The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!

[JPF997]

1 hour ago, Mockduck said:

Really about the only new thing in this video for people who have been watching the 2600+ news closely is it looks like he showed off the case the 2600+ pack in and Paddle games carts will come in. Kind of neat, would actually love something like this for my other loose carts.

 

:

 

Still cool to see a CEO doing this , you can tell Rosen isn't just a corporate suit, man's a true gamer at heart.

[Dr Karnov]

That's true but it would be a bit more reassuring if he could pronounce the word "Jaguar"

[Giles N]

@TrogdarRobusto

As for 7800 games:

 

1) Will the 2600+ play both PAL and NTSC carts?

 

2) Will/can the 7800-emulation software be updated later to enable broader compatibility (for example emulate more soundchips)

 

3) Will it take long time to find out which homebrews are Playable or Fail?

 

4) Is the 2600+ designed in such a way that one could bypass cart-dumper problems, by having a catridge-converter piece (akin to things used in the 90ies to adapt for carts made for different regions), made, or would such a converter-piece then essentially be a levelled-up cart-dumper/dumper-upgrade?

[Words Fail]

The cover of the 10 in 1 cartridge looks like absolute shit. Boring. Should be something cool like classic Atari art was.

 

The console says it's compatible with most games.. I wonder if it will work with any of our homebrews?

[Albert]

I can answer two of your questions: 

1 minute ago, Giles N said:

1) Will the 2600+ play both PAL and NTSC carts?

Yes.

1 minute ago, Giles N said:

3) Will it take long time to find out which homebrews are Playable or Fail?

Not really, as I build homebrew 2600 and 7800 games for orders, I will be testing them in the 2600+.   I'll setup a thread for this after I create a 2600+ forum.  Of course, I don't have access to many games that I haven't personally published, but once the 2600+ starts shipping, I'm sure it won't take too long to have a fairly comprehensive list of which games work and which do not. 

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

3 minutes ago, Words Fail said:

I wonder if it will work with any of our homebrews?

Yes, it will, I've already played a few, like Juno First (a 32K F4 game), that have worked fine.  

 

 ..Al

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, Dr Karnov said:

That's true but it would be a bit more reassuring if he could pronounce the word "Jaguar"

 

[+littaum]

To help test compatibility, would it be useful to have a 2600+ at PRGE and people can bring the untested real cartridges to try them out?

[TrogdarRobusto]

8 minutes ago, littaum said:

To help test compatibility, would it be useful to have a 2600+ at PRGE and people can bring the untested real cartridges to try them out?

Well that could be quite a line ... bui if we could get a whole bunch of games tested in a short amount of time. Al, what do you think?

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

Well that could be quite a line ... bui if we could get a whole bunch of games tested in a short amount of time. Al, what do you think?

Sounds good to me, we'd just need to make sure we can capture that information and verify that the game ran (or didn't). 

 

 ..Al

[TrogdarRobusto]

3 hours ago, Dr Karnov said:

That's true but it would be a bit more reassuring if he could pronounce the word "Jaguar"

I've heard jag-you-are, jag-wire and jag-whar. Pronunciations are all over the place. Wade is a big fan of the Jaguar, I think that is the important thing here. 

[TrogdarRobusto]

7 hours ago, donjn said:

I hope Atari sees and addresses the following:

• Manually changing jumpers to select games is ridiculous on their multi-game cartridges, and why couldn't they pay someone to make a software menu?
• If that port in the back cannot support adding roms (or the system cannot support a multi-cart like Harmony cart), you have lost at least 50% of your audience.

I am pretty sure the dip switches were used for the combination of authenticity and novelty ... not because we couldn't afford to create a menu. So no, I don't think we are going to change that. Let's at least see what the broader reaction is to it vs pre judging the outcome. 

50% of our potential audience is way too big an estimate. Maybe you are exaggerating to make a point, but that strikes me as a purposefully silly number.
The 2600+ is appealing to both the hard core Atari fans (not all, obviously) and the more casual Atari and retro fans. It is a pretty big pool of people, the majority of which have never once in their lives downloaded or ripped a 2600 ROM.

Adding some way to support the more complex homebrew game cartridges, or adding Harmony cart support for developers ... that is all up for discussion. Certainly increasing support for homebrew games is important to us. I'm not an engineer, so I won't pretend to know what is possible in this iteration and what might come in a future iteration of the product.

[famicommander]

1 minute ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

so I won't pretend to know what is possible in this iteration and what might come in a future iteration of the product.

It's not even out yet and you're already talking about future iterations. Smells pretty AtGamesy.

 

Makes me fear we'll be here in 5 years talking about how hopefully next year we can get basic features in the 2600+ v6.0.

[Albert]

I just grabbed a bunch of 2600 homebrew games that I have built, including three PAL games and one PAL60 game.  They all ran.  This includes:

 

- Juno First (PAL60) (32K F4)

- Star Fire (PAL) (8K F8)

- L.E.M. (16K F6)

- Lady Bug (16K F6)

- 2005 Minigame Multicart (32K F4)

- AStar (PAL) (4K)

- Go Fish (PAL) (8K F8)

- Colony 7 Trak-Ball (32K F4)

- Drive! (4K)

- Cannonhead Clash (4K)

 

The PAL games all ran with the proper colors, which was nice to see. 

 

Here are a few photos.  Excuse the mess, we are in the middle of packing as we will be moving soonish.

 

 

 

 

Juno First is a PAL50 game, and it ran fine, but the colors were wrong.  Which makes sense, since it's basically an NTSC game with the wrong color pallet. 

 

 ..Al

[Giles N]

34 minutes ago, famicommander said:

It's not even out yet and you're already talking about future iterations. Smells pretty AtGamesy.

 

Makes me fear we'll be here in 5 years talking about how hopefully next year we can get basic features in the 2600+ v6.0.

I’d share your concerns if this would end up becoming an endless money-milking thing where every new release were so gradual as to make it hardly noticeable among all the other things I can spend hobby-money on (fairly many things to want to get, and not-at-all that much money to use on hobby-stuff).

 

But I want to give this a chance as:

 

1) there may have been issues not dealt with properly due to wanting to rapidly hang-on to some Atari 50th effect, - and now they must sort out unseen problems in a solid manner.

 

2) Even though I’d like such iterations to encompass inclusions of fully new consoles (like calling it 2600 Ultra, and have a slot for 5200 and so-on, and so-on), this line may sort of ‘want’ to be about the 2600 and 7800… from what I see, it doesn’t feel like a thing that’ll just come with new cart-dumpers for new iterations.

(I can of course hope so)

 

3) yet, I can understand the possibility of a few takes of upgrades, to ensure full compatibility with all existing games, and future games which may use different extra chips 

 

Conclusion: as Atari seems to also have a reality of rebuilding firm economy, I can bear with a little birthtrouble and a couple of upgrades.

 

If it becomes and endless, gradual, line-up, where you hardly notice any other difference than one more playable game, I’ll sit by and watch how it fares generally.

 

Perhaps I’ll get one, when most titles are compatible.

 

Hopefully, they’ll cut through asap, and end up with a solid emulation retro-console that plays everything 2600 & 7800.

 
Then they can concentrate on releasing new retro-carts for this completed hardware, re-issuing rare games for collectors, hopefully buy many 2600 and 7800 IPs (licenses), and make money on selling games and the once-and-for-all completed unit to more people…

Edited September 12, 2023 by Giles N

[Bakasama]

Now this interesting, this some of us on the fence wanted to see if this was worth buying.

 

Now the 2600+ is advertised to play 7800 games, would it be too much trouble to show that in action with few sample games?

[famicommander]

3 minutes ago, Giles N said:

I’d share your concerns if this would end up becoming an endless money-milking thing where every new release was so gradual as to make it hardly noticeable among all the other things I can spend hobby-money on (fairly many things to want to obtain, and not-at-all that much money).

 

But I want to give this a chance as:

 

1) there may have been issues not dealt with properly due to wanting to hang-on to some Atari 50th effect, - and they must sorted out in a solid manner 

 

2) Even though I’d like such iterations to encompass inclusions of fully new consoles (like calling it 2600 Ultra, and have a slot for 5200 and so on, and so on), this line may sort ofcwsnt to be about the 2600 and 7800

 

3) yet, I can understand the possibility of a few takes of upgrades, to ensure full compatibility with all existing games, and future games which may use different extra chips 

 

Conclusion: as Atari seems to also have reality of rebuilding firm economy, I can bear with a little birthtrouble and a couple of upgrades.

 

If it becomes and endless, gradual, line-up, where you hardly notice any other difference than one more playable game, I’ll sit by and watch how it fares generally.

 

Perhaps I’ll get one, when most is compatible.

 

Hopefully, they’ll cut through asap, and end up with a solid emulation retro-console that plays everything 2600 & 7800.

 
Then they can concentrate on releasing new retro-carts for this completed hardware, re-issuing rare games for collectors, hopefully buy many 2600 and 7800 IPs (licenses), and make money on selling games.

It doesn't inspire confidence that they were in bed with AtGames as recently as last year and this year they're putting out MyArcade devices. Now they're already talking about future 2600+ iterations? 

 

How about just releasing a small number of quality products and standing behind them?

[Albert]

Just now, famicommander said:

How about just releasing a small number of quality products and standing behind them?

Standing behind products includes offering updates to products where possible, rather than the end-user being stuck with something that can't be updated to fix issues or add new features.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

5 minutes ago, Bakasama said:

Now this interesting, this some of us on the fence wanted to see if this was worth buying.

 

Now the 2600+ is advertised to play 7800 games, would it be too much trouble to show that in action with few sample games?

Yes, but not right now, as I'm tired and have been working all day. 

 

 ..Al

[famicommander]

5 minutes ago, Albert said:

Standing behind products includes offering updates to products where possible, rather than the end-user being stuck with something that can't be updated to fix issues or add new features.

 

 ..Al

Selling them an entirely new device next year is not exactly what I would call offering an update, especially when you're already talking about the new device before the current one is even out. Atari has to prove they're not just going to do the same crap that AtGames put us through for a decade. 

[Albert]

3 minutes ago, famicommander said:

Selling them an entirely new device next year is not exactly what I would call offering an update, especially when you're already talking about the new device before the current one is even out. Atari has to prove they're not just going to do the same crap that AtGames put us through for a decade. 

I'm talking about software updates to the device you already own, not purchasing a brand new console.

 

 ..Al

[famicommander]

3 minutes ago, Albert said:

I'm talking about software updates to the device you already own, not purchasing a brand new console.

 

 ..Al

But you responded to a post that quoted an Atari exec talking about future iterations to the hardware, not updates. And you trimmed out the part of the post where their association with AtGames and MyArcade products in the present and recent past casts doubt on their inclination to fix things with updates rather than just releasing more and more hardware iterations.

Edited September 12, 2023 by famicommander

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, famicommander said:

But you responded to a post that quoted an Atari exect talking about future iterations to the hardware, not updates. And you trimmed out the part of the post where their association with AtGames and MyArcade products in the present and recent past casts doubt on their inclination to fix things with updates rather than just releasing more and more hardware iterations.

Would you just stop being so argumentative?  It's getting old. 

 

It's obvious I was talking about updating a console in the software sense:

17 minutes ago, Albert said:

Standing behind products includes offering updates to products where possible, rather than the end-user being stuck with something that can't be updated to fix issues or add new features.

 ..Al

[famicommander]

20 minutes ago, Albert said:

Would you just stop being so argumentative?  It's getting old. 

 

It's obvious I was talking about updating a console in the software sense:

 ..Al

But that's not even relevant to the conversation. You interjected with a non-sequitur. The concern, which came about from a statement from an Atari exec who mentioned future hardware iterations of the 2600+ unprompted, was that Atari would simply keep iterating on hardware. That concern was supported by their recent association with AtGames and their current association with MyArcade. Releasing a sea of sub-par, marginally different yearly hardware iterations is the bread and butter of AtGames and MyArcade.

 

So my concern  was "they release too many devices, they should release fewer and stand by them"

 

And your response is, "part of standing behind products is updating them."

 

But that wasn't disputed anywhere. Of course updating devices is standing by them. My post was more or less a plea for them to do exactly that. 

 

But what about the combination of recent AtGames devices, upcoming MyArcade devices, and the Atari exec talking about future iterations of a device that is barely available for preorder suggests we should believe the plan is to stand behind this product with long term improvements via software updates? 

[+Sauron]

5 minutes ago, famicommander said:

But that's not even relevant to the conversation. You interjected with a non-sequitur. The concern, which came about from a statement from an Atari exec who mentioned future hardware iterations of the 2600+ unprompted, was that Atari would simply keep iterating on hardware. That concern was supported by their recent association with AtGames and their current association with MyArcade. Releasing a sea of sub-par, marginally different yearly hardware iterations is the bread and butter of AtGames and MyArcade.

 

So my concern  was "they release too many devices, they should release fewer and stand by them"

 

And your response is, "part of standing behind products is updating them."

 

But that wasn't disputed anywhere. Of course updating devices is standing by them. My post was more or less a plea for them to do exactly that. 

 

But what about the combination of recent AtGames devices, upcoming MyArcade devices, and the Atari exec talking about future iterations of a device that is barely available for preorder suggests we should believe the plan is to stand behind this product with long term improvements via software updates? 

I think you're being way too overly critical here. I think most everyone understands the concerns you're expressing, but is it really necessary to nitpick things said in an interview and take them to mean something that hasn't been clearly expressed? You should probably step back, take a deep breath, count to 10, and then post your concerns in a more tactful manner rather than just hammering down on every little detail that you don't like. These are video game products. They're not a matter of life and death.