So I saw the arcade versions of Missile Command, Millipede, and Tempest on the trailer. Didn’t see Marble Madness, but Crystal Castles was there.
And no trackball controller, just a classic joystick and a standard dual-analog gamepad. What a shame.
Ouya no thanks
Not trying to be snarky, just legitimately curious, is there anyone here that is actually excited and or wants this? I’m sure there are Atari fans out in the world, and I have no ill will against them or anything, but I think trying to conflate this with Nintendo is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire universe on their part.
This is one of those things you’d maybe buy for 70 bucks, play for 5 minutes, and never turn it on again as far as I can see. They might have a chance if they pitched it as a cheap “look how many games you get” sort of disposable impulse purchase, but hundreds of dollars???../boggle. Maybe I’m just out of touch with the ravenous Atari market desire.
The only thing I would want are paddle controllers for Warlords, Kaboom, Breakout etc and they didn’t even do that.
I love Atari. Love. I had so many Atari games back in the day it was ridic. Remember those double-ended carts? I had a ton of them.
I have no interest in this. At all.
Could be interesting as a small form factor PC if they were more detailed on the specs. As an Atari throwback console… eh. Not for the price.
Currently sitting at 8000 backers and $2m raised.
I’m a big Atari fan, but I did my nostalgic memory-lane trips years ago thanks to emulators like MAME. And so far, I haven’t seen anything from the new console that’s a compelling draw. Certainly not at $200+.
It’s basically a low spec Steambox with a custom front end and some vague talk of classic Atari games. $200 doesn’t seem like an awful lot for that. But that doesn’t mean there’s a market for it. Steamboxes didn’t exactly set the world on fire.
Specs:
CPU: Bristol Ridge A10
GPU: Radeon R7
RAM: 4GB DDR4
Storage: 32GB eMMC, SD card slot and support for external HDD
Connections: HDMI 2.0, 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, Gigabit Ethernet, 4xUSB 3.0
HDCP: HDCP 2.2 compliant
Operating system: Linux OS based on Ubuntu (Linux Kernel 4.10)
Microphones: 4 front-facing mic array
Screencasting: Yes
Power: Low TDP architecture
Weight: 1.36kg
Dimensions: 368.3 x 134.6 x 40.6mm
If you’re going to accuse a reporter of making things up… maybe make sure they aren’t recording your interview first.
What’s sad is that they couldn’t make the system work.
I mean, you can put a RaspberryPI into a box of trivial size and get it to work… probably not gonna be your final system, but you’d think they could have done that and at least given the impression of a working system.
The whole idea of the Atari VCS is kind of dumb though. I don’t think most of the Atari games really hold up the same way that NES or SNES games do.
That only seems to be a small part of it, though, and basically the branding hook to get coverage and funding. I mean, I’m deeply skeptical of it as a mass market product, but if you think of it as basically a Shield with an Atari front-end, it’s not as ridiculous a product/price as it first seemed.
Incidentally, I’m getting a proper nostalgia hit from the comments thread to that Register article. It’s all Atari ST/Amiga and BBC Micro/Spectrum platform wars, just like when I was a lad.
Honestly IMO they had the right idea years ago… a vintage-style joystick you plug in and it has a ton of games pre-loaded. Only they should ideally source Activision/Imagic content as well as Atari. And I guess lack of 2-joystick and/or paddle support is an issue. But a device like this gets you 75% of the way.
Paddle games were some of the best 2600 games though.
Kaboom, Super Breakout, Warlords
Agreed – I would go so far as to say Warlords is one of the best couch-multiplayer games, full stop.
I think there might even have been a paddle version of the joystick gizmo at some point, though to do it proper you need 4 paddles… in which case you are catering to a pretty small slice of customers.
Apparently the controller is good at least, and works on other systems. If it is a similar size and has a similar feel as the original joystick then I’d buy one for sure.
So annoying that these are all Atari VCS, instead of the 5200 - I’d love a 5200. Never even saw a 7800 but guess that would be good too,