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Comment by HeckFeck | Hacker News Reader

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.

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