Hands-On With The NEW Atari 2600+ Pac-Man Edition

The Atari 2600 is arguably one of the most important consoles ever made, and certainly a personal favourite of mine. Of course this iconic machine should need no introduction - but I think just before we check out the latest official iteration from Atari, perhaps it’s worth just taking a very brief moment to refresh our memories on the story behind this historic machine - and that’s a story that starts all the way back in 1977 with the “Video Computer System” - or “VCS” - this rather handsome unit you see here. Now, this one has retroactively become known by the community as the “Heavy Sixer” model, so called because it has 6 switches across the front, and also it’s rather heavy.

Yeah, it’s not complicated.

A year later in 1978 Atari decided they wanted to reduce the cost of manufacturing the machine, which meant a redesign of the bottom half of the case to reduce the amount of plastic used. The result of that being this: the “Light Sixer” model - so called because, well, while it still has those 6 switches across the front, it’s quite a bit lighter than the original model - and of course this set them up for a series of redesigns and reinventions over the console’s 15 year lifespan from its original production run from 1977 to 1992: we got a 4 switch model in 1980 for example, and this rather nice compact futuristic “Junior” model in 1986 among many, many others.

That certainly wasn’t the last that we would hear from the 2600, with it being brought back kicking and screaming in 2004 - much like Atari itself was many times over the years - in the form of these “Flashback” mini consoles, which arguably started the mini console revolution that the console manufacturers are still milking for all it’s worth today - and by the way, I am going to be making a dedicated video all about the fascinating story behind these Flashback consoles at some point in the near future on the channel, so please do make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss out on that.

So, with the history lesson out of the way, let’s check out the latest iteration: This is the Atari 2600+ and it was released by the current owners of the Atari brand in 2023. They worked in conjunction with Plaion who designed and built the hardware - and this is quite a bit different to those Flashback consoles that we just saw - and indeed the other mini consoles available on the market - because this actually supports the original cartridges: whether they’re 2600 or 7800 cartridges, PAL or NTSC, you slot the cartridge into the front, it dumps the contents to an internal memory and then runs that on a software emulator running on an ARM SoC, upscales the output to 720p, outputs it over HDMI so you can play it on your modern display, which is wonderful stuff - and it also supports the original controllers, so your original joysticks and paddles, and indeed the rather nice newly-redesigned versions also from Plaion - and I will say, I have been a very big fan of this since it has been released. There were some initial teething issues and compatibility problems with it, which did come up in my original review - you can certainly check that out for yourself if you like, that’ll be linked down below - but they have since been fixed in firmware updates and also a minor internal hardware revision which we will talk about with this new version.

And indeed the subject of this video is the brand new Atari 2600+ PAC-MAN edition. This is a limited edition version of the console which has been released to celebrate not only 45 years of PAC-MAN itself - perhaps one of the most recognisable arcade games in history - but also the wider history of collaboration between Atari and Bandai Namco - and as part of that celebration there are also some re-releases of some Bandai Namco games as well as a new DLC pack for the Atari 50th Anniversary. I won’t be covering those in this video, the focus of this video is the 2600+ PAC-MAN edition - and just before we go ahead with the unboxing, one more thing that I do need to say. While I did purchase the 2600+ back in 2023 with all my own money, because I was that keen to get my hands on it, at some point over the past couple of years Atari has realised that I exist and has actually started sending me some stuff for review - and that is where this came from so it’s been sent to me for free and I also get to keep it and I think it’s very important that I make that very clear to you as we go into this review.

So without further ado, as they say on YouTube, let’s see what you get in the box.

Right, here we go! So, this is the final retail packaging - no fancy VIP influencer pack as we have had in the past. But that’s perfectly fine, it does mean that it’s a fair representation of what you can pick up either on Atari’s website or indeed on Amazon if you’re outside of the US - and I will put links down in the description to purchase your own Atari 2600+ PAC-MAN Edition if you are so inclined after watching this review. Anyway, the box, I must say, Atari - I’ve mentioned this before in previous reviews - but I’ve been really really impressed with the graphic design on some of their recent hardware offerings. Let’s just grab one of these joysticks as well, just have a quick look at that. I will unbox this separately after the console, but yeah, they’ve gone for this very coherent and very kind of modern but still kind of retro style to all of their hardware - and yeah, I think it’s a really nice kind of consistent look - and yeah, some points for Atari there, I will say.

But of course we’re not really interested in the packaging - let’s just get this bag off of here. We’re not really interested in the packaging I guess, although we’ll have a quick look at some of the information on the outside of the box. Look at that: we’ve got PAC-MAN there, being chased by the ghosts - classic - I mean you could stick the box on display after you’ve unboxed it and played with the console, what we’ve got, we’ve got Atari logos on the ends. But yeah, so we have the classic PAC-MAN styling here, we’ve got the 45th anniversary logo there which of course is appearing on all sorts of merchandise to celebrate that 45th anniversary of PAC-MAN.

We’ve got the light-up display in full effect here - and I will say when I first saw this being advertised and being marketed, I thought this would be some kind of OLED screen or something and that perhaps this would be animated, I don’t know why I thought that, I imagine that would add quite a bit to the cost. But you know, hopefully that’s quite a nice effect, we’ll take a look at that of course. We have one joystick included in the box which is the yellow one, we have the new cartridge which is a new and improved version of PAC-MAN - so this is based on the 7800 homebrew version from recent years.

The original 2600 port of PAC-MAN was notoriously terrible despite the fact that it went on to be one of the greatest-selling games of all time - and of course we’ll check out this cartridge and compare the two different versions once we’ve got this thing plugged in and up and running.

We’ll just have a look at the back of the box very briefly - have some screenshots from that new version of PAC-MAN, it’s much closer to the arcade version, it’s not identical.

The joystick itself - and again we’ll take a look at the joysticks in a second - but it is advertising that we have “DB9” - which I think is actually DE9, Atari, quite a common mistake but we’ll let them get away with that - and we have USB adapters and these are wireless unlike the CX-40+ joysticks that came with the original 2600+ which were wired and used that original DE9 connector, these are wireless and have their own proprietary dongles.

So we have the joystick, we have the new PAC-MAN cartridge, we have an HDMI cable and we have a USB power cable - so I’m not the actual plug that plugs into the wall, just the USB power cable itself - so let’s get this open!

[A few minutes later]

I’ve just to go and find my knife! I’ve moved into a new studio by the way - and I will be doing an updated studio tour very soon - it’s a really exciting space, it’s spread across multiple offices and stuff but I’ve been putting some carpet tiles down and I lost this but anyway, my unofficial 45th anniversary PAC-MAN unboxing knife…

…didn’t seem worth the effort just for that but there you go - and oh my goodness look at that!

Look at that!

That is glorious - that bright yellow!

Oh my!

Oh wow - and I’m not just saying this because they sent this to me for free, I promise that that is quite striking! It’s going to be an acquired taste I think for some people. We’ll just get this out of the box - of course I’m doing this upside down but oh that is lovely.

As mentioned in my previous reviews of the 2600+ I’ve been really impressed with the build quality of these. They do feel very very solid and they’ve got a good weight to them and very kind of well designed and engineered by Plaion. I’ve just spotted these switches actually…

Let’s compare those two just before we carry on.

Let’s compare those to the original 2600+ from 2023 - just bear with me a second.

There we go, that is that. That’s going to mess up the auto ISO setting on my camera isn’t it? A bright thing and a dark thing next to each other but hopefully you can see.

This has these lovely - I mean these are actual kind of shiny metal switches - a lovely kind of heft to these as per the original VCS and 2600 consoles.

These…

Are they the same type of switches internally?

I must say these feel a bit cheap actually compared to the- these kind of feel really premium and like I say they are actual metal on this but these are plastic. I mean I’m not saying they’re flimsy - don’t get me wrong they are quite solid and quite chunky - but perhaps not the nice- of course the metal probably wouldn’t work so well with the yellow so I can see why they’ve done that.

This surround and stuff are red rather than the orange of the 2600+ - the original version - just to get both of those in shot there - so of course we’ve got the walnut finish as per the original console on the 2600+ and we’ve got this black finish on here although this does have a very faint - I don’t know if that shows up on camera but there is a very faint kind of wood grain pattern to that as well.

The original console when it was plugged in the Atari logo lit up of course - let’s get this out of the way now…

…and that has- I’m guessing this probably lights up as per the ghosts as well, and the PAC-MAN of course, the main man - so on the back it is the same as the 2600+ we’ve got a 16:9 / 4:3 selector switch here so you can switch between a stretched widescreen picture - not quite sure why you would want that - and the original glorious 4:3 aspect ratio. We’ve got those DE9 connectors - of course these support original controllers - and also this is a revised version of the motherboard internally, so there were some controllers that didn’t work - stuff like the Star Raiders keypads and I believe some rotary, you know paddle type controllers.

This has the revised motherboard from the 7800+ in it, big fan of that console as well it’s also one that I have covered on my channel.

We’ve got the difficulty switches on the back as per the original console - generally they’re used for difficulty, for some 2600 games they are used to select different game variants and I believe there are a couple of games - I think Space Shuttle is one of them? That actually uses them as part of the control scheme as well.

At the beginning of this video I mentioned the 6 switch and the 4 switch versions - of course this is based on the 4 switch as per the 2600+ and that’s why we have the difficulty switches on the back as per the original 4 switch version.

We have the HDMI port there as well of course you can plug that straight into your modern TV - what’s that, just a bit of a factory fluff?

Plug that straight into your modern TV, we’ve got another controller connector there all as per the original console, and USB-C for power which is quite nice.

That original cartridge slot of course takes all of your 2600 and 7800 cartridges and Atari’s new reissues of some of those original games as well - so we’ll get this out of shot because it just messes with the ISO setting on the camera - people are probably shouting at me in the comments that I should fix it but that’s not how we roll here so look at this manual! Wow!

This is very much in the style of the original Atari game manuals. Let me see if I can go find one…

[A little longer than a few minutes later]

…in fact, it’s actually a lot better - so here is Joust, my original boxed copy of Joust, just as an example, one that I grabbed off the shelf.

That’s the manual for that - and yeah, I remember the 7800 manuals were mostly just black and white, just a single piece of paper like this, whereas this is stapled and has multiple pages and stuff. All colour printing, wonderful, wonderful stuff. We’ll get that out of the way, but I did also find my 2600 PAC-MAN manual so we can compare the two. This is new artwork been redone by the person who did the original PAC-MAN artwork - I’ll put the name up on screen again.

But yeah, if we just flick through this, I guess this is- it’s funny that the 2600 PAC-MAN manual, and this is probably one of the best manuals out of all of my 2600 games, despite the fact that it is all water damaged. But yeah, look at this, it’s all kind of very similar indeed, isn’t it? Yes, it’s quite thick because it’s multiple languages, it’s like an international release - so if we just compare the two manuals and compare the artwork, like I say, the fonts and stuff are, and the font colours and things are of course more in the style of the 7800 manual, which is quite a nice touch because this is a 7800 cartridge, of course. The 7800 being the successor - or one of the successors - to the 2600, fully backwards compatible with that console. Again, it is one that I have covered on my channel and will be linked down below in the description if you’re interested in learning more about the 7800 and the very interesting story behind it.

Of course this release is available separately if you already own the original 2600+ or the 7800+, indeed, you don’t need to buy this console to get this new version of PAC-MAN. There are some other Bandai Namco games that have been re-released as well for this platform - you can purchase those over on the Atari.com website. But yeah, points to Atari yet again for this. It even explains what the switches, the difficulty switches on the back of the console actually do - so yeah, the right difficulty switch, the A position - player 2 controls Blinky, which is one of the ghosts, so that’s quite cool - and then if it’s in the B position, it’s just a standard alternating game where you take turns and you get your own high score as well per player - so far more advanced than the original rather poor 2600 port of PAC-MAN. Nice to see that we finally got a decent version. We also have in here the manual for the console itself - just a quick start guide here that just shows how the cables and things plug in, what the various switches do. Of course we already know all of that - and look at this, this has got this kind of glossy embossed- can you see that?

Finish on it. I mean that’s- you could stick that on display and that would look very nice on the shelf.

Also the box here, which I assume - I guess this is the joystick and this is the box for the cables. Look at that, you’ve got the PAC-MAN maze on there!

That is really nice attention to detail. I like that a lot. That feels quite premium.

So we’ll look at the joystick in a second, but let’s check out these cables first. A cable unboxing!

I know, you get all the good stuff on this channel, don’t you?

Some inserts and things, because if these are like the original 2600+, yes they are, wonderful!

These actually have the Atari logo moulded into them. Can you see that on the camera? I think you can - and I made a big thing about this actually when I unboxed the 2600+ originally, because they didn’t need to do this. Nobody would have noticed if they hadn’t done this. But it’s such a nice touch, isn’t it?

Yeah, I really like that. That’s always been one of my favourite features of the new Atari consoles. I always like to point that out - and I do like to keep my Atari cables separate for use with my Atari consoles as well, rather than them getting mixed up with everything else.

Anyway, that’s the cables - and this is the joystick. Atari 2600+ PAC-MAN Edition. That’s a nice box - I should try not to damage that. Ah!

So, this is the cartridge. Now, yeah, the PAC-MAN Double Feature cartridge, 7800, it says on it - and this will work with the original consoles as well, won’t it? There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work with the original 2600 and 7800 consoles - so we have, we even use DIP switches - so there’s quite an interesting-

The way that these consoles work - and I will say they don’t work with menu-based flash carts, because obviously they require you to boot up into the menu, which basically runs as per a game - and then you select your game and it reboots the console and loads the game. But because of the way this dumps the contents of the cartridge into RAM, it basically just does that initial load, and then you can’t trigger that reboot and stuff - so the multicarts that Atari have come out with, they actually have these DIP switches on, which switch between different areas in the ROM, internally in the cartridge, which is how multicarts worked back in the day - and it seems they’ve continued that with this Double Feature cartridge here - so look at that, the artwork on that’s really nice. Nice quality plastic as well as per their other recent releases - and another thing that they’ve started doing are these sleeves, which I quite like.

I do like that, that does feel like a nice, coherent, you know, high quality package - so again, points to Atari, but this is the main thing that we are interested in - other than the console, I guess.

This rather in your face joystick - so we’ve got the two wireless adapters here - USB and DE9 - and again, they do have the Atari logos molded into them, if you can see that - and they are also colour coded to the joysticks - so that’s quite useful, I guess - and the good thing about these is you don’t need to buy the console, you don’t even need to own an Atari console, one of the new consoles. You can use them with USB. If you have, say, a Raspberry Pi that you’re using for emulation or a MiSTer setup, and you just want to use an original - or at least original as it comes - Atari joystick with it wirelessly, this is a really good option for that as well. It’s something that I kind of pointed out in my initial coverage of this console - and of course, this works with the original consoles as well - and it looks like that’s actually powered from the console itself, which is cool.

Of course, those original ports were powered for stuff like your spinners and whatnot, paddle controllers. We have a cable in here, which I guess will be for charging.

Does this work as a wired joystick as well? That’s a very good question.

Wired USB joystick, that might be quite useful - and sorry, I’m doing this off camera - so this is the joystick itself.

Now, a couple of quite interesting things about this.

I’ll just take this sheath off the shaft, un-sheath the shaft.

Dear, oh dear…

So a couple of interesting things about this. “Copyright 2025 Atari”.

Yeah - so it has a built-in battery, which is rechargeable over USB-C. We have presumably the power button here - and some quite interesting little Easter eggs on this joystick itself, I will say - so the original Atari CX-10 joysticks, which shipped for one year with that heavy sixer model that I talked about in 1977, had these discs in the top, these hexagonal discs, which actually slotted into the top of the original joystick. Of course, the vast majority of them have gone missing now because they all fell out back in the day.

But I guess they’ve decided to honour that with this little insert in here - and this has PAC-MAN on it - and the different colour options, we’ll take a look at those in a second, but the different colour options have the different ghosts on as well - and on this one, you can see we have the pills, the power pills - so if we compare this to the CX-40+, which came with the 2600+, this is styled - this is basically a direct copy of the original Atari CX-40 joystick - so we’ve got “Top” here. That wasn’t on the original CX-10s. Do I have a CX-10? I do. Hang on.

I know you all appreciate the history lessons on this channel, so let’s do the complete set. This is the CX-10 from 1977.

I have replaced the rubber boot on this, hence it doesn’t have the insert for the for the hex disc at the top. But as you can hear, it uses a different mechanism internally.

This one uses micro switches. It uses a different mechanism internally - and I actually really like these joysticks, but Atari changed the design as a cost saving thing in 1978.

But yeah, they added the “Top” thing to the CX-40 when they redesigned it - and of course, the CX-40+ has honoured that. But these don’t have that. They have the PAC-MAN power pills on instead as the direction markers.

Oh, that’s nice. Nice tactile feedback on that button. I was a big fan of these joysticks I will say - I did a teardown on my second channel - again, I will link that down in the description - I did a teardown of these comparing them to the original joysticks - so if you’re interested in the internals of these things, please do go and check that out on my second channel. Let’s get these original joysticks out of the way - and here we go, the full set, or at least I say the full set. There is also a pink one, which hasn’t been sent to me. That’s not very nice of Atari, is it? I guess they know that I’m a bit of a completionist and I’m going to go out and buy that one anyway, so at least they’ve made some money out of me. But yeah, of course these correspond with the original ghosts: we’ve got Inky, Binky, Pinky, and Clyde.

Other than Pinky, I’ve no idea which one’s which. But yeah, and these are, as per the original CX-40+ made by Plaion, they are really nice solid things, they’re very well built, of course we’ll see how well they work in a second, but the yellow PAC-MAN as mentioned does come with the console itself, also available for purchase separately if you want to buy that on its own, and there are also these that correspond with all of the various ghosts, the four different colourways. Very very cool to see indeed - so let’s get this console hooked up and see how it works.

Here we go, all set up, plugged into my computer monitor here, so I’ve got some speakers hidden behind all of this, I don’t want those distracting people, they’re not really anything to do with this test. I won’t be doing direct HDMI capture from this console as I quite often do, purely because I’ve just moved studio and I’m not quite sure where my HDMI splitter has gone, so I’m going to have to find that, I did just have a look for it.

Anyway, the show must go on and we’re going to start with this, the PAC-MAN Double Feature cartridge with that new version of PAC-MAN, of course we’ve got the DIP switches on the back to select the game and the guide - we’ll just pop that up there shall we - the guide is on the front of the cartridge here, so all up for the new 7800 version and the left hand switch down for the 2600 version, which I already have set here, so we’ll just plug that in and power this on.

Of course the first thing you might notice is that wonderful light up front panel with PAC-MAN and the ghosts on there, I’ll just zoom in and get a nice close up shot of that with the studio lights dimmed, quite a nice effect that, I quite like it actually, it probably looks a little bit washed out on camera but in real life I think that looks quite smart. Anyway, this is software emulation so it does take a few seconds to load, as mentioned it dumps the game from the cartridge to the internal RAM and then runs the software emulator on the ARM SoC - and here we have an excellent opportunity to demo that aspect ratio switch on the back of the console, where is that?

That’s on that side, so if we switch that, there we go, our picture is no longer stretched as Atari originally intended, long before widescreen TVs were invented but this is the notoriously bad Atari 2600 port of PAC-MAN, the original version, and once we start the game, I wanted to actually get this, is this connected? It is connected, once we start the game…

…you can hear those wonderful sound effects.

…I must admit, I am terrible at PAC-MAN, I will say…

…as per most games…

There you go.

Anyway, if you want to know a bit more about the- I can’t bear to play that any longer - if you want to know a bit more about the Atari 2600 version of PAC-MAN and how notoriously terrible it is, I’m sure the information is out there for you. What we’re interested in here is this new version, so let’s just switch this DIP switch, turn this back on - so again, software emulation, so we have to wait for it to dump the cartridge to the internal memory, load that into the software emulator.

It’s a lot quicker than it was originally, I will say, when the 2600+ first launched, or maybe it just seems quicker, I’m not quite sure, it felt quite slow to me when I did that initial test - and here we go, this is the first I’m seeing of this new PAC-MAN double feature, Copyright 2025 Atari Interactive, good stuff. We’ve got the ghosts here - so Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde - we’ve got this attract mode. Bob Decrescenzo, that’s the developer I couldn’t remember the name of earlier, apologies Bob, you have done some absolutely wonderful work with your arcade ports on the 7800, I certainly don’t want to do you a disservice.

What’s going on here? So we’ve got high scores, the cartridge saves the high scores, that’s a feature of the 7800 emulator that we have here - and look at that! That is such a big improvement on that 2600 version we just saw - and this is, as mentioned, a whole brand new port to the 7800 based on Bob’s previous, already excellent 7800 port, this has just been tweaked a bit, been given Bandai Namco’s official blessing, made a bit closer to the arcade version.

Anyway, I guess we need to play this, don’t we? I’d be interested to hear- oh we’ve got a number of players, we’ve got lives, random mazes, speed adjustment, loads of customisation here, that’s good to see.

[Music]

Huh.

Right.

I’m going to turn that off for a second because it’s very noisy but yeah, I just wanted to play through to that first intermission screen and great to see that they are in there. You know, the audio is - it’s close, it’s much closer to the arcade version than the original 2600 version was. Of course, it’s not 100% perfect. They do have to work with the limitations of the original hardware, but certainly a much, much, much better version of PAC-MAN - so yeah, good job Bob. Well done - and nice to see that being embraced by Atari and Bandai Namco as an official release as well. Joystick-wise, it’s very difficult to tell. I mean, obviously latency with these things. I guess someone like Bob’s going to have to get his hands on one of these and give it a proper latency test, a proper lag test. But the game’s as playable as it always has been with an Atari joystick. It’s not the ideal joystick for playing precise games like PAC-MAN, but very authentic feeling joysticks as per the CX-40s and they seem to work wirelessly perfectly well - so no real complaints there, I guess.

And just to test out that much touted compatibility with the original controllers and games, if you are new to the 2600+, I have my CX-78 pad here - this is the original version from the Atari 7800, this isn’t the new version that Plaion made that came with the 7800+ - and I also have the original release of Joust here, which I did get out a moment ago, of course.

Yeah, this is the PAL version, P for PAL, on the back - and there were all sorts of compatibility issues with PAL 7800 games with the 2600+ when that was first released - so I’m intrigued to see how well this one works.

“Joust. Copyright Atari 1984.”

“Prepare to Joust.”

Good to see that both buttons work.

Yeah, I did mention that PAC-MAN wasn’t the only game that I was terrible at, didn’t I? But yeah, Joust works perfectly fine. Loading time, very acceptable, I think. Just a few seconds to load that.

The original controller works perfectly fine with the 2600+ PAC-MAN edition - so that’s another win.

So there is a feature that was added in the later firmware releases that wasn’t on my launch 2600+ when I did my initial review and I’ve been meaning to check this out. I have actually updated the firmware on mine but I’ve just not had a look at this yet - so what you need to do is switch the console on without a game in the cartridge slot and we get this Atari splash screen here. You have to wait a second or so for it to boot into the “No Game Detected” screen and then all you do is pull these two switches down - so that’s “Game Select” and “Game Reset” just toggle those at the same time and it takes you into this setup menu - so we have a 50 Hertz mode, of course, useful for those of us in PAL land but I guess some monitors and things perhaps don’t like running at 50 Hertz or perhaps you want to play all of your games at 60 Hertz. Nice to have the option there anyway. We have the bilinear filter which is disabled by default. We’ve got integer scaling - which is disabled!?

I’m a big fan of integer scaling, I will say that. It’ll probably make the picture slightly smaller on the screen but it does mean that the pixels are scaled 1:1 rather than having kind of a partial scaling thing - although I will say I don’t think the graphics are bad on this system at all. At least the scaling isn’t bad - of course it’s a 2600 at heart so it is what it is. You know this probably isn’t going to make much difference graphically.

We’ve got “Phosphor (2600)”. Is that like a phosphor glow effect? That’s quite cool. Let’s check that out.

Let’s put that on high.

Two button support for the 2600 - I guess that’s if you are playing 2600 games with a two button controller - and we’ve got the high score cart for the 7800. So that was a special cartridge that was released for the 7800 console that only supported a few games but allowed you to actually kind of piggyback your game cartridges onto it and it would save your high scores internally. I think it had a battery inside it.

You know an interesting solution to that problem rather than having battery backed saves in the individual cartridges and whatnot.

Yeah let’s check that out - so “Save changes”. “No Game Detected.”

Let’s try a game.

…and here’s one that I’m sure many of you will be interested in, Big Bird’s Egg Catch for the Atari 2600 using the Kid’s Controller - and I do indeed have the Kid’s Controller here. It’ll be very interesting to see if this works with this console because of course the original 2600+ has compatibility issues with various keypad-type controllers - so I believe- I’ve never actually played this, I’ve had this set on the shelf for ages so I hope it works.

We’ve got this overlay here - let’s just get all of this set up. Whoop, throw that on the floor - so we’ve got Big Bird’s Egg Catch. Can you see that? We’ve got the overlay on the controller here. It literally has two buttons - left and right. Let’s get this plugged in - and I enabled that phosphor effect as well for 2600 games so it’d be interesting to see that if that works.

Big Bird’s Egg Catch. Here we go.

How do we start this?

Oh it works! The Kid’s Controller works.

[Jaunty music intensifies]

So there we have it, the Atari 2600+ PAC-MAN Edition launched to celebrate not only 45 years of PAC-MAN, one of the greatest arcade games of all time - even if I am not very good at it - but also that history of collaboration between Atari and Bandai Namco.

So, what are my impressions of the console? Well, positives: I like the wireless joysticks, they seem to work very very well and I like some of the design touches and things on those as well so that’s a very big plus point - of course the wired joysticks were quite a limiting factor on the original console so good to see that that’s been addressed. Of course you could buy those separately and use them with the original 2600+ if you wanted.

Speaking of the original 2600+ I do prefer the kind of fit and finish and the design of that, it’s more authentic to the original, and I will say those toggle switches, the plastic on these compared to the metal on the original console, the original just feels a lot more solid and a bit more upmarket, I will say a bit more of a premium product so yeah I think I would definitely go with the original 2600+. That said, the internals of this - and I think this is very important to reiterate - the internals of this are based on the 7800+ which has support for a lot more controllers, different driving controllers and keypad controllers, obviously I tested it with the Kid’s Controller but yeah that’s something that we’re not really sure is going to be coming to the 2600+, there has been talk of an internal upgrade called the “Parity Board” over on the AtariAge forums that might add that functionality to that console but there’s been no solid word on that as of yet so yeah if you want the most compatible version it’s going to either be this one or the 7800+ and I know a lot of people prefer the look of the 2600 and quite rightly so, so that’s just something to bear in mind.

But anyway I haven’t been able to go through and test every single game and every single controller in every single combination in this review - I think that’s a bit pointless because no matter what I test someone in the comments will say “Oh does this work?” “Does that work?” There are some lists over on AtariAge, I will link to those in the description if you are interested in any specific games and of course you can go and ask over there - it’s a fantastic community over there and indeed Ben himself from Plaion is answering questions over there - so all that’s left is I guess to say a big thank you to Ben for sending this over to me for review, quite impressed with it, I do think it’s a decent bit of hardware - the yellow- it’s a nice shade of yellow, I’m not sure it’s it would look quite right in my living room but very cool looking thing to have up on the shelf with your game collection so I certainly won’t complain about that and the the packaging all very kind of premium looking and premium feeling as well which I think is really nice and very kind of consistent with Atari’s recent releases so certainly a lot of good things to be said about the 2600+ PAC-MAN Edition.

But that’s it! That’s all I have for this review, so thank you ever so much for joining me - of course it’s great to be up and running in the new studio now having had two months off from making videos believe it or not so very keen to get this one out there get the ball rolling again.

Big thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon and Ko-Fi and indeed my YouTube Channel Members as well - they pay for this studio so it’s very much appreciated particularly when I’m not releasing videos and not bringing in ad revenue but yeah that’s all I’ve got for you for this review - any further thoughts or comments or whatever do let me know down in the comment section or indeed you can come and join my Discord server there’ll be a link to that in the description as well that’s all I got for you for this review so thank you once again for joining me and I’ll hopefully see you next time.