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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 February 2024
If you have a stack of old 2600 and 7800 cartridges lying around and your original hardware has bitten the dust, this is an essential piece of kit. The tactile experience of putting the carts in really adds to the nostalgia, and the joysticks are a glorious replica of those un-ergonomic chunks of hard plastic Atari gave us back in the 70's. It's only really going to appeal to the generation wanting to relive their game playing youth or videogame archaeologists, but it's target audience will love it.
IMPORTANT: There are a lot of customer reviews here that complain that their 2600+ won't load all their games. Over the years the cartridge contacts often build up a layer of dirt. Arm yourself with a box of cotton buds and some Isopropyl/lighter fluid (there are plenty of video guides are out there) and they'll clean up really nicely. I got plenty of games to load that originally refused to. Obviously there are some games that will fail after after a few decades, but I only found 2 out of around 180 that just wouldn't work after repeatedly cleaning.
There are some issues with PAL games when using the firmware that comes out of the box (displaying incorrect colours or having sprites missing), but the beta update is available through the Atari age forums which fixes them. This should be officially available once it's gone through some more testing. The developers are also available on the forum to answer queries or talk about future features. Atari are currently re-releasing some classic 2600 & 7800 carts along with some new ones. This is definitely a product that Atari hasn't pushed out on the shelves and forgotten about.
IMPORTANT: There are a lot of customer reviews here that complain that their 2600+ won't load all their games. Over the years the cartridge contacts often build up a layer of dirt. Arm yourself with a box of cotton buds and some Isopropyl/lighter fluid (there are plenty of video guides are out there) and they'll clean up really nicely. I got plenty of games to load that originally refused to. Obviously there are some games that will fail after after a few decades, but I only found 2 out of around 180 that just wouldn't work after repeatedly cleaning.
There are some issues with PAL games when using the firmware that comes out of the box (displaying incorrect colours or having sprites missing), but the beta update is available through the Atari age forums which fixes them. This should be officially available once it's gone through some more testing. The developers are also available on the forum to answer queries or talk about future features. Atari are currently re-releasing some classic 2600 & 7800 carts along with some new ones. This is definitely a product that Atari hasn't pushed out on the shelves and forgotten about.
