The Atari retro games box is real… sort of

Re: PC technology?

That's what I see in my mind. A redesign of the original housing with a RPi inside. Done.

You've got HDMI, four USB, and it runs an emulator. The original Atari 2600 hardware is so old, computers from 20 years ago could emulate the games at full speed with no problem.

Re: PC technology?

Clearly they mean Politically Correct technology. Why they want to appeal to SJWs is beyond me...

That console is made by AtGames, under licence from Atari since around 2011. I am sure the new Atari is getting this money, since they own the brand, but you can never know for sure...

The Atari Flashback 2 can even be modded to have a cartridge slot, allowing you to play original 2600 games on it. And the joysticks are 100% compatible with the originals, so you can break out your old kit and start playing, or use the new joysticks on old equipment (like what I'm doing with my VIC-20).

Highly unlikely that there will be that level of customization in this, though.

"as Thomas Wolfe said: You Can't Go Home Again."

Presses Home button.

Goes Home.

Invokes App.

Presses Home button.

Goes Home.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong.

The Atari joystick is part of the original experience, or so I assume it would be claimed. I get the impression it's not a great joystick by later standards (even those that used it seem to complain about the construction) but it's certainly iconic.

Personally, I wasn't impressed the very few times I used one. Then again, I wasn't used to it- my Atari 800XL didn't come with a joystick when I bought it, so the first (and main) joystick I had was a Quickshot II Turbo. To me, that's the joystick *I'd* want.

OTOH, someone else wrote to Atari User complaining that it felt like a shovel after they'd got used to the Atari stick (IIRC). I'm not sure any new stick would be an exact replica internally, though, possibly just one that resembles it cosmetically for nostalgia purposes.

The problem is that all the 2600 games were shite. I love my retro gaming and have spent plenty of times playing old games on various consoles. I'll admit I never had a 2600 so the nostalgia is limited to playing them in toy shops and wanting one. The likes of the c64 and speccy had some great games and there are some classics amongst the crap on mame, but the 2600 and its successors were bollocks.

"So get it to emulate ST games too."

...until you realise there's a reason that the once raved about Xenon 2 fell from grace in later years; namely, that now the graphics and sound are no longer state-of-the-art, the design flaws of the original game itself are more obvious.

Anyway, the ST was a product of the value-focused Tramiel era, and a very different "Atari" from the one that designed the VCS. The former was more of a success in Europe, the latter enjoyed its greatest success in the US, so I'm not sure how much nostalgia overlap there is.

"I don't think Atari has a lot of nostalgia left to support this."

I've said something very similar elsewhere. Atari's late 70s / early 80s "golden age" IP has been relentlessly exploited, rehashed and resold for nostalgia-oriented purposes since Hasbro bought the brand 20 years ago. We've had endless rereleases of those same games in numerous formats, and there must be a limit to how often people want to have the same part of their childhood sold back to them.

From my point of view, this is just starting to induce deja vu, an apathetic "oh no, yet another attempt to exploit the IP/nostalgia with 'Flashback Mk II/III/IV/V/whatever by Infogrames masquerading as the same "Atari" that produced the originals".

It's also been observed that most of those people have probably indulged that nostalgia to death and are moving on as they grow older anyway. The new nostalgia wave appears to be more late 80s and 90s related.

(And yes, three quarters of the 1990s are now over 20 years ago now. There are people calling the film "Independence Day" a classic and getting nostalgic about it, FFS. Then you realise most of these people are now twentysomethings who saw it in their childhood 20 years ago and still remember it through those eyes- not as the f****** bloated, cornball, stupid, effects-reliant America ra-ra-ra jingoistic toss that it quite obviously always was if you first saw it as an adult).

Re: Atari 2600: the original and still the best?

I came here to make that point about "original", but you beat me. Thanks for the image.

Anyway, on the "attraction of nostalgia" front, when burglars took my television, back about 1982, they took the time to unhook the (heavy sixer) VCS and leave it behind.

They also left me the VT-100, so maybe just no taste for nerd-gear.