Atari Launches Atari 2600+ | Hacker News Reader

Atari Launches Atari 2600+

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98 pointsmanaskarekar97 comments

Nostalgic for older genXers such as myself who grew up with these things. Hard to imagine younger generations having patience or interest in such primitive games though. Needs to be played in basement on CRT TV with wood paneled walls though.

Also need a mom in the background shouting that we should go play outside...

I recently played a bunch of these classic games with my 7 and 10 year old nieces and they loved them. There’s something magnetic about the challenge and simplicity that seems timeless IMO

Here are my kids playing my childhood 2600 from 1982 https://www.instagram.com/p/CIJ0aeTJAuo

And complete lack of ads and load times..

Needs to be played on a CRT in general. For retro games, you can't beat the low latency and fantastic glow of an electron gun. No shader emulation comes close.

...I find this hard to believe. A modern high-quality 4K HDR screen is exceedingly good at recreating all sorts of lifelike imagery. You're telling me the one thing it can't effectively recreate is a CRT television?

Input lag is probably the biggest issue, but you can get very low-latency screens nowadays! None of them are actually 0ms, but neither were CRTs unless you're measuring only the top of the screen and not the bottom.

It depends.. the waterfall effects in the likes of Sonic are pretty hard without a real CRT.

If you're using an emulator, there are quite a few filters that can help to recreate that old feel, none are quite right though.

The waterfall effect of Sonic is more of a result of composite video artifacts. Using a RGB cable, the effect is much less pronounced.

I know.. and it was designed that way. It wasn't a bug but a feature of the game where the designer/developer knew how that would artifact on the screen, and was done intentionally. It really doesn't emulate/simulate well on a modern display.

The waterfall effect is basically just blur! The problem with adding blur is that—although it makes the waterfall effect work—it makes the image blurry.

Personally, I don't think it's that the CRT is better than the filters, I think you're just used to the imperfections of a CRT.

Also, I really do think you need a 4K HDR screen (with good HDR, there's a lot of variance) in order for filters to really emulate the look of a CRT.

It's not a blur so much as intentionally designed to use how a CRT/Composite video would artifact on a CRT. It's not a matter of better or worse, just that filters/simulation won't work well for that same effect.

Also, in a lot of ways a good CRT does look significantly better than all but OLED displays for games. The down side is they're heavy. I used to have two 22" calibrated flat screen displays that I loved, and only very recently are new displays visual quality on par. I stopped using them more because of space and size than quality. They weighed 85# each and had a permanent bow in the desk I was using back then. Moving 3x in one summer I decided to go with flat pannel. Not as good, but was doing less design work and more programming since then.

No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint. Same problem. Plus, no static.

> No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint.

It actually can on a really good hdr tv! And there's no reason a crt filter couldn't add static.

I meant physical static. How are my overlays supposed to stick?

I agree, I've tried numerous times to get my kids interested in the games I love from childhood, and they find them so boring. Modern games have a level of pacing, engagement, and art style that are all really attractive to kids, it's hard to get people with no nostalgia to go backwards. However, there will always be some that are attracted to retro and lofi but not the majority.

> Nostalgic

Just looking at those pictures I got a faint whiff of wood and warm plastic from 40+ years ago.

I setup an RPi a few years ago to play some of these old games... played with upscaling settings, played a few games I used to love... flipped the score on asteroids after a few hours, and hadn't touched it since.

"The system comes with a CX40+ Joystick which has been lovingly recreated to the same specifications as the original"

I don't think the person that wrote this ad copy was alive when the original, fragile-as-glass 2600 joysticks were in circulation, or maybe they were and were able to slip this joke into the product description unnoticed.

Fragile’s not really the right word. They often were flaky about reporting input, but were quite hardy when the player responded by smacking them against the floor in an effort to revive them.

Maybe they fixed it in later versions, but the controllers had plastic “fingers” inside that would press down on the metal dome button, and it was pretty easy to push the stick too hard where it would snap the plastic finger. I think that’s what most people remember about their fragility.

I could also see that the electrical signal from the metal dome button probably wasn’t very clean/reliable, however I don’t think most people noticed that in the same way they would today.

I remember sometimes, the rubber cover of the stick would slide off the stick, and then you had a wonderful suction cup that you could stick on your brother's forehead. Then you could call him a unicorn.

It came off on a couple of my joysticks, and I found that just using the white plastic underneath felt more precise.

I would describe them as blister-inducing and creaky. But relatively dependable (to a point).

"Simmons Fracture": https://www.atarimagazines.com/v5n1/repairjoystick.html

Yeah, and at the time this weakness was in a way a learning opportunity that may have been more valuable than the formal play the console offered.

It provided a safe way to learn about design and manufacturing techniques during disassembly and hypothesis testing re: how does it work?

It provided lessons in materials science and chemistry: "On TV, the Superglue held that construction guy in midair attached only by a small dot of glue between his hardhat and the steel girder above him. Why won't it hold the plastic ring together? Why is duct tape somewhat better if you don't mind frequent reapplication?"

Engineering: "The joystick-ring-switch mechanism is something like the levers we have to calculate mechanical advantage on at school. If so, there is a comparatively huge moment on the tip of the joystick compared to the plastic ring."

There were also some global macroeconomic principles in there that we were too naive to appreciate, but in our defense, most of our parents didn't appreciate the change that was coming either.

It looks like they sell paddles too. I'd pay for those, especially if there was a USB adaptor, so I could just run the games on a PC or raspberry pi.

They weren't that fragile, but did tend to wear out after maybe a couple of months of heavy use.

> to wear out after maybe a couple of months

That is my definition of fragile.

When they say "lovingly recreated", the "love" is for money, not hardware.

As kids, I remember one time we got really desperate and disassembled a broken joystick to see if we could still play by pressing the internal 'buttons' directly. Although it technically worked, the experience was poor, to say the least.

Aren't people interested with that kind of retro console really more interested in scoring an Sony Trinitron and the original console in the second hand market instead?

I don't see the newer generation getting suddenly attracted by the primitive graphics. Only the nostalgic, hardcore retro gamers do really care about that. And these are the kind of people who want the exact real experience, which mean using a CRT TV/monitor and the real machine. Only concession they sometimes do is using a cartdridge with sdcard support.

And it is not like those old Ataris are rare and difficult to find which would justify the existence of alternatives. I see a few ones available for around ~50€ in the local market, less than half the price of that thing.

CRT monitors being out of production is the single biggest impediment to authentic retro gaming. It just doesn’t look anywhere near the same on a modern display, unless maybe if you use the most advanced CRT shaders on a high-powered PC with a 4K+ display, and then you still have the higher latency.

I’ve often wondered of the feasibility of some kind of special built LED monitor with a custom chip to handle real-time (within a frame or two) scan line generation and CRT mask / phosphor glow emulation built in, with a slightly curved glass in front of it to complete the illusion.

That way, to my uneducated mind, the monitor itself would be handling the CRT shader effects and could accept any input, including real 80s/90s/00s devices.

But it’s quite likely that I’m underestimating what it would take to have a dedicated input processor in a display that works as well as the GPU shaders do, and underestimating the minimum amount of input lag required.

You could certainly integrate a shader into a monitor using a sufficiently powerful GPU or equivalent. But looking at https://i0.wp.com/wackoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CRT... for example, you'd need at least 10 times the original resolution, which for NTSC would translate to roughly the same vertical resolution as an 8K display, if not more.

The curved glass wouldn't be necessary, nor very desirable, IMO. Trinitron TVs were approximatly flat and great for CRT gaming.

I got one of these four years ago so I could use an old VCR with a modern TV. Works great! Amazon shows no longer available, but similar products can be found for about $10.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QPS7BK8

Nobody's having issues connecting them to modern TVs, the issue is they don't look even remotely the same.

Here are some pictures that illustrate the difference: https://wackoid.com/game/10-pictures-that-show-why-crt-tvs-a...

And here's some retro-arch shader comparisons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4QOHe4bOZc

Interesting. What's the opinion on OLED? I've been pretty happy with the results connecting my Nintendo Wii to one.

Pretty much all modern displays are too sharp for low-resolution bitmaps designed for a CRT. The whole modern "pixel art" where you see the art being made up of visible squares is not what you actually would have seen in the 8/16-bit console eras on a TV. Later arcade cabinets were much sharper, but still pixels were more like overlapping circles with Gaussian blur than they were squares.

The Wii is fine on OLED, the issue is with older consoles. Anything designed for TV's before 720p was a thing are where you will run into display disparities.

Well, maybe nobody here is having issues, but right now I own only one monitor with a composite video input. None of the other dozen TVs and monitors I own have one. Fortunately most DTVs can still display NTSC RF, so that's also an option for old equipment.

Some are, some aren't. I happily got the NES and SNES retro consoles when they came out and I play them on a modern TV or monitor. I don't care about the CRT scanlines and artifacting. (I do care about a CRT's lagless instant response time, which is an issue for some games. I do have HDMI monitors with as low lag time as you can get.)

The old Atari consoles are common, but it's hit and miss as to whether they work well or at all, particularly the power supply and also the controllers. It's reasonable to spend a few bucks on some modern hardware if you want. I probably wouldn't play Atari games quite enough to justify it myself.

This might be very subjective, but NES games were actually enjoyable. 2600 era games, while they were enjoyable for the time, were instantly obsoleted IMHO once the NES came around and you had games with stories, no matter how thin, and endings and such. The whole "high score" era of games, I personally have no interest in going back to those at all. Maybe one or two games of Grand Prix and River Raid, but I know I would get bored really quick.

I'd recommend some of the 2-player games, like Combat.

I have the original one (a heavy sixer), but connecting to a modern TV is a bit of a pain. I installed the modchip and have hi-def HDMI-to-Component adapter, and colors are still off, and overall image has some artifacts.

I think the 2600+ hits a sweet spot for nostalgic GenX-ers who don't want the hassle of making a 50+ yr-old console working with modern TVs. Plus, at $129, it's actually cheaper than buying a used console + converters.

I have many HDMI TVs, but no CRT (nor the space). I would consider this just for the HDMI connection, since I still have my old collection of games and controllers lying around. Getting my original console connected to HDMI doesn't really work.

If they made it easy to write new games for it, with full documentation and a method to get the games on the console, I bet it would really take off with the fantasy console people.

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=949

http://8bitworkshop.com/v3.1.0/?=&platform=vcs&file=examples...

https://archive.org/details/StellaProgrammersGuide

There is also batari basic, not sure how much more accessible or easy they could make it. The first link cartridges should work in 2600+

Never tried it myself, but the Atari Flashback consoles [1] had an SD card slot that you could use to play your own ROMs.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback_series

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. A retro console with an easy way for novices to develop and distribute games. I can see that being a hit.

I was hoping they'd went the FPGA route, but this looks like another emulator in a box.

Yep, hardware says:

  Featuring a Rockchip 3128 SOC microprocessor with 256MB DDR3 RAM and 256MB eMMC fixed internal storage. Wired CX40+ Joystick with serial port connector.

So probably Linux plus emulators. Hope they respect licenses.

Thing is Atari has been through several bankrupcies and name changes, and I think currently they are just expliting IP and licenses, including failed business like hotels, NFT tokens based games... so I'm not expecting anything great.

I feel like that CPU is way overkill for emulating 2600/7800 games. They might be starting from one of those "5,000 games" things and just deleting 8 of the emulators and all of the games and then adding in something to read the ROMs off the cartridges. Probably based on some existing modules that people have been using for years to burn them.

Very likely. The Rockchip stuff is super popular with that type of console and it’s easy to get Linux or Android going. HDMI out too; the Rockchip is probably one of the cheapest ways to get an HDMI signal out and USB in (which the controller almost certainly is.)

The Hyperkin RetroN does the same cartridge reading + emulator trick. It’s a neat but flawed device and I suspect the same flaws will show up here. $130 for a nice looking case and authentic feeling controller isn’t a terrible markup especially given the cartridge reader adapter.

I wonder how hackable it will be? It might be useful as a home server when isn't playing games (and maybe when it is as well). When you total up the cost of a Pi 4 (if you can get one) plus case, PSU, SD card... this isn't badly priced.

As silly as that hotel concept seemed, I was still hoping it would make it. A hotel with a couple of family friendly locations really focused on shared entertainment areas could make for a nice concept.

There are a few other brands that have had some success along the same lines.

The name has been owned and used by what had previously been Infogrames since 2003, twenty years ago. They’re legit, still pump out mainstream games and aren’t fly by night at all.

They release games but they've been for a while in the market of buying/selling IP too much, and has done weird things like Atari Token and Atari Casino. In fact, their investor site describes them as:

  Atari’s core businesses include video games, consumer hardware, licensing and blockchain.

So I try to review slowly whatever thing they release before hyping too much.

If the RK3128 supported pulling this off, it'd be a lot more fitting for a 2600 emulator console to just use the 8K SRAM, an 8Mb (megabit) SPI ROM, and then direct-mapping the 256K L2 as SRAM. Then have the display output scaled from a 320x200 buffer held in that SRAM.

Basically that'd turn it into a really big RP2040 ;)

For real. Atari 2600 enthusiasts who actually own cartridges and want to buy something like this will almost certainly be put off by the inauthenticity of software emulation. It seems well-engineered (9-pin serial ports for the controllers, even). But FPGA vs. software emulation is where my mind draws a line between interpreting these as either a premium product, or a novelty toy.

The fact that there's a cartridge compatibility list indicates that this is not a real machine, but an emulator which does not even do a good job of emulating the cartridge ports. I was so close. This is the same disappointment as the Ultimate64 that has a cartridge port, but one which does not actually simulate it completely.

It's a shame, because it'd not have been too difficult to get there.

> It's a shame, because it'd not have been too difficult to get there.

Like the Atari FlashBack 2, which reimplemented the original hardware design as an SoC and was designed to be modded with a cartridge port?

https://www.wired.com/2005/08/the-best-atari-yet/

I hope they will revive the ST microcomputer family, that's way more interesting to me personally.

That would be an exciting product to literally tens of people.

Don't hold your breath for a box with FPGA...(I wish as well), more likely Hatari running on a SOC -more or less like THEC64Mini/THEA500 -I bet.

That would be truly fantastic!

> Plays both Atari 2600 and 7800 game cartridges

and they include one "10 in 1" cart already. Expect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes, assuming theres not already some direct facility for it to have an SD card or something.

I suspect there's few people who own many original Atari 2600 or 7800 carts that really want to use them like this: surely that'll degrade their antique value? Its like "dont play with the beanie babies"... And emulation will be available with all sorts of extra features as well as fewer drawbacks.

Yep, there is a flash cartridge called the Harmony Cartridge. It’s great for playing Atari home brew games which in many cases are better than anything available on the original VCS. Pac-man 4k is a great example. https://harmony.atariage.com/Site/Harmony.html

Expect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes

I get why a curious engineer would do this, but there are already so many devices we have laying around that can already hook into the TV and play atari (and other) games...

I suspect there's few people who own many original Atari 2600 or 7800 carts that really want to use them like this: surely that'll degrade their antique value?

History shows that if this takes off, it'll increase demand for carts and raise prices. Of course, prices on these carts aren't that high to begin with. There's a ton of them laying around, so the supply might be able to absorb the demand...

True collectors pieces might be something CIB, and yeah, you wouldn't want to crack those open, but even some games like Galaga are only going for $20 CIB...

>Expect it wont be long before someone has a Pi or Arduino shim to feed this thing any ROM one likes, assuming theres not already some direct facility for it to have an SD card or something.

Well sure... but that defeats the entire purpose. Of course you could just run an emulator and not even need the hardware. The point is that people enjoy collecting old cartridges. Hence why used N64s now sell for $200.

It is an emulator though :/ the specs say it’s a Rockchip with 256MB of RAM, not an FPGA. It’s also not 100% compatible with all cartridges.

>It is an emulator though :/

Well that sucks. Honestly I'd be more surprised if it wasn't, given Atari's zombie status as an IP holding company.

If it's really compatible with 2600 carts, SD card carts already exist and work great!

Personally I've found 2600 carts to be pretty durable. Almost all of the carts I bought new still work, and I still use them frequently!

They have a list published; it’s compatible with some, but not all, cartridges. It’s a Rockchip-based system, not an FPGA like Analogue’s stuff; my guess is this will work like the Hyperkin RetroN. Those systems dump the ROM off of the cartridge and then start an emulator it, which doesn’t work with SD card carts - the emulated ROM loads but can’t find the SD card because the emulator doesn’t actually talk to the cartridge hardware directly.

I wonder if that "10 in 1" cart will run on a real 2600?

I don't think Atari+ is worth 125 dollars, honestly.

Maybe it's worth it for people who still has 2600 carts, but compared to other classic console remakes that all came with more than 10 games, $125 doesn't seem like a great deal.

$60 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Classic_Edition

$80 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_Classic_Edition

$80 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis_Mini

$100 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic

and the games aren't worth $30 each either

https://atari.com/products/berzerk-enhanced-edition

I purchased the "Atari's Greatest Hits" iOS app for my (previous) iPad over 10 years ago. I also forked out the extra cash for ALL of the games, which included a bunch of 2600 games. The arcade game emulations are great, but the 2600 games are hardly worth playing. They are nostalgic for me because I had purchased a 2600 console as a gift for my sister on Christmas 1977, but the quality is shameful when compared against any computer game released since.

It's pretty amazing what they could do with a one megahertz processor, four kilobytes of ROM (in the cartridge), and 128 bytes of RAM.

https://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?8

And no GPU!

Is Atari still the old Infogrames? Or did the brand change hands again?

Hard to say. Atari has been cannibalized so many times it's hard to recognize what's what anymore. Much of the IP was parted out and sold off.

As far as the company proper goes, the original Atari Inc from 1972 was broken up by Warner into two parts in 1984. The consumer division became Atari Corp, while the coin op division became Atari Games.

Atari Games was partially owned by Warner/Namco for a while, then JTS, Hasbro, was at Midway Games for a while, but now is back at Time Warner / Warner Bros. Games.

Atari Corp ended up at Infrogrames (IESA) in 2001ish. They bough up all public shares and took the company private in 2008. They then renamed IESA to Atari SA to better represent the brand. So IESA doesn't really exist anymore. It's all Atari SA now.

Good news is that since 2020/2021 Atari SA seems pretty focused on restoring the brand. For a long time they didn't release hardware and simply regurgitated/licensed old titles. But recently they've released new hardware/software again. Their focus seems to be around being a "retro gaming" company, old style gameplay on newer hardware. For example, there's this [1] and this [2]

Personally I'm excited that there seems to be an attempt to make Atari a "product company" again. They seem the most focused they've been since Jaguar. Who knows if it will pay off, but at least they're swinging.

[1] https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump [2] https://atari.com/products/mr-run-and-jump-2600

Thanks, that's very helpful!

seems like it according to wikidia

https://atari-investisseurs.fr/en/about-atari/ is less clear though

I wonder what "widescreen mode" means, I couldn't find any description of that on the page?

I have a couple of Atari consoles and a bunch of games that I bought on a whim a few years back, but connecting them to my current TV is no longer possible. This would solve that issue with the HDMI connection.

Ugh; that original joystick was not comfy to use. If this uses a standard connector I'd try find an old Wico or similar.

Website says "joystick with serial port connector". Do they mean the original DE-9 connector, or is this something different?

Nostalgic? Sure

Do I actually want to play these ten really basic games today? Maybe for five minutes

Is it worth $120? Nope

The system comes with a CX40+ Joystick which has been lovingly recreated to the same specifications as the original, and a 10-in-1 game cartridge featuring some of Atari’s most famous games: Adventure®, Combat®, Dodge 'Em™, Haunted House®, Maze Craze™, Missile Command®, RealSports® Volleyball, Surround™, Video Pinball™, Yars' Revenge®.

What... no E.T.? Off to my local New Mexico landfill I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

1. Hey it looks like you're in the UK - click here to set the shipping options

2. Click

3. This product is only available for shipping in the United States.

Why bother with (1)?!?!?!?!

I’d imagine the option was a function of the larger store which has things actually for sale in the UK.

It's a pity it's USA only.

Is that real wood on the front?

The original wasn't real wood; I can't imagine this one would be.

If it wasn't a wood veneer, what was it? Paint?

A faux wood decal.

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