Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/19/this-raspberry-pi-retro-gaming.html
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Given that things like this exist, I really don’t know why someone’s trying to resurrect the Atari name for a new console (which essentially would just be this, but far more expensive).
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Gee whiz, Mark! If you’re going to include a link on the mention of the retro gaming kit, instead of going to random Amazon goodness, why not link to the actual retro gaming kit?
Probably because it’s an affiliate link.
$99 is actually a decent price for this, and I wouldn’t mind getting one just for the case alone. But you can’t play Atari 2600 paddle games decently with a controller like that.
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It is, they also will sell just the software for $24.99…which I’m sure is going to end up being easy to pirate, but if you want the legal right to run those 100 games you can get it all for what a 2600 game use to cost…or maybe $5 less.
…I wonder if someone sells one of those cases with the RPi 4 cutouts?
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Is there a list of the games anywhere? And are 40 year old games still worth playing in 2020?
I hope Retroflag sells an Atari VCS RP4 case, with accompanying joystick and paddles. I’d pay for that.
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Most of these games are pretty lame by today’s standards. I found that I enjoy looking at the box art much more than playing the actual games.
If you’re a lazy skinflint like me, you might find a guy on ebay who sells you a 32 GB retro pie image for a fiver on which you will - among other things - find all 2600 games.
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Note: while this system is mostly 2600 games (I assume it had more first party games & those were the easy ones to get legal rights for), it also has around a dozen each of coinOp arcade games, and Atari 7800 games.
I didn’t see a list. I think this is primarily a nostalgia product. If you loved Star Raiders on the 2600 as a kid, it is not likely to captivate you the same way as an adult, but would still be worth some play time. Even if only to remind you how crappy the graphics and sound really were. I think the CoinOp games include Red Baron which was as far as I know the first CoinOp 3D game (and came out long before “home” 3D games did). So it could have some value to a video game historian (although I assume a video game historian has easy access to unlicensed versions of everything in this product and far more).
I think if you had one of these systems in the 1980s and remember it fondly it is definitely worth the $30 for the software only (bring you own RPi) version if you already have an RPi. If you don’t have an RPi it may or may not be worth the $100 version (which includes the one generation old RPi3+ otherwise this bundle would even be so-so for someone who just wanted an RPi, power supply, case, SD card, and intended to play the games for a day or three and then use the RPi for other things)
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Those are also on my image. And most of them are a lot better than the 2600 games.
Fair, I wanted a 7800 as a kid, but had a 2600. So one has more nostalgia for me despite not actually being nearly as nice.
I also have a deep deep nostalgia for Star Raiders from the Atari 400/800…so I wonder if you…um I mean that guy on eBay has those on the image because that would be quite the thing…
(also in the “not nostalgia” I always wanted Battlesphere, but didn’t have the right hardware, and it doesn’t look like it ever got ported to anything you can still buy, and no Jag emulators seem to be up to snuff)
I would assume that the guy on ebay has access to some software that is named after a very large number, where he would type a special code that would refer to the name of the game, the platform it was available on, and the invocation for transferring said game to their machine, and magically, a choice of places would be revealed where that game could be obtained. Some of that places even carry a scroll where the operation of that game is explained to those who have forgotten some of the details since their childhood days.
Such is the curse of nostalgia, that after reading that scroll, you will be even more disappointed when you play the actual game.
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Isn’t the current “Atari” basically two lawyers with a photocopy machine? I wonder if they’ve really done all the legwork to make sure that their Atari has the rights to all those games and not some other (now dead) fork of the Atari name?
That is probably why I have resisted for so long.
A very good friend bought a CoinOp gauntlet game, and while it was fun, it didn’t stand the test of “how fun is it really when I have unlimited coins”. That might just be because CoinOp games in general don’t stand that, or it could be 15+ years later I had played better games (not just graphics, but more interesting and better balanced).
So my childhood favorites could be worthless to me now, or maybe I still enjoy them. If I still love it I may be doomed to try to make some sort of VR version. It will probably suck because I’ve never been a good artist. Hell I haven’t even made it as far as bad artist! That plus I’ve never really finished writing a game since my brief job at a Microprose spinoff!
Some Infocom text adventures have stood the test of time for me (i.e. acquired due to nostalgia, and were still fun), but also shown that they still don’t hold my attention long enough to actually complete them.
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I find the CoinOp version of gauntlet is still a lot of fun, about the only thing from that era besides Galaga I still play on a regular basis. If I had a windows machine, I’d definitely try the latest windows version of Gautlet.
Don’t despair if you’re a bad artist, there’s free assets out there (here’s some spaceships) and also sale in the Unity aaset store, on Steam, itch.io and other places. Or you find an artist who shares your love for that game?
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