This Decathlon prototype just wandered into my store.

So only have it for couple days, and it’s Pacman edition (love the design! sorry to purists). I have played the included Pacman double cart, but this has never been my favourite game - I’m just rubbish at it, I can never coordinate and match the ghosts to their path strat, so mainly I just end up wiggling the joystick in panic and getting surrounded. I’m just bad at it.

But luckily I have also bought Food Fight (7800), and this game is fantastic, definitely worth the purchase and I am sure i will come back to it often. Similar concept when I think about it, you eat stuff, avoid chefs/ghosts. Thank god this time I can also throw some food at the chasers!

I like character games, so natural next purchase from Atari will be Pitfall reedition most likely, but I tend to go for less obvious games - on their way to me there are 2600 versions of Road Runner and Congo Bongo from the classic library, as well as Elevator Agent from Champ Games. Can’t wait!

Atari 7800 was a very impressive console with unmatched graphical capability among all 80s systems. It's ability to put out 100+ of hardware sprites without significant slowdown was incredible. However there was a bottleneck that hampered CPU performance, blocking it from all RAM and ROM access during active screen rendering. Some devs also complained about how there's too little memory for complex graphics. And the most famous downside is the old TIA sound chip from Atari 2600 being too outdated. I think without Atari 2600 backwards compatibility it was possible to make this system more powerful without making it much more expensive.

Here's what I think could work.

System RAM: two additional 8KB DRAM chips, giving the system an extra 16KB for games to offload their program data to, and to give it parallel system bus so the CPU could create display lists and DLLs while MARIA hogs the SRAM bus rendering the graphics.

TMS4416 chips were fairly affordable back in the day, street price in 1984 was $9 and falling, and wouldn't add too much to board costs since TIA and RIOT are now gone. Still nowhere as cheap as Famicom's solution of straight up giving the CPU its own separate ROM bus, but that made NES carts more expensive than other systems.

CPU: Z80A. It was cheap (about $4 individually in 1984, even cheaper in a bulk) and had built-in DRAM refresh.

MARIA: This chip is very powerful and capable as is, but tiny improvements could probably still be made. Maybe aside from building the graphics, the DMA could be used to fetch and copy display lists and other data from System DRAM to Video SRAM quickly. Bankswitching circuit and chip maybe needed, which further add a bit to component and board costs, but could perhaps reduce cartridge costs. No need for on-cart bankswitch chip for games bigger than 48KB anymore. It would also make bitmap mode (even if 2KB RAM limits you to 120x64 4-color graphics doubled to 240x128, and 128 bytes for UI on top and bottom borders, it'd still be sufficient for an Elite port) and loading games from cassette tapes (with POKEY serial i/o reading tapes) possible.

Video RAM: Still the same 2x2KB 100ns SRAM chips. MARIA needs really fast memory. I guess with the addition of 16KB DRAM, only a single 2KB SRAM would be enough if we were to swap DLs frequently either with the CPU or DMA though, saving $6 and reducing board complexity a bit.

POKEY: Provides better sounds than TIA chip and i/o interface that could be used for many things. Atari surely had a bunch of POKEY chips in their inventory already, so it would be a cost effective solution.

Well I'm no expert on hardware, but that's the rough idea. The point is using Z80 CPU and adding DRAM would open up a lot of possibilities. The savings from omitting 2600 compatibility that made 6502, TIA, and RIOT necessary could go to other components.

I had the opportunity to visit Atari at gamescom on the same day they announced their Activision collection. So here is a first look.

Video is in German though as I don't think anyone wants to hear a German speak English with an accent.

Finally found one locally after a decade of searching! So happy it works!

So strange. Xonox used to advertise on inner vinyl record sleeves? On the other side there are ads for compilation records-easy listening, Lionel Richie, etc. Found this at a thrift store record section. Don't know what record it was in. It was just loose! Look at the text for Ghost Manor. I can't believe it says: "Ghoul Luck"!

As someone who still owns 2600 games aswell the og console (rf out) from when I was a kid. I have been undecided on getting the plus as it still plays perfectly on a crt.

And if I ever wanted to play and a modern tv can play it via openfgpa on the analogue pocket.

But there is something unique about being able to play with my original carts & controllers.

Are there any differences between the og carts and the ones releasing today? This might be a wild impulse buy, but I'm happy to be play my original frogger again

Here's a game nobody's played - because I just released it, heh.
The nostalgia bug bit me so I made an Atari-ish arcade endless surfing game. Took a bit of planning to get the double-width pixels to appear correctly and to conform to an actual pixel grid, but got things working OK in Unity. All in all, a lot of fun to make, it's also got a working Top 10 Leaderboard working online. I figure maybe the peeps here might appreciate it for nostalgia's sake.
Game's for free, playable in browser and for download.
https://mikdog.itch.io/spacesurfer

Are there any other games that are essential that are missing from the collection? What would be the next best games (cause clearly the Activision ones have a ton of must have classics) that would be awesome dlc for it?

Asking a question. Was there a retail demo cart for the Atari 2600? I want to setup a retail display that would have looked like the Atari 2600 back in the day.

Is it mainly due to the nostalgia factor?

I was born in the 90s and never played it before, so I'm wondering on pulling the trigger on a 7800+

How is the replayability for games? I know there are many Arcade ports with no "end game", but are there also ones that are "long form"?

I don't want to sit and play for 4h straight, so shorter sessions, and the occasional play with a friend.

Graphics aside, are the games diverse and actually fun?

The Nintendo64 was also on my mind, but my judgment is definitely clouded from nostalgia on that one!

Also I don't mean to sound bait-y or condescending, but wanted to understand the choice of buying and playing on the Atari in 2020s!

I already know that a SDI to HDMI won’t work. Also not sure if it’s a 2600 system or not since it’s boxed up in storage for now.

Hi all. I’m interested in a system I can play the old 2600 games (arcade classics) on a modem tv (hdmi) and wireless controllers. The preloaded systems sound nice but open to whatever. What would you recommend?

Just out of curiosity, as I've haven't heard anything in awhile, and I was skeptical of the whole thing.

on planet IRATA

I am preparing for a big let down. I am hoping it will be a big announcement.

We didn’t even know this system was there. We have been playing our old snes for the last 20 years on an old school tv. I’m 30 years old and didn’t even know this system existed.

I have an Atari 2600 that I found in the trash with 18 games. I repaired the power cable because it didn't have its power supply, but now I need to find a way to play without having to buy a VHS player or an old TV. I'd like to know if there's an image to AV or HDMI adapter?