What’s the Atari 2600+ and the place can you purchase one?

I am unable to consider I will say this, however within the yr 2023, Atari introduced a brand new model of the beloved 2600 recreation console. The brand new system, which is aptly named the Atari 2600+, will play all the unique cartridges from again within the day. What precisely is that this new Atari 2600+ console, and the place can you purchase one? We’ll break all of it down for you so you may dip your toe into the gaming fountain of youth.

What’s the Atari 2600+?

The Atari 2600+ is a comparatively devoted recreation of the unique console, launched in September 1977. The 2600+ will play authentic cartridges from the 2600 and newer 7800 consoles, opening up an enormous library of video games. In fact, you may must have these cartridges sitting round or have the ability to discover them at your favourite native retro recreation store.

Atari features a nifty 10-in-1 cartridge with a collection of traditional video games. It has Journey, Fight, Dodge ‘Em, Haunted Home, Maze Craze, Missile Command, RealSports Volleyball, Encompass, Video Pinball, and Yars’ Revenge. For those who grew up on the Atari 2600 or are even remotely acquainted with the video games individuals liked on it, then you recognize it is a good collection of video games. Positive, there is not any Pac-Man, however that is probably attributable to licensing and the way a lot it might value to get the little dot-eating character on the console.

The {hardware} is a barely shrunk-down Atari 2600, proper all the way down to the wooden grain and metallic switches for resetting, turning the console on and off, and so forth. Internally, it isn’t only a inventory retro game console, although, because the {hardware} is sort of a bit extra fashionable. It has a Rockchip 3128 SOC microprocessor with 256MB DDR3 RAM and 256MB eMMC mounted inside storage, which is sort of a bit extra highly effective than the 1977 machine, which had an 8-bit MOS Know-how 6507 chip and 128 bytes of RAM.

Additionally modernized is the way in which you join the console to the TV. There’s HDMI output and the power to pick out between a number of display screen resolutions. USB powers the console, so some quality-of-life enhancements have actually been made to carry this to fashionable avid gamers.

Atari contains one CX40+ Joystick, which is a devoted recreation of the unique, proper all the way down to the DB9 connector and wire.

The place can you purchase the Atari 2600+?

Proper now, the one place we are able to discover to pre-order the brand new model of the beloved recreation console is thru Atati’s website. Different retailers might inventory the console as soon as it comes out (and if there’s sufficient demand), however it appears like going immediately via Atari is your solely possibility for now.

Outdoors of the console, Atari already gives equipment and extra software program titles. For $25, you may snag an extra CX40+ to play with buddies. For $40, you may seize two CX30+ paddle controllers and four games: Breakout, Canyon Bomber, Night time Driver, and Video Olympics. All of those use paddle controllers, so it is logical for Atari to incorporate them as a bundle. Lastly, there are additionally two video games you should purchase for $30 every: Mr. Run and Jump 2600 and Berzerk – Enhanced Edition.

For those who bought the console itself, an additional controller, and the paddle controller bundle, you are taking a look at $195. If you’d like the extra two video games, you may must spend $255, one other reminder that nostalgia is not at all times low-cost.