Jakks Pacific/Atari TV Plug & Play Paddle (from 2004)

[Tanooki]

I found one of these within the last week for a couple dollars. Never had something like this before, figured it would be the best place to ask given it's another simulation setup like the older flashback consoles.

 

Anyone have any experience with the thing at all? I'm curious how good it is compared to the original as far as game behavior and the paddle functionality as well. Thanks.

[Harrison]

I had one years ago, long before I had experience with actual Atari hardware. I couldn't say how accurate the emulation was, but from what I remember the paddle worked well and there were no glaring issues.

[akator]

I've still got one and play it a few times a year. It isn't perfect, but it's a very good recreation of many of the 2600 paddle games. Just the simulation of the original Atari Pong arcade game is worth the price. I think it's good fun and so does everyone else who has tried it when I've got it set up.

[Tanooki]

Well then I guess it was a score to get one for $2 then if it's fairly on the nose even if it's not 100% there, it's good enough. Even had a pair of working good AAs in it too.

[onmode-ky]

I've had the 2-player set since the summer of 2004, and I found it worth its $30 asking price even then. I don't know if $20 for the 1-player edition would have been okay with me, but playing the included games head-to-head against a friend or family member was always just fantastic fun. In particular, I thought arcade Warlords was its killer app. Around AtariAge, I think the system has always had a positive reception. If you run a search in the Dedicated Systems sub-forum (the parent of this Flashback sub-forum) for "jakks paddle," you should find a few other evaluations.

 

FYI, the system was programmed by Jeff Vavasour's team at Digital Eclipse Vancouver, using what was described as "partial emulation." The underlying hardware seems to have been a Winbond W55x-family microcontroller, which is 65C816-compatible. Years later, after the closure of Digital Eclipse Vancouver, Vavasour's current Code Mystics studio would develop the first Jakks Pacific plug-n-play game system running entirely via software emulation, their 2011 Taito ("Retro Arcade featuring Space Invaders") system.

 

onmode-ky

[erichenneke]

I just bought one of these jakks pacific paddle tv games for $5 at a goodwill.

 

Unfortunately, even after putting new batteries in it I just get a pink solid screen when I turn it on and nothing else seems to change that. Tried pushing the menu button, fire button, the reset button, etc.

 

Anyone else seen this issue and/or know what can be done about it?

 

It's $5, so not really worried about that... i was just disappointed because it seemed really cool and I think this one has the "arcade warlords" and original pong on it.

 

-Eric

[Andromeda Stardust]

I have the Jakks joystick version. $4.95 find at GameXChange. Batteries past their expiry date but still worked, no leaks. Not sure of value.

 

The joystick was extremely stiff until I modded it by throwing the little puck away that prevented multiple actuations. That part that made it way too tight and after I discarded it, the joystick was manageable. The recreations of ten Atari games were not accurate to the original console, later FBs having much better emulation. I think it may have been an NOAC chip in there.

[onmode-ky]

Unfortunately, even after putting new batteries in it I just get a pink solid screen when I turn it on and nothing else seems to change that.

A pink screen? I've never heard of that happening for any device, not just this one. Sounds like a severe issue on the system board, maybe a dead CPU or video signal generator. Then again, I'm no hardware expert. This just sounds unusual for any sort of video output. Might be worth opening up the system and checking for any obvious damage to the circuit board.

 

The recreations of ten Atari games were not accurate to the original console, later FBs having much better emulation. I think it may have been an NOAC chip in there.

It is neither emulated nor a NOAC*. According to my research, it (and a scant few others of Jakks' absolute earliest TV Games plug-n-play systems) was built on a 65C816-compatible Winbond microcontroller, and so the games were ports/re-creations made for it. My data for those systems is unfortunately second-hand and intentionally somewhat vague, so I don't include it in my plug-n-play info website. However, for the Atari Paddle TV Games system, I do have first-hand semi-confirmation from developers that it used a 65C816-compatible Winbond microcontroller, as mentioned in an earlier post (i.e., the responses I got were of the "that sounds about right to our faded memories" variety).

 

onmode-ky

 

*A note for anyone who might not be aware: nothing can be both emulated *and* a system-on-a-chip implementation. The word "emulation" implies two different architectures at work, the program/game's architecture and the host hardware's architecture, with translation happening on the fly from the former to the latter, while an xOAC design comprises just one architecture, common to both program/game and hardware, with no real-time translation needed. Using "emulation" to include remaking a system in more compact circuitry would mean that you could freely refer to slim PS2 systems as emulations of launch PS2 systems, for example. Yet as far as I know, no one says, "Certain PS2 games not working on slim PS2 systems is due to slims' bad emulation of original PS2 systems."

Edited July 6, 2017 by onmode-ky