The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!

[+jgkspsx]

1 minute ago, Dr Karnov said:

Thank heavens for that, I just ordered five PAL 7800 carts!

They’re a lot cheaper!

[Dr Karnov]

I found these in my loft too 

[MASTER260]

8 hours ago, famicommander said:

It doesn't. If you put your logo on AtGames products then people will expect AtGames quality from other products with your logo on them. That's just how it works.

I mean, there were Sega Genesis Flashbacks that were crap, & then there were the 2 Genesis Minis that were actually good.  'Course, the only difference is Sega stopped doing the former, while I think Atari still works with AtGames...

[donjn]

4 hours ago, DirtyHairy said:

Cost, I'm pretty sure. With DIP switches you can just use run-of-the-mill ROMs / EEPROMs / whatever that tolerate the VCS bus levels and timings, wire a few address lines to the switches and be done. If you want a menu you need more fancy banking hardware in conjunction with custom 6507 code that draws and drives the menu and that triggers a bankswitch by accessing a hotspot. As @Thomas Jentzsch says, you also need to make sure that the hotspot is disabled for the ROMs that you "chainload" cannot accidentially trigger the same bankswitch. This requires more sophisticated hardware (clever discrete logic, an ASIC, CPLD, FGPA, MCU, whatever you prefer 😏) which is more expensive and requires additional development effort.

@TrogdarRobusto said in this very thread it was done for novelty and not for cost. This is someone who works for Atari.

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by donjn

[hizzy]

12 hours ago, Albert said:

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

That looks fantastic. the old games are one thing, but seeing Juno First on the screen like that is amazing.

[donjn]

Here is the YouTube video with Pat the NES Punk regarding the Atari 2600+.
I know we are still in the early stages but these guys you want on your side.
They are usually pretty reasonable (although sometimes overly harsh)...

 

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by donjn

[Thomas Jentzsch]

15 minutes ago, donjn said:

@TrogdarRobusto said in this very thread it was done for novelty and not for cost. This is someone who works for Atari.

He works for Atari PR. 

[donjn]

Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said:

He works for Atari PR. 

What does that entail? He knows or does not know? Or he knows and is blowing smoke up our....?

 

[DirtyHairy]

20 minutes ago, donjn said:

@TrogdarRobusto said in this very thread it was done for novelty and not for cost. This is someone who works for Atari.

 

He said he was "pretty sure". I can only judge the technical side, but as part of the Stella team and one of the maintainers of the UnoCart firmware I can assure you: a menu-driven cart would have added considerable cost and complexity to the cart and / or the emulator setup. I should also add that I think that, given the technical constraints, the DIP switches are a perfectly reasonable compromise.

Edited September 12, 2023 by DirtyHairy

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, donjn said:

What does that entail? He knows or does not know? Or he knows and is blowing smoke up our....?

 

He works for Atari PR.  

[Thomas Jentzsch]

8 minutes ago, donjn said:

Here is the YouTube video with Pat the NES Punk regarding the Atari 2600+.
I know we are still in the early stages but these guys you want on your side.

 

 

They do not have the major facts right.

• The R77 was using a very outdated version of Stella, not the most recent one. Only the community version changed that.
• The 2600+ uses the latest Stella
• The R77 is able to dump and play bankswitched games, but only the ones using Atari standard bankswitching
• The R77 is able to play all games, using the SD card. The 2600+ has no SD card slot, but maybe there is a way
• The 2600+ dumper is promised to be better.

[donjn]

10 minutes ago, DirtyHairy said:

He said he was "pretty sure". I can only judge the technical side, but as part of the Stella team and one of the maintainers of the UnoCart firmware I can assure you: a menu-driven cart would have added considerable cost and complexity to the cart and / or the emulator setup. I should also add that I think that, given the technical constraints, the DIP switches are a perfectly reasonable compromise.

No, any menu-driven carts including Harmony Cart mean that it kills future sales of Atari 2600 + version 2 DELUXE "now with more compatibility!!!"~
I mean, they are selling Outlaw for $60 right now.
The bigger picture is a bit easier to see for me.

 

 

 

[donjn]

3 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

They do not have the major facts right.

• The R77 was using a very outdated version of Stella, not the most recent one. Only the community version changed that.
• The 2600+ uses the latest Stella
• The R77 is able to dump and play bankswitched games, but only the ones using Atari standard bankswitching
• The R77 is able to play all games, using the SD card. The 2600+ has no SD card slot, but maybe there is a way
• The 2600+ dumper is promised to be better.

But they hit a lot of major points you left out.
They weren't all gaga over R77 either.

[donjn]

4 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

• The 2600+ uses the latest Stella
• The 2600+ dumper is promised to be better.

The latest Stella plays just about every game.

The Atari 2600+ compatibility list is...poor...to say it best.

 

So either one of these is true:

• The Atari 2600+ is not as good as "the latest Stella" or even Retron 77 which can play almost everything, or
• They have not done enough testing and most likely should not have put out such an incomplete compatibility list, which shows poor judgment, IMO.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

7 minutes ago, donjn said:

But they hit a lot of major points you left out.
They weren't all gaga over R77 either.

Yes, and I mostly agree with them. But when you argue, you should not use false facts.

[donjn]

3 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Yes, and I mostly agree with them. But when you argue, you should not use false facts.

This is what I said:

 

Here is the YouTube video with Pat the NES Punk regarding the Atari 2600+.
I know we are still in the early stages but these guys you want on your side.
They are usually pretty reasonable (although sometimes overly harsh)...

 

Name one false fact I mentioned in there..
Heck I even mentioned they were overly harsh sometimes.

 

I don't get it.
I agree with their OPINION (not false facts, its an opinion) that switches are not a good idea.

This was my point.

Edited September 12, 2023 by donjn

[LatchKeyKid]

4 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Yes, and I mostly agree with them. But when you argue, you should not use false facts.

If they're false then by definition they're not facts.     It's like when people talk about "my truth" when there is only "the truth".

[Thomas Jentzsch]

5 minutes ago, donjn said:

So either one of these is true:

• The Atari 2600+ is not as good as "the latest Stella" or even Retron 77 which can play almost everything, or
• They have not done enough testing and most likely should not have put out such an incomplete compatibility list, which shows poor judgment, IMO.

I think it is a mix between both points.

• The 2600+ cannot play all released games (Stella can do all, not almost all) due to the dumper approach and the lack of an SD card. It might be possible to circumvent this using the USB port, but we do not know and Atari is not telling.
• The list is beta. Yes, I figure a lot of "untested" carts simply could not work at the time the list was created. So knowing the result, they did not have to test them. But if they improve the dumper code (the R77 one is ridiculous), it should have a much better compatibility when the 2600+ gets released.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Just now, LatchKeyKid said:

If they're false then by definition they're not facts.     It's like when people talk about "my truth" when there is only "the truth".

So true. Sorry.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

BTW: I hope Albert will help Atari to avoid some major errors in the future. 

[donjn]

10 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

BTW: I hope Albert will help Atari to avoid some major errors in the future. 

Absolutely we are lucky to have Albert!

I want Atari to succeed and am very happy they are still around and prospering, unlike what happened to Intellivision.
I just sometimes wish the Atari 5200 wasn’t the red-headed stepchild of the company.

 

[Flojomojo]

55 minutes ago, DirtyHairy said:

He said he was "pretty sure". I can only judge the technical side, but as part of the Stella team and one of the maintainers of the UnoCart firmware I can assure you: a menu-driven cart would have added considerable cost and complexity to the cart and / or the emulator setup. I should also add that I think that, given the technical constraints, the DIP switches are a perfectly reasonable compromise.

I agree with you on the technical realities. As a consumer, I think a cartridge with physical DIP switches is ridiculous in 2023, but then I calm down and remember that this is a 2023 device designed to play media from 40 years ago. 

[Zoyous]

1 minute ago, Flojomojo said:

I agree with you on the technical realities. As a consumer, I think a cartridge with physical DIP switches is ridiculous in 2023, but then I calm down and remember that this is a 2023 device designed to play media from 40 years ago. 

I think kids will find the DIP switches interesting. Hell, they're interesting to me and enhance the physicality of the cartridge experience (even if I understand that it's not really using the cartridge like the original system did). It'd be cool if they put a hidden game on there that you can find with some unlisted combination.

[donjn]

4 minutes ago, Zoyous said:

I think kids will find the DIP switches interesting. Hell, they're interesting to me and enhance the physicality of the cartridge experience (even if I understand that it's not really using the cartridge like the original system did). It'd be cool if they put a hidden game on there that you can find with some unlisted combination.

Kids don't play Atari 2600, us older kids do..
I mean, the bulk of the Atari 2600 retro customers are over 40 years old.

Getting out my reading glasses and tiny pliers to select a game (which, let's face it, they only did this because they don't want multi-cart menu systems to work so that they can sell you Outlaw for $60 and future Atari dip-switch combos) is downright ludicrous, but we will see.

 

[Zoyous]

2 minutes ago, donjn said:

Kids don't play Atari 2600, us older kids do..
I mean, the bulk of the Atari 2600 retro customers are over 40 years old.

Getting out my reading glasses and tiny pliers to select a game (which, let's face it, they only did this because they don't want multi-cart menu systems to work so that they can sell you Outlaw for $60 and future Atari dip-switch combos) is downright ludicrous, but we will see.

 

True, but some of us older kids have kids of our own though! Mine takes an interest in older games from time to time. Although my kid definitely is focused more on Pokemon, Minecraft, and Roblox, we have played some 2600 games together.