I sold it around 2010 with a bunch of associated hardware and manuals. It was the last but one 1980s micro that I had held onto, because it was one of the very few that was built to a spec rather than down to a price. For it's day, the hardware was astonishing - sprites, yes, but each line of the display could come from anywhere in the memory and scrolling it was simply a matter of changing a register. This meant that games could move serious numbers of pixels around on the screen smoothly and quickly.
I have missed having it but a) it took up a lot of space and b) I also got rid of the old analogue TV.
So the second I saw a review of this, I ordered one. It calls itself half-size - it's smaller than that. Perhaps it's around half the size of the 65XE which had an optional keyboard.
The 720p display on the HD TV is great, with the option of making it worse if you really want it to look like a CRT analogue TV. As with the original, sound comes via the TV and there is no audio jack or Bluetooth so if you want to use a computer monitor, it either needs speakers or you want an HDMI audio splitter.
Twenty five games are included - Airball, Asteroids, Basketball, Battle zone, Berzerk, Boulder Dash, Bristles, Capture the Flag, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Elektraglide, Encounter!, Flip and Flop, Henry’s House, Hover Bovver, Lee (AKA 'we couldn't get the licence to keep the original "Bruce Lee" name), M.U.L.E., Millipede, Miner 2049er, Missile Command, O’Riley’s Mine, Star Raiders II, The Seven Cities of Gold, Wavy Navy and Yoomp!
If you had one, you'll know that includes some absolute classics.. and some that weren't. There are also some screaming omissions: the original Star Raiders, Pacman, Pole Position.. and that's just from Atari.
Fortunately, a USB port at the back lets you plug in a USB stick with other games/utilities on in a variety of standard (for Atari archiving and emulation) formats. Remembering that cartridges had up to 8k of memory (16k for ones using fancy tricks) and the standard Atari disc drives held around 80k bytes - less than the size of the logos here - you can fit a LOT of things on a single stick. Sadly the flap on top that looks like the original cartridge cover is a non working fake, because it would have been so neat to be able to plug the USB stick in there.
Also included is a USB joystick styled to look like the original (and terrible) Atari ones. They have some extra buttons because all the keys on the console are as fake as the cartridge cover lid. These can be mapped to any single key or you can plug in a USB keyboard. Similarly you can use (most) USB controllers etc.
So for me, it's absolutely five stars. It costs less than I sold the real hardware for but is vastly easier to use and store.
For you... it depends. The Atari 8-bit micros were fascinating and there's a lot of stuff out there that will run on this. Inside it is a ten year old Arm processor and graphics chip. You could get a Raspberry Pi and run the same 'atari800' emulation software as this one for less... but it wouldn't be as simple.
UPDATE: it is VERY fussy about which USB sticks it will accept. Even when programs on your computer say the stick is FAT32 format with an MBR - what THE400 demands - it may not work. Formatting via Ubuntu didn't work, formatting via Windows 10 Explorer didn't work, formatting via the Windows command line didn't work. What did was using a Windows program, Partition Wizard, fortunately the free version.
Given it's so fussy, why they didn't include a 'correctly' formatted stick is beyond me, as is why the Linux it uses is unable to read other formats it doubtless uses itself...
Once you have the right format, it appears as 'media' in the carousel. Interestingly, it won't work with some ATR files that RetroPie does.
UPDATE 2: I have agonised about it, but it's been returned. While running atari800 on a Pi isn't quite as simple as it could be, thanks to having to track down the ROM files yourself, put them in the right place etc, it does mean that when something doesn't work, you can almost always fix it.
Here, I got no response at all from the maker's support email address over the USB stick issue. I still have no clue whatsoever why, say, Pole Position won't run on this, despite being able to run exactly the same files on the same emulator on the Pi, and there are no log files or anything else I can examine to see why, or emulation settings to tweak beyond the very few that this offers.
Frequently bought together
This item: Retro Games THE400 Mini
£83.32
In stock
Not Machine Specific
+
£82.29
Get it as soon as Wednesday, Aug 7
Only 4 left in stock.
Linux
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your basket.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start againPage 1 of 1
From the manufacturer
Top reviews from United Kingdom
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Top reviews from other countries
Stefan Michlmayr
Klein und fein
Reviewed in Germany on 1 July 2024Style Name: THE400 MiniVerified Purchase
Client d'Amazon
Super produit !
Reviewed in France on 27 April 2024Style Name: THECXSTICKVerified Purchase
Client d'Amazon
Reviewed in France on 27 April 2024
Images in this review
