Emehr

Speaking of manuals, the back side of those slip cases would be a great place to print the game select matrix and a short controller description.

It'd be kinda neat if Atari put some hidden buttons underneath the "chin" of the 2600+: one each for "Menu" and "Back". The joystick would control selections and the fire button for "OK".

I was going to jump on this thread specifically to suggest an Atari-branded Roblox game. Adventure would be a great start. They should probably drop 9 games (just to keep with tradition) to explore various genres. Even better (maybe?), make one Roblox game that touches on all of the classic Atari gameplay mechanics. Maybe you start out playing Adventure. Get the chalice and now you've got robots and Evil Otto chasing you in a haunted house while you try to find the pieces of the urn or something. Savvy players who get the easter egg will transport them into something more cerebral like a Swordquest or Raiders-like game where they need to find clues. Something fun to drawn in new players and get them enjoying content with the Atari fuji. If Atari wants to grab the attention of younger people they're going to need a gateway and Roblox might be a good way in.

I just shot some video. Unfortunately I didn't notice the light glare at the exact spot that covers the action. Sorry about that (I can shoot it again but I was just happy to get it on the first take!). When Pac-Man gets stuck you can still kind of make out that his graphic is "lodged" in the top escape route. When you move the stick he breaks free and moves vertically. Pac-bug.mov

Yep! That's the one.

I've known about this bug since the early 80s . Getting Pac-Man stuck in the escape route is one of my core 2600 memories from childhood! I would do it at the top escape route but wouldn't get too aggressive with the wiggling (lol). Just enough to keep Pac from coming back out.

I can't tell but is he trying to get Pac-Man stuck in the escape route? I remember discovering that when I was a kid and Pac would glitch out by looping vertically down (or up) the screen.

I first tried Antonio's composite adapter and had mixed results. The dot-crawl was very prominent to the point of distraction for most consoles to about the NES era and became less noticeable for the 16-bit and later eras. I ended up a bit disappointed and disconnected it altogether. Then I got ahold of the MikeS adapter and that made a world of difference. My MiSTer is hooked up to my CRT television full time. It it indistinguishable to having a Genesis or NES hooked up to my TV. I do keep a smaller rotatable HDMI monitor next to it for those arcade games that have a vertical orientation. It's also fun to do a side-by-side comparison to see the advantages of CRT in real-time.

@zzip @Lord Mushroom @Giles N This square-jaw Adventure guy talk inspired me to sketch something up... I tried him with appendages but ditched them in favor of keeping him true to his squarish nature, letting the action of his sword and shield fill in the blanks. I like the idea of an expressionless visor. As for a name: Sir Squarinn?

Is there any noticeable input lag with this? My "go to" test game for NES emulators has always been Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and whether I can beat Soda Popinski or not. Not sure off the top of my head what an equivalent 2600 cart would be to test for fast-reflex gameplay. Maybe the BMX event in California Games? Or Dragster if you wanted to get nuts.

Regarding the DIP switches, I think they're a neat idea. It would be super-trivial to 3D print a key where you can use a flat edge to "reset" the switches to zero and the keyed side to set the game. They can print little labels for the keys and put 'em on a key ring or something.

I always prefer to "roll my own" when it comes to programming but thought I'd try out a game engine since they have pretty solid physics systems in place. Figured I'd give Unity a shot to prototype a game idea that'd been bouncing around in my head since it had pretty good 2D support as well. I was just starting to get comfortable getting up and running when this all blew up. I feel bad for the indie developers who invested years into this software only to have it come crumbling down like this. It's a shame to see such a seemingly well-made product get corrupted like this. What a waste. Welp, time to try out Godot...

StellaRack (no meaning, just thought it sounded good)

I think there's a sweet spot in that later 8-bit (NES/SMS) and 16-bit era (Genesis/SuperNES/Turbo) where the games just look better on CRT. The pixel sizes were at just the right size to take advantage of that CRT blending byproduct. Games like Golden Axe or Super Metroid just don't look right without it. Earlier games in the 2600/Intellivision/Colecovision era had large blocky graphics and few colors so there weren't a lot of gradients happening in the artwork so the games look fine on either CRT or LCD. Same with handhelds. Lynx was fairly low-res and the colors onscreen were low so I'd prefer to just play on LCD. Same with GameBoy/Color. GameBoy Advance, however, mimics the look of SuperNES games and I gotta say, the games look very good on CRT. At the other end of the CRT-sweet spot era are the N64 and PlayStation games where the higher pixel resolution didn't benefit much from the CRT blending so again, I can play any of those on either technologies (CRT or LCD) and be content. So, in my case at least, I don't think it's nostalgia. It's more, "what looks better". To me, it's seems to be all dependent on both the pixel dimensions and color depth of the game.

Trying to get back on topic here, I have a two-part question for @Albert and @TrogdarRobusto : So, with AtariAge and Atari working together, are there any plans for incentivizing homebrew authors (or teams of programmers, artists, and/or designers) to develop new titles for the 2600+? While nostalgia is a good hook, I feel that having a block of, say, nine(?) new titles could help invigorate interest. On a related note, I understand some of the original Activision authors (Dan Kitchen and I thought one other?) from back in the day wrote some new 2600 titles recently. Has Atari reached out to any of these original developers since some still seem to have an active interest in the console?

Lots of discussion about what makes an iteration of Atari "real". People come and go so it can't just be the people who work there so how about this: "Real" Atari produces new hardware. Lynx and Jaguar were the last pieces of original hardware produced by Atari. So I propose that once Atari ships and sells millions of Atari 2600+ units and have enough money in the bank, they either engineer or acquire (as they did with Handy/Lynx) hardware they can call their own. This would end the discussion, right? And Atari will have officially earned its fuji 😀 (related note: is the company that makes Playdate for sale? or is willing to license their tech? That's a cool little piece of tech that looks like something Atari would make)

Probably too late to retool the molds but interchangeable faceplates would be a neat option for any future 2600+ models.

Here's my take, for what it's worth: this is Atari. Let's do the math: Atari = Albert + Nolan Bushnell (as advisor) + the powers that be at Atari To me, it really doesn't get any more Atari than this. I'm in.

Congratulations, Al! I've been on this site for 20+ years and AtariAge has always felt like it's been carrying the torch for the Atari brand since it fell from the public spotlight in the post-Lynx/Jaguar days. Now that it's officially part of Atari, it feels like things have come full circle. This actually makes me more excited for the 2600+. Best of luck! Also, welcome to the site TrogdarRobusto!

I pre-ordered on GOG and got $5 off. Just downloaded today and tried it out. My only exposure to Karateka is the 7800 version (yeah, I know) but I love these Digital Eclipse offerings and have a great appreciation for indie game developers. And for $5 off, why not? I played the Apple II version and was able to make it inside the fortress and to the gate, where I was summarily killed because I couldn't get into my fighting stance quick enough. That was already a lot further than I had ever made it in the 7800 version! And my hand wasn't cramped by then either! I then tried the "remix" version (or whatever they call it) and it was nice! The pixel art is true to the spirit of the original and there are a lot of nice background animations. The only thing that bothers me (and this goes for a lot of modern pixel art games) is the pixel inconsistency. I feel like if the art is going to be blocky, then so should the lighting. But that's just a minor nitpick. It looks and plays great otherwise. I still need to delve further into it...

This reminds me when the Flashback 2 came out. There was a lot of discussion about "Well, why don't they just add a cartridge port?" and a lot of the responses (besides the cost aspect) basically being "Think of the customer service disaster when those old carts are plugged in and don't work." Funny thing is, the FB2 probably has better compatibility with the 2600 library. I just hope Atari is able to improve that compatibility list. It's pretty sad that the weakest link is the cart dumper when under the hood Stella can run pretty much anything you throw at it. They should've gone with SD cards encased in miniature 2600 cartridge cases or something and skipped the dumper altogether.

I like that this is happening but come on...the technology is right there: modern 2600-compatible hardware with cartridge interface (Flashback 2) + composite to HDMI converter (RetroTink, for example, I'm sure there are cheaper options that would be adequate) = something everybody could love. Probably with some revisions to the modern 2600 hardware (or even a modern implementation of 7800 hardware), we'd be able to plug in our modern homebrews, our flash carts, and our legacy cartridges from the ancient time and play in glorious HD. If they're going to go all the way with supporting legacy cartridges and controllers, why not bridge the gap and support modern homebrews that use newer technology? They might even spark new interest. They were so close! (I really want this regardless because the presentation is very nice)

Qb was one of my earliest AA homebrew purchases and is one of the first I dug out and put on my shelf after my move. Such a cool little game.

I never much cared for the look of DKC. Maybe it's purely psychological but if it were being rendered in real time I would've been more impressed. Using pre-rendered CGI felt like the cheap way out to avoid having an artist hand-draw each frame of animation, which would've looked a lot nicer, IMO. If DKC looked more like Metal Slug (that is, excellent animation that is hand-drawn) I'd have jumped on it right away instead of waiting years after its release. I can enjoy the games well enough now, but it always feels like I'm playing an "ok" platformer with disjointed visuals. It's hard to explain but the 3D appearance of the characters never felt like they were really inhabiting the world. More like they were just overlaid on it. I much prefer DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze. I feel like those games took what DKC was trying to be and perfected it. Back on topic, I missed the boat on Super Mario RPG. Probably would've avoided it back in the day for the same reasons as above. By all accounts it's a good game that deserves better visuals so I'll probably check out the Switch release.

I'm all for this. I love the ports and appreciate the work put into them but it's always been a gray area and I was never sure which ones had the blessing of the IP owners. I'd hate to see the legal hammer come down on this site and/or the homebrew authors. Not only that, maybe this will open the floodgate to more inspired ideas. Look at the work Andrew Davie is doing with his Wen Hop game. That's the cool new stuff I personally like to see for this hardware that's about as old as I am. I see AtariAge as a publisher just as much as Atari, Activision, Parker Bros, and Imagic and cutting loose the games that may be a liability will be good in the long run.