Restoring Old Ataris Virtually… With ReStory!

Over the past six years here on ctrl-alt-rees I have upgraded, modified and repaired more than my fair share of computers, gadgets and games consoles. For example quite recently I worked on a Nintendo Wii to install an internal HDMI mod - and a little bit further back I did the exact same job on an original Xbox. Or how about the Nintendo 64? Of course computers have been very well represented on the channel as well - everything from PCs like my Tiny Pentium from the mid-90s or my beloved 486 DX4/100 or some slightly more modern stuff like the Mac Mini or this Mac Pro.

…and of course how could we forget the oddballs like this CefuCom 21 Japanese English language teaching computer?

But I think it’s fair to say that I am an Atari fanboy at heart - a love affair that started way back in the late 80s when I first got my hands on my cousin’s Atari 2600 Junior - and here on the channel that has been very well represented indeed with videos about the 7800, or how about the 5200? Perhaps the rather rare and interesting Atari 2800?

But the console that has seen the most coverage here on ctrl-alt-rees over the years has been Atari’s best selling console of all time: the 2600 or VCS Video Computer System. In fact one of the very first videos on my channel was all about the 2600 and some internal repairs and upgrades that I did to that system.

So it goes without saying that I am intimately familiar with the internals of this particular console - and as you might imagine, over the past week or so when I started to see a game pop up across my social media all about cleaning up and restoring Atari 2600s, I was very excited indeed to check it out. Now I just want to say, just going into this video, this isn’t sponsored, they haven’t paid me to feature this, in fact they have absolutely no idea that I’m making this video. I just applied to be in the game test for this on Steam and got in, and I thought it would be of particular interest to viewers of my channel.

However - that said - this video is indeed sponsored by my channel’s sponsor PCBWay.com. PCBway has been in the business of PCB fabrication for 11 years now and also offers additional services including sheet metal fabrication, CNC machining, injection moulding and 3D printing. But what I want to draw your attention to in this video is their Christmas Sale which is running until the end of December 2025. You can find the link down below in my description and there you will find lots of awesome coupons offering up to 50% off their various goods and services. But as mentioned, this sale is only running until the end of the 31st of December 2025 so if you want to take advantage of these offers, do get in there quick.

Right, so, what exactly is this game all about then?

Well, if we head over to the Steam page we can see for ourselves - so the title of the game is “ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs” and we can see that this is part of the Wholesome Snack Sale Event - although it’s on pre-release, in fact it’s pre-pre-release, it’s actually available for testing at the moment, and this game isn’t actually due for release until 2026. But if we scroll down we can see this ongoing livestream - I don’t think this is actually live, I think this is just a video, this has been running every time I’ve been to this page over the past few days. But we can see Tina here, one of the developers from TinyBuild who is actually putting the game through its paces doing a bit of a demo - and as we can see Tina is currently working on an Atari CX40 Joystick so that’s very cool - and if we just scroll down we can see some of the other devices available in the game - so there’s this Nomi PMP, which is obviously the Sony PSP.

That’s the interior of the 2600, which hopefully we’ll get to take a look at in this video - and some screenshots and things-

There’s also a Walkman there by the way called the Goman, the Noni Goman.

We’ve also got the interior shots of the shop itself, the repair shop that we’re going to be running in the back streets of Tokyo. Now as you may have noticed, there’s officially licensed Atari stuff in here but nothing from any other actual brands, they’re all made up names and things - and that’s because they have actually partnered with Atari to license the name and the 2600 and CX40 Joystick for use in this game.

But not with any other hardware manufacturers, which seems a bit odd, but quite cool to have officially licensed Atari stuff in there. Now when I first saw this popping up all over BlueSky and various other social media, I assumed that this was actually an Atari game because of course modern day Atari is putting out a lot of really interesting stuff at the moment - but it seems it’s literally just a licensing thing - and this is actually developed by Mandragora - which is a developer I hadn’t heard of - and it’s being published by TinyBuild - and if you go to the Steam page, and I will say this is Windows-only at the moment, although it will be releasing on other platforms as far as I know, you can actually apply to be part of the playtest - and if you get accepted, you can then install it on your Windows PC and see what it’s all about. You also get two invites, so you can invite two friends as well, if you like.

So that is that, that is ReStory - we’ve got some more video footage and stuff of some of the devices that we’ll get to be working on in the game.

But I think for now, all that’s left is to hit the “Play Now” button and we’ll see what it’s all about.

Oh, just before I do that, I guess I should show you my Pro Gamer setup here, because of course, if you’re a long term viewer of the channel, you will no doubt know that I am somewhat of a Pro Gamer - so I have my Pro Gamer headset here ready to go, of course, I don’t want to use the speakers on this computer because the microphone will pick it up and that will cause all sorts of problems, and most importantly, I’ve got my Pro Gamer keyboard and mouse - so I’ve got the keyboard here.

Yeah, a wonderful mechanical keyboard there, like all the gamers have - and my mouse, this gaming mouse - and if you think they look like the keyboard and mouse from the Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit from a few years ago…

Yeah, you’d probably be right.

Anyway, let’s get started and see what ReStory is all about!

So first things first, we’ve got this rather lovely Tokyo street scene here: we’ve got a ramen shop on the right, we’ve got a soba place on the left, we’ve got our combini on the street corner. Should be familiar to anyone who’s checked out the back streets of Tokyo. Not a lot else on here. There are some settings and things - we can change the volume of various things and the resolution - and also we’ve got links to wishlist this on Steam, you can go to the official Discord, and there’s also a survey, which is for submitting feedback if you run into any bugs or anything. But the only option we’re really interested in is starting a new game.

Warning: This is not the final version of the game. It may be broken, contain temporary content or have unpredictable bugs. Please report your impressions and any bugs found using the “Take the survey (2 min.)” button in the main menu or pause menu.

“Tokyo, Early 2000s, my first day in the repair shop” - and this is our repair shop - so we have a to-do list before we can open up the shop: we have to clean up the work area, we have to sort out the inventory and throw away boxes and we have to open the shop - and as you probably just saw, we can look around - so we have the lever here that opens the shutter at the front. We have a bicycle parked up here, which is the save option, which is quite cool.

What’s this? Is this just rubbish? Yeah, there’s all sorts of rubbish and stuff strewn about.

Completely mouse driven game from what I’ve seen - I have played a little bit of this, although not much of it at all - and if we just swing around to the left, we can see this lovely Atari banner up on the- above the shelf there, just covering up a big crack in the wall.

But yeah, first thing on the to-do list is to tidy up the shop - and of course, if you’ve been involved at all in computer stuff, computer repairs, upgrades, electronics repairs, working on games consoles, this will no doubt be a familiar sight.

I know my studio looks nice and tidy on camera, but I can assure you that when I’m in the midst of a project, it’s very much like this!

Stuff everywhere - so let’s get rid of all of that - and the last bit that I just wanted to show to you, I think that’s everything, is this - this glove, which seems to be a severed finger and blood everywhere, which to be honest, isn’t all that unrealistic when it comes to this kind of stuff. Anyway, we’ll get rid of that. I think that belonged to the previous owner.

Tidy up our paint brushes and things, which we’ll be using in a second - and that’s our work area clean and tidy - so just a few other things that we have here, just before we open up: we have this box here, which is for parts, apparently - so I believe later on in the game, based on watching the livestream, that we can actually use this computer to connect to the internet, and we can buy parts and things for our projects and buy some machines and things to work on, so that’s quite cool. Got our cash register there with our 1000 yen starting currency - and we have our own- oh, there’s a lamp!

Not very exciting.

…and we have our own box of belongings here - so there’s a little work log book type thing, which we’ll use to keep track of all the parts for things that we’re working on - and then some other bits and pieces in here - so, we have a nice little lantern.

“Repair shop status updated: Cozy place.”

There’s a radio.

Now this will play this cosy lo-fi music on a loop - I’m going to turn that off just because it’s going to make my life a lot easier when it comes to editing this video - and then we can chuck the box away.

Throw away boxes, and we are ready to open the shop - so let’s do that.

It should only be a matter of seconds before our first customer appears.

Here he is!

“How are you getting on? Cleaning up? I’m here about rent, as we agreed, 2000 yen per week” - so he’s the landlord, I think.

“By the way, on the way here, I found a phone. I don’t know whose it is, but it’s mine now. Everything here is mine, although it doesn’t turn on. How much will it cost to repair it?”

So the first customer gets free service to celebrate the opening - or we can rip him off, and we can name the inflated price of 6000 yen - so let’s do that.

“You might as well offer to do it for free. Take 7,500 at least, or you’ll go out of business like the last master.” - sounds good to me!

“When you’re done, put the phone on the counter-“, yada, yada, yada…

…and here it is, our first project, the Hashimoto. Or is that his name, Hashimoto? I think that makes more sense, doesn’t it? Yeah, that’s his name - so we can use the right mouse button to just have a look around this, which is quite cool, all modelled in 3D, quite a nice model that.

Of course, I think that’s probably based on the Nokia 3310. I say that with some confidence, because I used to have one of those - and we can zoom in and out and take a closer look.

So the first thing we need to do is to dismantle this piece by piece - and any pieces that need cleaning we can drag over to the paintbrush pot over here - and then it’s just a case of rotating it, cleaning all of the sides up. Nice, chilled, cosy kind of game for the Christmas break.

Some of the pieces don’t need cleaning. You can just drop those-

Oops…

…haphazardly throw those on the desk, as the case may be.

That bit needs cleaning.

We’ve got a phone number there - is that the number of the previous owner, perhaps?

Maybe we’ll find out what that’s all about shortly.

Oh! Well there’s the circuit board.

I don’t know why I took those screws out - I don’t think I needed to!

[A few minutes later…]

Ha! Perfect!

Ha!

I like that. Look, it’s got the old menu screen and stuff on it as well.

“Is the phone ready? I don’t have much time.” Yes, it is.

“Mention the paper with the number on it.” Should we do that?

Yeah, let’s do that. Seems like the right thing to do.

“I know that number. In short, you may be contacted, but it would be better for you if you don’t answer - and in general, you really should close before midnight. There was an incident last night - somebody broke into a store, ransacked everything, and stole some expensive equipment.”

“My son was on the scene. He came home angry and wet. He provides security for very good rates too, but we’ll discuss that later. Bye.”

There we go. Security from Hashimoto’s wet son.

I’ll stick that in the till.

Okay!

“Taking part in an online Pac-Man championship on my old Atari 2600, but my joystick broke, and I’m so close to the record!”

“It’s the second time this month, so now I’ve got two broken joysticks. Could you fix one of them at least?” Well, this is cool.

“Tug the rope if you agree.” Absolutely! Tug the rope!

“Use parts from one joystick to fix another.”

I like this!

So I guess, oh, we’re going to clean that first. Good plan.

Can we put that- aha, we can!

Red button? Does that any cleaning? No, we’ll put that in there.

Cable, that looks good - we’ll take that.

Now, I will say I have torn down and fixed a fair few of these original CX40 joysticks over the years, and this looks spot on - the way this is all modeled. That base looks pretty decent so we’ll keep that. What’s this? Is that board damaged? No, that’s rubbish, so we’ll chuck that away.

“Before you stands Inspector Sakamoto, why are you tensed up like a cat in a kimono? There’s a little case I’m investigating.”

“There was a chase last night, somebody broke into a store, smashed the windows and made up with expensive equipment. I chased them all the way to the Kanda River.”

“In the struggle, I fell straight into the water. I’m fine, but my flashlight was damaged. It wouldn’t turn on. Could you take a look?”

So apparently we can buy parts for this.

“Tell him that you still don’t have internet.”

“I have an internet guy. He’s a little odd, but he knows what he’s doing.”

Ah, now this joystick looks much cleaner!

I must say, I haven’t seen much repairing going on, just cleaning, and then we’ve got this bit left over as well.

So the action button is broken - we’ll throw that away - and the cord is also broken, so we’ll throw that away, right.

So I’m assuming we get that…

…and the cord from that one…

…and we can start to put this back together…

…so we combine that and that…

…action button back on…

…base there…

Oh yeah, we need the cord! Cord, top.

Look at that, a shiny new working CX40!

Ha! perfect!

“Have you fixed it already? Right, here’s the payment for your work. It should be enough - and you can keep the second joystick.” - thank you!

“I heard that you still don’t have the internet, can I help? It’s so nice to be able to do something useful for somebody else.”

“Write in your answer what speed you want.”

Um…

…500 yen a week?

We don’t need the fast internet, do we?

So, fast forward a few minutes and that’s the end of day one in my little repair shop. A couple of other things happened, I shut up shop before midnight as advised and I took the time overnight to fix the torch for the cop - if you remember that - so that’s sitting waiting to be collected, and we’ve also got this end of day review thing here, so we have day one repairs orders, we’ve got two completed and one still in progress - and look, we’ve made 8000 yen today, so I think that’s a pretty successful first day - and we just need to stamp that to confirm and hopefully we should be into day two, Sunday.

Now, yesterday off camera I did have a bit of a play with this computer as well in the corner and I’ve discovered a few interesting things about that, so let’s have a look at this and we have email on here, so we have some emails about potential jobs here and we’ve got an Atari 2600 clean and repair for 5120 yen, we’ve got another CX40 joystick and we have another- we have a cleaning job, I want to do a repair job now I think, we’ll get the Atari 2600 in, accept that order.

…and then if we go to our browser here - “Gozilla Fairfox” - we’ve got service licenses, so on day one someone did pop by and ask if I had a Nony PMP service license and it seems you can actually buy that for 40,000 yen and there are licenses to be able to work on some other slightly more modern equipment as well but we’re not interested in those, what we want is the Atari 2600 of course!

Interesting to see some of the other devices in the game, so we’ve got the Autorolla Razor - I think we all know what that’s based on - we’ve got the Nony PlayMachine, the PMP, so this is essentially eBay I guess, we’ve got the Eggotchi - another Eggotchi there - so various projects that we can buy to work on and then obviously fix them up, buy the parts, and sell those on and make a profit - so there’s a pretty comprehensive system in place I think and there’s also this other website here where we can buy tools which presumably would make our life easier - so there’s a sandblaster, a ratchet screwdriver, an air duster and this rather cool looking electric screwdriver for 12,000 yen but unfortunately I can’t afford that.

Oh we’ve got some decoration for the shop as well: a daruma, a maneki neko, and a shoji lamp! Cool!

Oh, one more thing as well, I will say actually: last night - oh, they’re gone now - someone did swing by with some bills that I had to pay, so that’s why my balance is down to 9,000 yen.

Anyway what’s this?

That’s rubbish, that’s not very useful.

I guess it’s 10 o’clock in the morning so we’ll open up the shop and see if our police officer friend comes back for his flashlight. There it is!

“I see you brought my old friend back to life, here’s your reward.”

“You don’t mind if I ask a few questions do you?”

Say that you’ll be happy to answer… say that you’re just a master and you don’t-

No, I’m happy to answer.

“…convinced that Hashimoto is involved, do you know anything?”

Say you thought he was Hashimoto’s son… are we going to help the police?

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“That’s your right, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

I don’t think we’re quite ready to cooperate with the cops just yet. Anyway.

“So glad you saved my flashlight, I really didn’t want to lose it. Right I’ll be off, I stand out here like a cat in a kimono.”

Off you go - and that’s my 7,500 yen reward, an excellent start to the day!

That’s the courier…

…because I’m more interested in this, look at this! Beautiful, is that rubbish? That’s rubbish - so here it is, the Atari 2600 - and we have our reassembly guide.

I noticed the “Days worked on” thing here as well, so evidently there are some bigger jobs in this that can take multiple days, again I think that’s quite realistic.

We’ve got a cracked top panel here - it’s obviously cracked across the front so that whole top panel needs replacing.

…a dirty bottom…

…and I’ve got some screws here so we’ll start off by removing those.

Oh that’s rubbish, that goes straight in the bin.

Fair enough, we’ve got this bottom panel, can we remove that yet? Nope, we can remove the cord, apparently that’s good.

The old RF cable.

These switches, are they okay?

Oh, that one’s broken.

That one looks good.

That is also good.

Oh yeah, I can see we’ve got three tiny screws just here.

Remove the RF shield, that needs cleaning.

Cartridge slot.

I must say, I think on the real thing they’re actually soldered on…

…but where’s the fun in that?

That’s a very dirty cartridge slot, as you might expect.

This is very accurate!

We can remove the bottom case, that just needs a clean.

Finally…

So we need a top cover and a switch, don’t we?

We’ll leave that as is, and we’ll stick it on the shelf. Do we have room on the shelf? There’s room up there - and let’s go shopping for a donor machine.

“Console works perfectly.”

Now I’m only getting paid 5120 for that, so I don’t really want to spend 4500 on a donor console.

What else have we got?

3500… 2000 - doesn’t turn on.

Yeah, let’s buy that one.

Oh, yeah, that’s a bit confusing.

2000 yen, looks like a good donor. I think I only need a switch and a top cover anyway.

Here’s the courier.

Oh no, the top cover’s cracked!

Argh!

I’m not very good at this!

Of course, if you’ve ever watched my channel in the past, you would know that.

Oh, look at that!

A big burnt bit. The cable’s knackered on that one.

Oh, dear, oh, dear, look at this. Are those switches okay? I think they’re okay despite the big burnt patch - and we’ll keep those because we need some switches.

[sigh]

I’m just going to end up with a shelf full of broken Atari stuff - art imitating life and all that. Anyway, what else have we got?

Oh, you know what? I’m going to buy that as well.

At some point I’ll have enough parts to build some working machines and hopefully turn a profit!

Right, what’s this? Ah!

Ah, now that top cover looks okay. Right.

So we’ll unscrew this…

…that can do in our parts box.

Back out of this project now, can I put this- there are more shelves aren’t there? Yeah. So I’ll put that over there - and that’s rubbish.

This is our online repair job…

…so, we can screw that back together now, can’t we?

Of course, no actual soldering in this game - or maybe there is later on, or maybe it’s something they’ll add. Obviously, this is all still very much under development.

So we have a switch and a top cover…

…look at that!

Perfect!

I won’t be too nitpicky about the design of that. I could be, I could be. Anyway, if you can spot the deliberate mistakes, answers on a postcard.

What’s the back look like?

Yeah, it’s pretty good though. It is pretty good. They’ve done a good job with that.

There’s the courier - and there’s my 5120 yen! Good stuff!

So there we have it, ReStory, something a little bit different for the channel, I hope you’ve enjoyed this video and yeah I actually really enjoyed that, I will say it looks like it has quite a bit of depth to it - lots of different jobs coming in, stuff you can pick up on the internet as well, buy those spare parts, and it certainly seems like with the whole landlord thing going on and the detective swinging by and the landlord’s son and stuff, there’s obviously going to be some kind of backstory that’s going to kind of unfold as the game goes on as well - so even in this very early stage I actually think it seems quite compelling as well and there’s already quite a bit there.

Obviously some extra repair steps, stuff like soldering and things like that would probably just kind of bulk it out a bit, make it a bit more realistic but yeah I do very much like what I’ve seen so far, I like the way that everything’s been modelled in great detail and it is quite a nice relaxing game to just kind of sit and play and just you know clean all the parts up, try to source the different spare parts for the different jobs and obviously as time goes on and you’ve got multiple jobs on the go at the same time and you’re trying to keep track of all the different parts that you’ve got and trying to work out how much profit you can make on each job, I like that, I do really like that.

Anyway I’ve already mentioned a couple of times how much I enjoyed that - so that is ReStory, again, not a sponsored video at all, just something that came up on my radar and because it is essentially what I do on my YouTube channel I thought I can’t let this pass me by, I have to have a look at this and see what it’s all about - so that is that.

All that’s left is to say a big thank you to my supporters on Patreon, Ko-Fi and of course my YouTube channel members as well. They get videos a little bit early and also ad-free. But that’s all I’ve got for you for this video so thank you ever so much for joining me for this game review and hopefully I’ll see you in the next one.