, that is a beautiful thing.
Very, very close to the original - I will compare it to the original console in a moment once we’ve finished unboxing all of this stuff, but yeah, really nice. Just like the 2600+ which came out before it, very nice build quality - it feels very solid, very kind of authentic to the original design.
Nice clicky feedback on those switches as well - so definitely points there for Atari - and underneath here we have - kind of haphazardly stuffed into the box - we have the boxes, which makes sense, you know, I can box all of these up and put them on the shelf - so certainly no bad thing - and we have all of the cables and things.
We’ve got the wireless receivers for these new controllers - and we’ve got the HDMI cable and the USB power cable for the console itself as well - so very, very good. I love these reproduction boxes on these new re-releases as well. They’re very- obviously they’ve got a load of new information and stuff that wasn’t on the originals - but they are very authentic feeling next to the original boxes so we’ll compare those as well a bit later in this video - and we have the pads. The CX78 was the original version of this pad, look at that, it’s got a flashing light on it - so these are actually Bluetooth as well, in fact I’ve heard that you can actually use these with other devices that support Bluetooth controllers, so I’ll have to check that out. It’s got a USB-C charging port on it - really nice, really nice feel in the hand actually. I quite like how solid this is. One thing that really impressed me with the 2600+ when I reviewed that on my channel was just how well built the actual hardware was - in fact, I actually tore that down and kind of showed off the insides as well.
And it looks like they’ve done it again as well - so that is fantastic. Of course, the hardware itself was developed by Plaion - obviously they’ve worked their magic with the 2600+, and done it again with the 7800+. Very, very good. I like that. I like that a lot. That feels nice. I always was a fan of these pads, because they’re kind of a similar size and shape to the original Nintendo controllers, the NES controllers, but the Atari pads have these nice rounded edges on, and they’ve got these nice rounded buttons - and they’ve got this D-pad with the removable joystick as well. I think the- was it the Master System that did that originally, or maybe the what was it called, the predecessor to the Master System?
Anyway so that’s very nice - because of course, as we saw in my previous video about this, the 2600+ also supports all of the 7800 games, but only came with a one button joystick because it was based on the Atari CX-40, and quite a few of the 7800 games actually require a two button controller because that’s what came with the 7800.
Right, let’s get all of this set up anyway!
Right, so that’s the 7800+ all connected up - I’ve given it a very quick test, it’s all ready to go, so that’s all good, and as you can see I’ve also dug out my 2600+ so we can compare the two side by side - and I think the first thing that’s immediately obvious is that the 7800+ is quite a bit smaller than the 2600+ now, I think this was actually designed on the same scale as the 2600+, of course the original 7800 was slightly smaller than the 2600 so it’s all in proportion - and speaking of proportions, I do really like that they maintained the original proportions on both of these consoles, I do think they look absolutely fantastic - they really do look the business and as previously mentioned, the build quality is excellent as well.
Another thing that I really liked with the 2600+ when I first reviewed that - and I will just remind you that I did pay all my own money for that - I bought it because I really wanted one. But one thing that I did really like about the 2600+ when I reviewed that were these matching cables - so these Atari branded cables - the power cable, the HDMI cable, and I’m very pleased to confirm that they’ve done exactly the same thing with the 7800+ as well - so this also comes with those Atari branded cables. Not really important because you’ll probably never see them, but I do think it’s a really nice little touch, really nice attention to detail, so also a big thumbs up for that.
Now, when I was unboxing this thing, I did speculate that the new CX-78+ pads might be Bluetooth - I haven’t actually had any information on these, so I wanted to test that just to confirm either way - and I tried pairing it with my MacBook Air and it didn’t show up in the list of Bluetooth devices so, I think I can pretty conclusively say that they are not Bluetooth - they do come with these dongles. You get a DE-9 dongle to use with the actual console itself - and it’s important to bear in mind that these are compatible with the original hardware as well - so, any Atari consoles or computers that support those DE-9 Atari standard joysticks should work with these.
I will test that in a future video - I don’t really have time to do that in this video, but that is something that I do want to check out - and they also come with the USB dongles, of course, which, as you can see here, I’ve plugged into my laptop, it’s recognized as a as a gamepad and just works perfectly fine so, oh, by the way, the game that I’m playing here is called “Baba Is You” - it’s an indie game that a friend of mine told me about and I’m a bit obsessed with it at the minute, but completely unrelated to this video, but I’ll probably get questions about that - so you know what? I’ll link to that down in the description.
But anyway, we’re not here to talk about my favourite indie game of the moment. We’re here to give our first impressions of the Atari 7800+ - so let’s just take a closer look at how it compares to the 2600+ - so one thing that I really liked about the 2600+ when I reviewed that about a year ago was the feel of the switches and how kind of authentic they were compared to the original console.
Of course, we’ve got the two toggle switches on this side and the two momentary sprung switches on this side - and I actually took these apart in that video and had some trouble getting the springs and things back together for these, but we won’t talk about that - and of course this is based on the four switch Atari 2600 models.
So some of the switches are on the back and that is authentic as per the original consoles - so we’ve got the difficulty switches on the back here and they also added some new ones if I remember rightly. Yes, So we’ve got the two difficulty switches here, and we’ve got the aspect ratio switch here - so you can output in 16 by 9 or 4 by 3, depending on what kind of display you’ve got it connected to, whether you want to use your TV’s built in scaling or whatever.
So, nice to have that option, very thoughtful of them to put that in there - and the 7800, as I say, internally is exactly the same hardware as this, so of course it has all of the same switches, and as per the original 7800, the difficulty switches are on the front here. As far as I know, these are only actually used by Atari 2600 games, and they’re not used by all of the games, but they are quite important for the games that do support them.
In some cases, they are actually used to select different game modes, and even for like controls, like inputs for some, I mean, only a couple of very obscure ones, but still very useful to have those on there - and one thing that I really liked about this was that they’d even replicated the original cable management on the bottom of the actual console.
So if we just get this out of the way for a second because I have an original 7800 to show to you. Now this is one that I modified, this was in that recent video that I mentioned, but it’ll still do for the purposes of comparison - so on the front you can see the controller ports there and the difficulty switches and as you can see, look at that, And that’s pretty authentic, isn’t it?
And we’ve got the cable management on the bottom, like I just mentioned. Now, like I say, this one has been modded, so the ports on the back are slightly different. Although yeah, coincidentally enough, it does have USB C for power, which this new 7800+ also does - so it looks like I beat Atari to the punch with that one.
You know what? Let’s just look at these two side by side. Look at that. I mean, look at that. Of course the new one’s quite a bit smaller as per the 2600+ but yeah, I mean they’ve done a great job of replicating all of the the design features, the nice brushed metal, I mean that, yeah, it’s, it’s very very close.
That’s very impressive - and finally we’ll just finish off on the back of the console. Of course we have the HDMI connector. That’s the only option. There’s no kind of analog video output or anything on this. It’s very much designed to be used with modern displays. That 16x9, 4x3 switch, again as per the 2600+.
And USB C for power - so, yeah, serial number, number 58. There we go. That’s what you get for being an influencer. Now here’s an interesting perspective that you might not get elsewhere because of course I am an Atari collector and that includes 7800 stuff so I thought what I would do is just grab a couple of my original 7800 games off the shelf and see how they compare to these reissues because I haven’t actually gotten around to picking up any of the reissues yet so I was quite interested to see how they differ.
Now a couple of things to point out the cartridges themselves will be identical they’re probably using modern ROM chips inside but I don’t really want to risk breaking these by taking these apart - so I’m not going to compare the internals of the cartridges. The code itself is exactly the same. These work on the original consoles.
The original cartridges work on the new consoles - and there’s absolutely no point comparing the games back to back because they will be identical. But the interesting differences will be in the packaging. The other thing I should probably point out, if it’s not abundantly obvious, is that if you bought these games at retail, of course they would come fully assembled.
They’re just flat packed because they’ve come as part of the VIP pack that I’ve received for this video - so let’s take a look at these and I guess we’ll start with Food Fight - so let’s start with the actual box itself. I’m not going to assemble these boxes, I mean I’m not going to do this immediately, I’ll do it off camera a bit later on when I can take my time over it.
But we’ll just take a look at these - so if we have a look at the printing on this, I will say, I actually think that the the newer version is much nicer quality compared to these original boxes. I do prefer the colours on the new version, and yeah, like I say, I think the actual quality of the printing is quite a bit better, which is quite interesting to see.
They have made a few minor changes, of course there are modern you know, legal things like an age rating that you need to put on there, and all of the kind of legal statements, the CE marks and stuff which they’ve put on the bottom which on the original cartridge would have just been the barcode, so that’s interesting to see.
The actual top of the boxes looks identical to me. You’ve got the name of the game and the actual, let’s see, X number for that - and there’s quite a big difference on the back - so the back of the original box doesn’t really have all that much information. It tells you about you know, difficulty levels, how many players and that kind of thing.
But it’s essentially just a bit of an ad for the game. Whereas these new reissues, and these are all the same across all of these games, have you know, a description of the game in various different languages. They do have the original you know, the same information that the original had. How many players, what controllers you can use with it.
Of course there’s Atari 2600+ compatible to let you know that these don’t just work on the 7800+. I really like this, have you played Atari today? Of course that was their old tagline, their old advertising jingle back in the day - and we’ve got a QR code that takes you to the page for this game on Atari.
com - and some nice updated screenshots as well. I think this is really tastefully done. I think it is very much in keeping with the kind of Atari’s original branding and stuff. Really nice job there - so, the cartridges themselves, as you can see, the new version, which is this one, which is in colour, quite a bit different to the original version, which was printed in black and white.
There is some variation in these different issues and stuff like that, but it’s interesting to see that they’ve gone with the full colour printing on the newer cartridge - and actually, yet again, I prefer the look of the newer one. I think this is really, really nice. It’s a really nice thing - and as for the actual cartridges themselves, kind of the feel in the hand and the weight and stuff like that, they’re pretty much identical.
If I close my eyes, I really can’t tell these two apart. Maybe, maybe the older one is ever so slightly heavier. I don’t have scales here, so I’m not quite sure, but to be honest with you by and large, I don’t know. Pretty much identical as far as the plastics and the the quality and stuff are concerned.
And same again with the manuals as well - so this is the original manual and this is the reissued version. As you can see, the original is basically black and white. It does have some red in it as well, but pretty much a very monochrome affair. It’s quite thin, quite flimsy paper. Mine also came with a German manual as well, as well as the English one.
Which is quite interesting - and this is the reissue - and as you can see full colour print. It’s really nice, shiny you know, I’m not sure the camera’s actually picking up just quite how nice and shiny this is. It’s a really nice finish. Exactly the same information in the manual as the original.
All right, it’s got an updated photo of the joystick, but that’s pretty much the only difference as far as the content’s concerned - and yeah, this lovely, shiny, silver, ink continues throughout the actual inside of the manual as well - so again, I think that’s a win for the reissue. I do really, really like this as a package.
And finally, to top it all off, and again I’m not going to assemble this, but we’ve seen these before with the some of the games that came with the Atari 2600+, just these little cartridge holders - and as far as I know, these are a new invention. I don’t remember Atari You know, old school Atari actually producing anything like this back in the day.
And of course it comes as part of the package. I think, I think if you buy the boxes at retail, then you will get the the big box version - and if you buy the bundled versions that come with the 7800+, then they will come with these smaller kind of more minimalist packaging. That’s certainly how it worked with the 2600+ anyway.
Of course, this being a games console, perhaps the most important aspect of its very existence would be well, its ability to play games - and I did have quite an interesting thought along those lines - so if you’re familiar with the original Atari 7800, you will no doubt know that the PAL version, the European version, had a built in game which was Asteroids.
It actually had a ROM chip on the motherboard, and it would load the game from there. that ROM chip if you started it up without a cartridge in the slot - and I must admit, I was kind of half expecting them to maybe include that as a bit of an Easter egg or something, but sadly not. It does behave in exactly the same way as the 2600+ did.
No real surprise there, it’s running the same hardware and the same software - so, hey, I just thought I’d try that out. As for this annoying, distracting white flashing LED here, Turns out it only actually does that when the controller isn’t connected, so if I just press this button here for a couple of seconds, literally syncs up instantly and that stops flashing, which is great.
And I was also a bit concerned when I saw that they’d used white LEDs on here, that these might be ridiculously bright, but They’re not at all, they’re actually very subdued, which is very good - so I’m not going to do a thorough test of every single game here in this video. This is just a very quick overview and a very quick kind of first impressions and hands on.
I do want to do a much more in depth review of the 7800+ along the lines of that original 2600+ review that I did with the latest firmware and everything else - so I’m going to take a few weeks to put that together and that should hopefully be out before Christmas. But for now, let’s check out the new game that we got as part of this package.
All of these are reissues of older games, like I say - so this is Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest, and you just shove the cartridge into the slot. Like I said before, these are compatible with the original console as well - and the way that this works is quite interesting - so it actually has two components to it internally.
There’s a microcontroller and a bit of memory that actually reads the contents of the cartridge and then the emulator. It’s a software emulator running on an SoC inside these machines. actually then reads that code from that from that memory and loads it into the emulator and runs it from there.
It’s very much a kind of a one way, a one way street between the two - and that’s the reason why flash carts don’t work with the 2600+ and the 7800+. Of course, if you have a flash cart and you just put the one game on it so it starts up instantly, then that will work. But if you’ve got something that’s menu based like the Harmony cart, that doesn’t work with these.
And as far as I know, technically there’s no way that they can be made to work. To modify the firmware. That’s the official line from the people that actually developed this thing anyway. But anyway, let’s check out Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest. This is a modern homebrew game which has been officially taken under Atari’s wing and released as a proper big box release.
So let’s check that out - so, this is Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest, and this game will actually come bundled with the 7800 So if you buy the retail version of the 7800 you will actually get this as a pack in game in the box. It’s an unofficial sequel to Crystal Castles, if you’re familiar with that game, from way back in 1985, I think it was.
And this game was actually written by a chap called Bob DeCrescenzo. Apologies if the pronunciation isn’t quite right on that, but it was years in the making. I remember following along with this on the Atariage forums, and then it was actually eventually released in 2022 as a homebrew title on Atariage.
com in their official shop - so very cool to see the progress of that one. It has been compared to Wonderboy in the past, certainly these first few levels, and I think that’s probably a fair comparison graphically. Obviously you’ve got this kind of jungle theme and these fires that you have to jump over, so that’s probably fair.
Of course, it’s, it’s no Wonderboy. The 7800+ is what it is, and I think the graphics are very Atari. They’re very charming. But they are certainly very Atari - and one game that this actually reminds me of is Scrapyard Dog, which is another fantastic platformer on the 7800, and another one that’s well worth checking out.
But yeah, this game makes really good use of the Maria graphics chip in the 7800. Of course, one of the most sophisticated graphics chips of its time - and I really liked this parallax scrolling on this particular level, so this is about three levels in. Didn’t get very far with this game, as you might imagine, because well, I’m not very good at games.
And the other standout feature, I think, is the audio - so this uses the Pokey audio chip. There were only a couple of games back in the day that actually used this chip. It was quite a legendary audio chip by Atari. It was used in some of their arcade games - and, of course. The cartridge itself includes a Hokie chip, which is actually a clone of the Pokie chip, so they haven’t had to cannibalise any actual cartridges from back in the day, so that’s good to know.
So, apparently this game supports one button joysticks as well, and I think that’s part of the reason why I keep randomly firing here when I’m jumping up in the air. I don’t think the game has any way to detect whether it’s being played with a two button or a one button controller, so it kind of does both modes simultaneously.
We have unlimited ammo here anyway, so it’s fine. It’s not really a problem, but just in case you were wondering about the random firing. Of course, I also checked this out in the 16x9 mode I can’t say I’d recommend this, it stretches the picture, but hey, it takes all sorts, I know some people like to play their old games like this, and who am I to judge?
So it’s good that it’s an option, but generally, like I do with the 2600 I think I’ll be leaving my 7800 in 4x3 mode - and just on the subject of the graphics output, this console As per its predecessor, it does output in 1280x720, so it’s 720p at 60hz. I know there was some discussion about that back when the 2600+ was first released.
Personally, I think it’s fine. I mean, you have to bear in mind the resolution of these games originally. We’re not talking about, like, modern day AAA type stuff - so I guess, of course, it would be nice to have native 1080p or 4K support or whatever, but it’s a limitation of the SoC that they’ve used in these systems, and it is what it is.
And on that note, I know there was also some discussion at the time about CRT shader effects, that kind of thing. You know, scan lines and those kind of effects that you might expect from some of the similar systems and from the MiSTer system - and indeed the 7800+ doesn’t have those. It’s just a very kind of pure 4x3 or 16x9 output.
But it certainly is very sharp considering the 720p resolution - and as far as lag’s concerned I mean, no issues here. Of course, it is software emulation, but because of the nature of these games, it’s not really been an issue in my testing. Not something that I’ve measured scientifically, but I’m perfectly fine with it.
And finally, on the note of the controller, that brand new CX78 Plus wireless controller, this is my kind of first chance to actually really get to grips with it, and it is lovely. My first impressions were spot on. Really do love this controller. It’s going to be getting a lot of use - so yeah, my hat is off to PlayOn for their excellent work on the CX 78 Plus controller.
And that is Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest on the Atari 7800+.
So, first impressions of the brand new Atari 7800+ console from the point of view of an Atari collector and enthusiast - and I’m pretty sure it goes without saying that I think this is absolutely fantastic. I made no secret of the fact that I love the 2600+ that came before it, and it’s essentially the same thing in a different shell.
I’m a big fan of the 7800 anyway, and they’ve done a brilliant job of recreating the original The look and the feel of that console, so what’s not to like? And I guess if you’re in the market for one of these and you’re trying to decide between the 2600+ or the 7800+, it’s entirely a question of aesthetics.
Do you like the original 1970s woodgrain look or do you like this 1980s black plastic and brushed metal retro futuristic look? Personally I like both and I was going to buy this anyway, so if anything Atari have done themselves out of a sale by sending me one of these for free. But anyway, of course the, the, the main new edition is this controller, the CX 78 plus.
And this is absolutely brilliant. I was really impressed with what they did with the CX 40 plus with the 2,600, which of course was the re recreation of the original Atari joystick - and they’ve worked their magic again with this. I actually really liked the original version of these controllers anyway, and all they’ve done is make it better and make it wireless, which is great.
So as mentioned, the plan is to put together a much more detailed deep dive into this, the 7800+, and indeed its predecessor, the 2600+. I think quite a lot has changed on that front with regards to firmware updates and stuff in the year since I did that review, so it’ll be interesting to see what What has changed.
If you do want to see a lot more of the games and things running on this hardware then please do check out that initial review that will be linked down in the description as well as my various other updates and things on that console. But that’s all I have for you for this video. I hope that’s been useful.
All that’s left is to say a big thank you to my supporters on Patreon, Ko fi, and indeed my YouTube channel members. A big thank you to Atari for sending me the 7800+, and a thank you to you of course for watching - and hopefully, I’ll see you in the next one.
Original Video Links
Support The Channel:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ctrlaltrees
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/ctrlaltrees
Become a Member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe7aGwKsc40TYqDJfjggeKg/join
Episode Links:
2600+ Review & Ultimate Test: https://youtu.be/vYURhEuQX7s
2600+ Teardown: https://youtu.be/JpDzB7wEOJQ
2600+ Firmware Update News: https://youtu.be/W1gHDRn5084
The Weird Story Of The Atari 7800 Video: https://youtu.be/2HuYMQr5oNw
Baba Is You (Indie Puzzle Game): https://hempuli.com/baba
If you liked this video please consider subscribing to ctrl.alt.rees on YouTube!
