Originally published at: The Atari 7800+ is a trip down the retro rabbit hole - Boing Boing
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Wirelessly connects to your new 7800+ and 2600+ AND it works with original 2600 and 7800 hardware using the included DB9 wireless adapter.
That’s the important bit right there. New wireless CX78s sold separately for $35? Assuming the build quality is the same as the prior wired repro ones they were selling they can shut up and take my money.
Is this the first time someone’s tried to release a “new” 7800 console?
Only 59 official games and 49 unofficial games, and I doubt it’s as easy to stumble upon the carts as it is with the 2600.
But I guess they figured there was adequate demand. (I still want to get my hands on a Colecovision Flashback, even if it’s unlikely to include Donkey Kong.)
Reckon a solid viral video based on Ninja Golf might get things moving.
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I didn’t even realise the 7800 was ever launched in Europe. What were they thinking of?
It was DOA over here with the NES arriving in volume that year with a massive back catalogue; the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad 8-bit machines going for bargain basement prices and their own huge catalogues of cheaper (copy able) games; and the Amiga 500 and Atari ST showing what 16-bit machines were capable of.
Poor Atari, they didn’t stand a chance.
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I’ve had 4,000+ ROMS since MAME became a thing in the late 90s and can get my retro arcade fix anytime.
I wonder why Atari just doesn’t release a console with all the ROMS and eliminate the need for cartridges. I’m sure people would pay a premium to get their fix.
They could even sell them through the console if they wanted to make a few bucks.
I’m sure they could figure out how to lock them down to the console for the non techie folks.
But for the techies there are emulators and ROMS.
It just seems Atari could make it easier and still control their stuff if they wanted to.
We got one of these… for when it was released, the games were pretty decent. The controllers were a disaster. The buttons stopped working ad the overlays to the keypads were not good. Atari kinda fizzled out once the NES and the rest cratered them.
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The 7800 used the same primitive sound chip as the 2600
I think that the 7800 had some of the problem of the Commodore 128: the backward compatibility to a vastly successful machine made title publishing less interesting. Meanwhile the same company made more powerful machines at the same time: while Atari 520ST wasn’t designed as a gaming computer, the GPU and CPU performance was adequate to make decent porting of arcade games.
Technically, no. The Atari VCS (2021) would play some 7800 titles, and the original Atari Flashback even looked like a 7800
Both suffered from the same lack of available or included 7800 titles.
But maybe the Harmony Cartridge works with the 7800+?
Not just for the techies, it’s really simple to set up a RasPi Zero (or any old RasPi actually), and you can user any USB or BT controllers already own.
There are excellent HowTos available (like this one for RetroPie, alternatives to RetroPi exist, IRRC RecalBox is also very popular).
But if that is too much: About 10 years ago I obtained a download for a 32GB flash card image for $5 off ebay, with the emulator preinstalled and all games for all consoles that were released until 2000 or so.
All I had to do was flash the SD card and pop it into the RaspPi. That value for money was hard to beat, even though the overwhelming majority of games that I wasn’t already aware of and tried on a whim were utter shite.
It is called the Atari GameStation Pro and has an SD slot. The 2600/7800+ series are intended to give the full retro feel of old controllers, and cha-chonking your carts into the slot. I have loved finding the 30 or so carts i have so far. Currently have a list of 3 or 4 i am looking for.
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It’s a bit easier than you might expect. Sales were pretty lousy but despite there only being 59 games released they sure manufactured a whole lot of them. In my experience every used game store with 4-6 linear shelf feet of stacked loose 2600 carts will probably have a dozen or so 7800 carts somewhere in the same vicinity. It’s a pretty easy catalogue to collect the whole set of if you don’t mind shelling out some real cash for the very small number of truely rare carts.
The ones release with the North American version of the console truely sucked, for sure, and have remained the worst part of the experience of getting into collecting the 7800 to this day and I’m sure has stopped many from even bothering. Tracking down a working controller only to have it fail within 6 month is a huge PITA.
For a long time getting your hands on the much better European release controller has been the solution though so it’s awesome that zombie holding company Atari has released reproductions of those now. That one thing alone removes a huge barrier to people deciding to get into the original 7800 hardware.
7800 carts are plentiful, and the games are great in most cases. Arcade ports are much closer to the OG than a 2600 version. I play a lot of Ms PacMan, Centipede and Xenophobe for the 7800.
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