Atari Superman

@Ben from Plaion Hey, thanks for all this hard work! Will there be a non-beta version of these updates eventually, or are these the only ones that we'll get? Trying to decide whether to update now or later.

Thank you for this thread! I don't have any contributions right now, but I do have a request. Could you/the community please confirm which OEM controllers are supported? I've received conflicting info about driving controllers and keyboard controllers and would appreciate some clarity!

Speak for yourself Although _mad_ is a strong word. I'm disappointed with the lack of full compatibility with their own catalog. I was going to buy this to retire my aging original hardware. But if I can't play all my old games, including Indy 500 and Star Raiders, then this won't solve my problem. ^^^ ATTENTION ATARI: USE CASE ^^^ It's baffling that a device would be designed for a very specific target market -- someone who (a) has cartridges, (b) is still playing them (c) in the living room and (d) doesn't care about homebrew compatibility, which, as far as I can tell, is only me -- and then have it not address the very specific needs of this market. Of course we need driving controllers. Of course we need a keypad. If we didn't need these, we'd already have a Flashback and a crappy joystick and wouldn't be buying a 2600+.

You know what requires no hardware tweaking? An Atari 2600. The Xbox I used to have, and the PlayStation I used to have, both worked flawlessly out of the box. Glad you're happy with your purchase. If you had my experience, I imagine you'd feel similar to me.

I've been through two. One works marginally better than the first, which I did return. Unless a high percentage of these boxes have manufacturer's defects, I'm gonna assume that the problem isn't the hardware. Rather, it's that the system was inadequately tested. I live in NYC, the same as the Atari people do. I have no sort of exotic setup at home. Just Time Warner broadband Internet with a vanilla factory wireless router supplied by Time Warner. I connect with a physical patch cord from the VCS directly to the Internet. The VCS loops indefinitely over download/install/restart every single time a new update comes out. Glad it works for you. It doesn't work for me.

Mine has been a black hole of despair and disappointment. The VCS doesn't appear to have been adequately tested across network environments, and based on the comments in the forums, it either works for you or it doesn't. I fall into the "doesn't work for me" category. I can't get it to update itself, for one thing. And if it doesn't update itself, it becomes a brick. You have to buy extra hardware like an external keyboard, assuming you don't already have one, and maybe your task will involve installing Windows (literally) and changing BIOS settings manually before you get the box into a usable state. Until the next update. The controllers are dodgy af for any kind of paddle game, and they don't withstand the rigors of normal twich-style play. I've had to buy three joysticks now because they keep breaking. By comparison, with my original Atari setup, I'm still using my original joysticks from 1982. You can't run Stella on it without external peripherals. You can't access difficulty switches, etc. And apparently no attempt has been made to bring licensed games from the 2600 library back to the console, such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Defender, Superman, and E.T., to say nothing of the Activision library, for example. Which I guess is fine, because there's no Kaboom! without better paddles. I'd say about 33% of the time, the software freezes and crashes for me in the add-on libraries of arcade games and 2600 games, requiring a manual reset. The people who seem to enjoy the VCS the most are very comfortable tinkering with hardware and software. That is absolutely not me. I want it to turn on and play Atari. This rarely happens. And when it does happen, a controller breaks. I went through two units, both with more or less the same problems, only the second one had issues less frequently. Clearly I wasn't meant to have this. After a while I stopped even trying. Give me a cartridge dumper like the Retron 77 any day. The VCS was an expensive frustration.

The Retron is currently the best possible way for me to have Atari in the living room without putting a strain on my aging vintage equipment. I don't like messing with adapters, modifying electronic components, or jury-rigging unstable workarounds. I just want to play Atari in the living room like I've wanted to do since I was 8. The various Flashbacks have sucky controllers and don't include licensed games like Pac-Man, which I love and you can hate all you want. The new VCS is an unending source of frustration and disappointment. It never updates itself properly without requiring me to flash the BIOS every gd time, and after all that I'm still no closer to Pac-Man. As a way to play the 2600 library, it is suboptimal by every measure. I wish the Retron had a better paddle solution. I wish it supported driving controllers and keyboard controllers without some stupid-looking gearhead jumble of multiple dongles and cables and adapters. I wish the controllers in general were more robust. But they are better than the Flashback controllers, and I'm happy for what I'm getting and not fixated over what I'm not getting, which I suppose makes me the exception to the rule around here. Emulation isn't the same experience, but it's close enough, and if the options are emulation or no Atari once my 2600s and CRTs inevitably bite the dust, I will take emulation gladly.

The original hardware is my preference, too, but mine is reaching the end of its life expectancy along with my CRTs. At some point these are going to give up the ghost. I don't want my ability to Atari in the living room to go with them.

@jgkspsx If it does support OEM controllers, and if that includes keypads and driving controllers, I will be buying multiples of this thing.

5. Please sell a pair of paddles without the multicart. So I can get my 4-player Warlord on.

1. Keyboard controller, please. For Star Raiders. 2. Driving controller, please. For obvious reasons. It's no use if Indy 500 is technically compatible but unplayable because of lack of controllers. 3. Please, paddles, don't suck. 4. Is there OEM controller support? So I can supply my own paddles, keypads, and driving controllers. The site says that the + controllers are compatible on an original 2600, but I'm not sure if that holds the other way around.

My replacements arrived. All three are bad. Let me just stress that last point. All three of the replacement cartridges do not work.

I would just like a product that works. By works, I mean it (1) doesn't crash/black screen every other time coming out of a game, (2) updates itself without my having to flash the BIOS, (3) doesn't knock out my home WiFi netwok, (4) connects properly to social features, and (5) receives timely, helpful customer support. When you can't be reasonably sure that you'll receive a functional VCS, your product doesn't work. When out of the box your console is incompatible with Spectrum WiFi in NYC, probably the same internet that Atari has, your product doesn't work.

Yeah it's unreal. Hope that gets sorted for you soon. Ironically(?) the one thing that seems to work fine on my bad box is Chrome.

leech, you are correct. Just hooked up a different VCS to my network, and it's working perfectly. The one I had to threaten them to send me is defective. They currently don't seem to want to believe that, and I don't know what else I can do to convince them except maybe go after the money I gave them. Their customer service is responsive enough unless they owe you a refund or a replacement, and then it's close ranks, obfuscate, and stall and hope that the customer goes away. I get the sense that every sale counts with these guys and they can't afford to lose too many of them. The Atari brand deserves better. Once this finally gets sorted out, I do look forward to playing this thing. And I can say no wrong about the RetroN in the meantime. If anyone's on the fence, don't be. It's been the closest thing to Atari in the living room than actually wheeling out the Atari.