Thanks for taking the time to watch the video! Check out my Instagram: instagram.com/gregsgameroom/ Every Konami NES Game: ua-cam.com/video/AO1qrfzyDtI/v-deo.html Nintendo NES vs. Atari 7800: ua-cam.com/video/OtB1vwTntcs/v-deo.html Why I LOVE Atari! ua-cam.com/video/YE7FbLzMA4Q/v-deo.html
I've not finished watching the video fully yet, but just a reminder that apparently you do NOT have to power the system off/on to change games. Just hot swap them as it was designed for this so you don't have to wait for the boot startup delay each time.
@@markrotondella4689 Yes as it is against what we did back in the day. But apparently this 2600+ was designed to hot swap the games like this. Otherwise you have to wait for the boot up of the console each time which, takes much longer. So they designed it to shut off the game when you remove the cartridge and when you load up a different game, it will read what was just put in and restart the emulation with the new game.
I wasn’t sure if I should preorder the enhanced edition of Berzerk but after watching your review of the game I’m glad I did. The voicing samples and the diagonal firing from the robots make it feel closer to the arcade version
Nice work doing such a thorough review! And I appreciate your editing style :) I suspect the keypad controllers don't work because they require the joystick ports to set some lines as input and some as output. It may very well be that the 2600+ joystick ports are only capable of input, not output.
Thank you for the detailed review and tear down I really wanted to love this system but already owning an 2600/7800 with mods, Retron77 with cfw and the newest Flashback. I just can’t justify the cost only for its looks.
Excellent full review, by far the best I've seen yet. Watched a few 10/15 min "reviews" that just don't cover enough. This video is how it should be done! Will definitely be checking out more.. oh and recognise you from the Daily Woo.. lol unrelated to this video 😅 Great work mate.
Holy crap, thank you! I finally found a video where someone plays Xevious on the 2600+! I bought the game the other day and I was worried that it wasn’t compatible, but now I know my cartridge just doesn’t work. Thanks!
To me, aside from the system itself, good quality new authentic joysticks and paddle controllers being available again is good for people who own an original 2600.
This is the best review/look at the Atari 2600+ I've seen. You checked everything including 7800 games and two button controllers. Strange that the Sega Genesis pads don't work as they work on any original 2600. I hope they fix that with firmware.
@@GregsGameRoom No, that info is just plain wrong. The grooves on the switch shafts are from a turning tool made by machining it on a CNC lathe. They are simply feed lines made by the tip of a turning tool. Very common on all items made on a lathe. I should know, I'm working as a CNC programmer/CNC Machinist/1st Class Machinist/Toolmaker since 1986. Knurling is something completely different since there are two grooves at an angle and cross over in a X or diamond shape along the length of the shaft. Although nowadays knurling isn't very common. If you have an old center punch you might see knurling on the part that you hold or on a barbell / weight bars, grips of darts or a mechanical pencil, to name a few.
Just saw you on Adam the Woo's channel. I do love me some retro systems! I still have my 1979 Atari 2600 from my childhood, which my father stored in a closet for 2 months before Christmas and, of course, I already knew he bought it. I feigned ignorance when I opened the present, and he still doesn't know that I did that. I'm 50 years old this year. Dad is 85! :) Thought I'd give you a sub.
You have a very nice collection of games, especially the 7800 ones. Thank you for trying out so many games. I was very concerned about Popeye and Stargate. Thanks for confirming.
Best thing to clean cartridge contacts with is hoppe's 9 powder solvent. Just dip a qtip into the bottle, wipe on both sides, get a clean qtip and scrub like you would with alcohol. hoppe's 9 is a copper oxide solvent, and that is what you are cleaning. I used it on all my old cartridges about 10 years ago. I still haven't had to clean them. Just make sure you don't drip solvent into the cartridge, you don't want to dissolve the pcb traces, just the corrosion layer on the edge connector. In other words, be frugal with the solvent.
Excellent review. I was making a list of questions to ask as I watched the video, but you answered them all! Obviously my first question was whether Ninja Golf worked.
My 2600+ just arrived. I opened the joystick and it's using a really clean nice design with conductive rubber pads and carbon-coated PCB pads like most modern controllers. So there's no old style dome switches in there and they should last many years without touching. If anyone already has a real 2600 and needs a new joystick buy this new one (sold separately I think) because it plays identical to the original but is better quality.
Thanks for the video. would love to see a further teardown showing those extra PCB's - it's clear that the bottom one (two) for the switches, the middle one the cart reader and rear connectors. I bet some enterprising individual could easily create a replacement Blue PCB for a seameless raspberry pi (or other board) based Atari2600+ ......Imagine a CM4 (or forthcoming CM5) adaptor that just manipulates the data lines on the two header sockets on that processor board.! Is there much more space in the case?
The system has a Rockchip ARM CPU, so it's already essentially a Raspberry Pi. The two hacks would be: * Load custom firmware * Add WiFi With that, you could emulate a much larger library of games. Any game that works with a one-button joystick should be playable, whether for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari 800, C64, or even arcade machines should be playable. Just have the firmware have a load-from-WiFi option if there's no cartridge inserted. If adding WiFi doesn't work, custom firmware could use a cartridge with a SD card.
It looks really good in terms of being a replica, but I am just holding off to see if there are some official or community updates that will really make this into a must-have.
Great Video! Hopefully they get some firmware updates for the compatibility issues. It will be interesting to see what the community does with this as they made the Retron 77 WAY better with the Stella Emu update, but still had issues with Jittery paddles. Unless you got the Hyperkin one, but that one was real stiff. Hoping this does well and maybe in the future they will put out a FPGA 7800 pro system console, one can hope and dream.
@@GregsGameRoom yea. Will definitely keep an eye out to see what happens with it and will get it when there is a better firmware or mod build out. They need to get the 7800 compatibility sorted out for the homebrews at the very least.
Greg thanks for the review mind arives on fri cant wait, Been looking forward to this since i pre ordered it..Been buying up old games just to have them..Thanks for testing an now i know what will work..Cant wait go atari..Looks like there making a come back..
Very informative! When they release this with an SD card slot, I will buy it. Otherwise, I'll buy a flash cart. I would rather have every game in coax quality on original hardware for half the price and use Stella which is free for HD. A lot of the fun in exploring Atari is the weird or licensed titles. I love Atari and have 100+ games, but I'm not paying for a console that can't play the entire library in 2023.
@@GregsGameRoom I'm thinking it will be accessed through USB too, but they plan to update firmware which may hinder the ROMs. The minis all came with amazing libraries playable for hundreds of hours that the 2600+ doesn't at a lower price and it isn't like Flashbacks haven't had SD slots before. This one is just easier to play smart and wait, even if the product is cool.
Great review and you really covered all the important details, to be honest though, I don't think this new system is for me. I have enough spares and parts from Console5 to keep my original running longer than I have days left on this earth. Maybe if the original wasn't built like a Sherman tank, I'd opt for the clone stuff. Thanks for getting this one out there. 👍
ngl, this was perfect for me, i had nostalgia for those dollar store plug and plays as a kid, so being able to have something i can hook up easily to my LCD and try to get my favorites in cartridge form is nice, honestly for those who are against the system, i understand but i also wanna mention, this could've been a genesis firecore situation, but it wasn't, it's using the opensrc emulators many use to play atari 2600/7800 games on the PC or other platforms. and i imagine if it was FPGa it wouldn't be worth it for me, i do hope eventually they do lower the price (maybe by making a 2600+jr?) so if they go down that route then at least most would have an option of software emulation consoles. And in general just hoping for more software updates come along to let us play more fun titles. By the way, i tried commando on mine, which hasn't been updated yet and it did take at least 5 tries but now it works perfectly on 2600+ :)
Great video! Can you test these other titles? Burger Time Gyrus Frogger II Omega Race Pinball Frostbite Worm War I Airlock Saboteur Sea Hunt Aqua Venture Conquest of Mars Elevator Age Raptor Ruby Q Space Taxi Amoeba Jump (Homebrew) Save Mary (Homebrew) Yars Return (Homebrew) HERO (Homebrew) Ninjish Guy (Homebrew) Stay Frosty 2 (Homebrew) Lead (Homebrew) Ardvark (Homebrew) Galagon 7800 (Homebrew)
The 16:94:3 is important if you want to hook it up via HDMI adapter to a 4:3 CRT or 4:3 LCD screen. When doing that via HDMI you would actually set it to 16:9 and then in theory it should look notrmal on 4:3 then as it will be desqueezed.
oh thank god you play four player paddle games!!! thanks for testing that no one else has thought to do it for some reason. :D :D :D :D :D I had that silver joystick back in the day. :P
You can usually either take a picture of the chip info and put it into Google lens, it will tell you about those chips. Or just type in the info on the chips and research and then find out about the hose chips. There has got to be some kind of schematic out there for you to modify the 2600+ boards for some kind of additional or augmenting?
I saw the 2600+ at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and thought it looked super cute! Loved the mini form factor. I was however disappointed to learn it doesn't support a majority of modern homebrews.
Good review. When I do my own, I might put a link to your review in the description because so far your review has been the most comprehensive and is the only one that has all that video testing which I can’t duplicate because I don’t have nearly as many cartridges nor do I have the 7800 stuff.
You suggested that future firmware updates might fix some of the compatibility issues. The catch is that there's no obvious method to update the firmware. There's no network. I suppose they could issue a firmware update cartridge that you could order, but only if the current firmware is designed for that. And while you mentioned that you expected one game to fail because of custom chips in the cartridge, Ballblazer has a Pokey sound chip, and that works, so if it's one where they detect a known game, they can emulate the special cartridge features. But there are a lot of those, so it's not surprising that they only got the best known ones.
The secret has been revealed: inside, it is yet another Rockchip console… just like Powkiddy and Anbernic. You _could_ hack it to run all kinds of other software, but… why would you bother? You'd be better off buying a separate device… even one made with the same Rockchip architecture.
I love mine. It's not perfect, but it works very well. I do hope that they reduce movement jitter in paddles games with a future firmware update, but the jitter isn't terrible, and Super Breakout is the only game I've found so far in which the jitter is prominent enough to be a bit annoying. As for those games you tried that didn't work, it's very possible that some of them just need to have the contacts cleaned. This system does seem to be more sensitive to dirty contacts than the originals. There have also been some beta and experimental firmware updates available on AtariAge. They make some improvements and also allow some games that didn't previously work to now do so. One of those games is Pitfall II, though with the experimental firmware, not the beta firmware.
Rockchip makes Arm SOCs. The board with the HDMI port looks like a single board computer. The others are most likely just for I/O. Thanks for the tear down, I’ve been dying to see the guts of one of these!
Very good video, but not greatly impressed, but no real surprise. I think it would generally be better for people to save their money, run the Stella emulator, and spend the money on a quality joystick or something else. The lack of output to any kind of CRT is a huge disadvantage, although I realize a lot of people are using LCD's (which greatly affects the experience). Several game titles as you've shown aren't working. They'd probably nearly all run with the regular Stella emulator, and most of the home brews. Stella adds a bunch of extra features, such as emulation of the Super Charger So many copies of classic joysticks today don't feel like the originals. The stiff movement is how parts are often copied today. The same with arcade joystick re-issues. Really annoying, so I use only classic original controllers. The CX-40 joysticks were not stiff like that when new. I owned several. Been a classic video game fanatic since getting my Atari Sears Pong in 1975 I still have. The paddle controller issue most likely has something to do with the LCD screen. I played an Arkanoid machine this past weekend with LCD, and the frame-rate didn't feel right Yet, I run some spinner control games on a spinner in my MAME cab on a CRT monitor and their perfect. I doubt the issue with the paddles is do to the emulation. I bought a USB adapter for classic Atari controllers, but haven't got my paddles working yet. Hoping I missed a setting in Stella. Perhaps that is about the only advantage I see to the hardware is ease of use, and the physical form of it, but it's still not the original. I'm surprised the 10 in 1 cartridge requires jumper changes rather than an easy menu to select with the joystick. And some really classic titles like Air Sea Battle, an original VCS game, should be included. All and old, save your money. I've seen worse, but there are better options such as Stella on a PC or collecting the original system.
So the three chips appear to be a Rockchip RK3128 which is a low power CPU/GPU system on a chip thingy, the H5TC4G63CFR is 512 MB of RAM and the third chip is 256 MB flash storage.
They could have made it use the same hardware logic directly. You can do a full hardware emulation using an FPGA, so all the chip details needed to make a real Atari 2600 or 7800 on a chip are out there. Still, this is the best option they've put out since the 80s. It was always disappointing that the Flashback devices lacked a cartridge port.
I don’t know if anyone addressed this elsewhere, but my recollection is that the keypad for Star raiders is plugged into player two and the joystick is in player one
It only works with some original cartridges. Mainly atari cartridges. It didn't run river raid, or tennis, or frog's n flies, or well more than half of my stash doesn't work on it. Thankfully I have old vader model and a CRT. I don't know, what it does play it does play well and the HDMI is nice. The emulator is superb, it feels like the original console.
The OG one probably had Velcro to stick to a surface so it's easier to move the joystick with how stiff it starts out at lol. Also no power brick but if you hook up to an HDTV, the USB slot on the back of the TV should be enough power for the console, saving on a wire going down to an outlet and finding a usb power brick.
I thought not all of them had the switch. When I bought mine on the Bay of E, I looked for one that had a picture showing the switch. But besides that, does the 2600 even support that kind of input? I thought only my 5200 had actual trakball analog input. For the 2600 - AFAIK - only the paddles (and the 360 spinning driving version) provided analog input. Hmmm…
The OG 4 switch moves all the plug ins up so this is actually correct i dont care for it also but you have a great collection if these carts are CIB its a big money collection if not i recommend looking for MT box and completing the more valuable ones. Good job on the review also did you run out to buy any games? there seems to be a rush of bidders now on everything Atari.
@Greg's Game Room Please do a followup and leave as a comment trying the games that didn't work in the first half after cleaning. I suspect at least some of them WILL work, but the contact pins were dirty. Please varify this!
@@GregsGameRoom Can you at least please double check on Pitfall 2 really doesn't work and your copy was just dirty? That's my favorite 2600 game and one I'm really looking forward to playing on this.
I don't think i got the Atari but a cheaper imitation system which had the atari games built in. Not sure what it was called but it had a cowboy on the box?
I do want to make a guess here. This is going to be hackable. Atari just can't say that due to copyright being held by Activision/Microsoft on a good amount of titles that one can find in rom format. That Micro USB port, and the button on the motherboard? That opens up the strong chance of hackability. With a simple OTG cable, a USB drive (assuming compatibility with a certain brand/size), I could really see the possibility of updates and upgrade packages that could be delivered. What is best, this wouldn't require any major hardware knowhow. Just open it up. find the usb port on the side it is on, plug stuff in, hold button, power on, and boom. Of course, the hard part will come in the awesome work that the software modding community comes in and makes our little Atari 2600+ the best Atari console it can be.
The vents are there to collect all the dust😂…I can’t figure out why so many consoles have those ridges. People in the 80s really liked making dusting harder.
The system looks great but that input lag on the paddle controllers is a huge let down. Circus Atari is my favorite 2600 game and requires a very precise amount of control. Would be incredibly difficult with the way emulation handles the input. It is what it is I guess.
37:14 The flash is the Toshiba TC58NVG1S3HTA00 TSOP48 chip. It's a 2G-bit (256MByte) NAND flash ROM. It's very curious why they used such a large amount of storage to hold what boils down to an ARM port of a Atari 2600 emulator and not much else. Clearly they are not using the best and most recent emulator code otherwise more games would work. Also, am I the only person who noticed the board has a space for a microSD card slot.... hmmmm ^_^
Pity the 2600+ doesn't work with the Harmony multi cart. Hopefully there's a firmware update to fix it. It should be easy to fix that because the Harmony cart can be put into auto-load single game mode just by putting one rom on the sdcard. But the Harmony cart downloads the rom to memory which takes a couple of seconds after power-on. The problem is the 2600+ is basically a cart dumper so it tries to dump the cart ROM before the Harmony cart has actually loaded it. A simple 3 second delay at power-on would be enough time to allow the Harmony cart to get the game ready and then the 2600+ can dump it to memory and run it. Or alternatively allow the reset+color switches when pressed together on the console to re-dump the cart which would also fix it. But ideally the 2600+ should just run the Harmony cart as-is without having to jump through hoops.
You might know this already but you're driving your tube too hard. You can see the vertical retrace. This will wear out your tube much quicker and give you a poor picture overall. But there might not be much life left and that's why you've got it so high, I dunno.
If they can get 90% of the gsmes to work, they have done their job. Those dmall bosrds will be easy to replace. I also bet it onky costs like $40 to make. Huge profit margin. Lastly, i wonder if the 7800 and light gun is coming soon.
Why did they use dip switches on the cartridges themselves rather than just using the game select button right next to the reset button. Or is the setup different on this system. I'm blind so I can't see the setup of the 2600+. Still love your video. I used to be a fairly good video pinball player lol, don't ask me how I did it.
I knew the 7800 homebrews wouldn't work yet but a little concerned about some of the 2600 compatibility (except things such as Pitfall II, which has an extra on-board chips). Hoping for some updates and/or community involvement.
I pre-ordered mine and am looking forward to it. Shame to hear that Pitfall 2 isn't running (which was to be expected) and the Sega Genesis Controller isn't supported, which I didn't expect. Can you tell if PAL and NSTC games run with correct colors on the 2600+? That would be great. I come from Germany and the PAL games here are often significantly more expensive than the NSTC versions. Thanks for your great review 👍😊 Holger
Thanks for the great video. I am curious if you ever got Smurf to work? I seem to be having the same issue you were with it and the cart was thoroughly cleaned.
Thanks for taking the time to watch the video! Check out my Instagram: instagram.com/gregsgameroom/
Every Konami NES Game: ua-cam.com/video/AO1qrfzyDtI/v-deo.html
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Why I LOVE Atari! ua-cam.com/video/YE7FbLzMA4Q/v-deo.html
I've not finished watching the video fully yet, but just a reminder that apparently you do NOT have to power the system off/on to change games. Just hot swap them as it was designed for this so you don't have to wait for the boot startup delay each time.
Ah, good tip!
That will feel weird :P
@@markrotondella4689 Yes as it is against what we did back in the day. But apparently this 2600+ was designed to hot swap the games like this. Otherwise you have to wait for the boot up of the console each time which, takes much longer. So they designed it to shut off the game when you remove the cartridge and when you load up a different game, it will read what was just put in and restart the emulation with the new game.
@@IvoryTowerCollections never tried it because i still dont have that many games
I wasn’t sure if I should preorder the enhanced edition of Berzerk but after watching your review of the game I’m glad I did. The voicing samples and the diagonal firing from the robots make it feel closer to the arcade version
Nice work doing such a thorough review! And I appreciate your editing style :)
I suspect the keypad controllers don't work because they require the joystick ports to set some lines as input and some as output. It may very well be that the 2600+ joystick ports are only capable of input, not output.
im impressed that you still have your original 2600 from when you were a children.
Yeah, I get too attached to things!
Really nice review and testing. Gone are the days of fighting with broken RF switch adaptors.
True. Even on an unmodified system you can get an RF to coax adapter.
Awesome job, Greg! The tiny but "real" boxes are really cool and fit better on "Media" shelves than the original sizes
Yeah they were a nice surprise!
Have to say this was a great video. You didn’t just do a surface dive like others.
Glad you appreciated it.
Really great review much more in-depth than other "reviewers" thanks so much 🥂
Thank you! I tried to answer as many questions as I could think of!
Thank you for the detailed review and tear down
I really wanted to love this system but already owning an 2600/7800 with mods, Retron77 with cfw and the newest Flashback.
I just can’t justify the cost only for its looks.
How do you mod them? What mods did you do? What are "cfw?" And "flashback?" And "retron77"? " Thx
Great Review! Awaiting my Atari 2600+ arriving tomorrow! Thanks for uploading this fun and honest review, cheers..... from Ireland.
Excellent full review, by far the best I've seen yet. Watched a few 10/15 min "reviews" that just don't cover enough. This video is how it should be done! Will definitely be checking out more.. oh and recognise you from the Daily Woo.. lol unrelated to this video 😅 Great work mate.
Thanks! Appreciate the kind words.
Holy crap, thank you! I finally found a video where someone plays Xevious on the 2600+! I bought the game the other day and I was worried that it wasn’t compatible, but now I know my cartridge just doesn’t work. Thanks!
Here in the UK, when I was a kid, my Dad use to rent games from the local petrol station for my 2600. Great review.
Haha! Love the AVGN reference... love that episode! Can't wait for mine! It's on its way
To me, aside from the system itself, good quality new authentic joysticks and paddle controllers being available again is good for people who own an original 2600.
This is the best review/look at the Atari 2600+ I've seen. You checked everything including 7800 games and two button controllers. Strange that the Sega Genesis pads don't work as they work on any original 2600. I hope they fix that with firmware.
Thank you!
The metal grooves on the switches is called a knurl (in manufacturing). Great review! I'm really looking forward to receiving mine.
Thanks for the info!
@@GregsGameRoom No, that info is just plain wrong. The grooves on the switch shafts are from a turning tool made by machining it on a CNC lathe. They are simply feed lines made by the tip of a turning tool. Very common on all items made on a lathe. I should know, I'm working as a CNC programmer/CNC Machinist/1st Class Machinist/Toolmaker since 1986. Knurling is something completely different since there are two grooves at an angle and cross over in a X or diamond shape along the length of the shaft. Although nowadays knurling isn't very common. If you have an old center punch you might see knurling on the part that you hold or on a barbell / weight bars, grips of darts or a mechanical pencil, to name a few.
Thanks for the super in-depth review. I was surprised at how many third-party games didn't work.
Yeah it’s a bummer.
Just saw you on Adam the Woo's channel. I do love me some retro systems! I still have my 1979 Atari 2600 from my childhood, which my father stored in a closet for 2 months before Christmas and, of course, I already knew he bought it. I feigned ignorance when I opened the present, and he still doesn't know that I did that. I'm 50 years old this year. Dad is 85! :)
Thought I'd give you a sub.
Appreciate it, thanks!
You have a very nice collection of games, especially the 7800 ones. Thank you for trying out so many games. I was very concerned about Popeye and Stargate. Thanks for confirming.
Thanks, I wanted to try as many games as possible.
Thank you for this review and for covering all the bases!
Best thing to clean cartridge contacts with is hoppe's 9 powder solvent. Just dip a qtip into the bottle, wipe on both sides, get a clean qtip and scrub like you would with alcohol. hoppe's 9 is a copper oxide solvent, and that is what you are cleaning. I used it on all my old cartridges about 10 years ago. I still haven't had to clean them. Just make sure you don't drip solvent into the cartridge, you don't want to dissolve the pcb traces, just the corrosion layer on the edge connector. In other words, be frugal with the solvent.
My vintage Atari joystick literally has the same rattling sound.
Excellent review. I was making a list of questions to ask as I watched the video, but you answered them all! Obviously my first question was whether Ninja Golf worked.
Had to do Ninja Golf!
Brilliant review this, best I've watched by a mile.
Thanks!
Really good review, thank you so much for this!
Thanks for watching!
Great review. I'm so hyped. Now I have to wait until Christmas ;)
Whoever thought you could unwrap a new 2600 at Christmas?!
My 2600+ just arrived. I opened the joystick and it's using a really clean nice design with conductive rubber pads and carbon-coated PCB pads like most modern controllers. So there's no old style dome switches in there and they should last many years without touching. If anyone already has a real 2600 and needs a new joystick buy this new one (sold separately I think) because it plays identical to the original but is better quality.
Thanks for the video. would love to see a further teardown showing those extra PCB's - it's clear that the bottom one (two) for the switches, the middle one the cart reader and rear connectors. I bet some enterprising individual could easily create a replacement Blue PCB for a seameless raspberry pi (or other board) based Atari2600+ ......Imagine a CM4 (or forthcoming CM5) adaptor that just manipulates the data lines on the two header sockets on that processor board.!
Is there much more space in the case?
There’s a lot of room inside there.
The system has a Rockchip ARM CPU, so it's already essentially a Raspberry Pi. The two hacks would be:
* Load custom firmware
* Add WiFi
With that, you could emulate a much larger library of games. Any game that works with a one-button joystick should be playable, whether for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari 800, C64, or even arcade machines should be playable. Just have the firmware have a load-from-WiFi option if there's no cartridge inserted. If adding WiFi doesn't work, custom firmware could use a cartridge with a SD card.
It looks really good in terms of being a replica, but I am just holding off to see if there are some official or community updates that will really make this into a must-have.
It has updateable firmware so not if but when.
Great review! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for watching!
Great Video! Hopefully they get some firmware updates for the compatibility issues. It will be interesting to see what the community does with this as they made the Retron 77 WAY better with the Stella Emu update, but still had issues with Jittery paddles. Unless you got the Hyperkin one, but that one was real stiff. Hoping this does well and maybe in the future they will put out a FPGA 7800 pro system console, one can hope and dream.
I bet this one will be amazing after the modders get ahold of it. I like the look of this console way better than the Retron 77!
@@GregsGameRoom yea. Will definitely keep an eye out to see what happens with it and will get it when there is a better firmware or mod build out. They need to get the 7800 compatibility sorted out for the homebrews at the very least.
Congrats on your award!! Now when are we gonna play Aztec Challenge? 🎉😊
Thanks!
Greg thanks for the review mind arives on fri cant wait, Been looking forward to this since i pre ordered it..Been buying up old games just to have them..Thanks for testing an now i know what will work..Cant wait go atari..Looks like there making a come back..
Sounds like you’ll be busy with those games!
@@GregsGameRoom What would be cool later on is if atari lets colecovision run on the system id love to play that old dnd game my friend used to have.
Very informative! When they release this with an SD card slot, I will buy it. Otherwise, I'll buy a flash cart. I would rather have every game in coax quality on original hardware for half the price and use Stella which is free for HD. A lot of the fun in exploring Atari is the weird or licensed titles. I love Atari and have 100+ games, but I'm not paying for a console that can't play the entire library in 2023.
Well, the Mini consoles don’t have SD card slots. I bet it can be accessed through that USB slot.
@@GregsGameRoom I'm thinking it will be accessed through USB too, but they plan to update firmware which may hinder the ROMs. The minis all came with amazing libraries playable for hundreds of hours that the 2600+ doesn't at a lower price and it isn't like Flashbacks haven't had SD slots before. This one is just easier to play smart and wait, even if the product is cool.
Check the board.... it does have an microSD slot, only it's not populated.... ^_^
Great review and you really covered all the important details, to be honest though, I don't think this new system is for me. I have enough spares and parts from Console5 to keep my original running longer than I have days left on this earth. Maybe if the original wasn't built like a Sherman tank, I'd opt for the clone stuff. Thanks for getting this one out there. 👍
Yeah it’s nice to hook it up to a modern TV, but I’ll never give up my unmodded RF signal Ataris!
“Man do I have a lot to do” “Greg is reviewing the 2600+” “Let’s put the to do list on the back burner and watch this video!”
LOL, thanks for dropping everything. ;-)
ngl, this was perfect for me, i had nostalgia for those dollar store plug and plays as a kid, so being able to have something i can hook up easily to my LCD and try to get my favorites in cartridge form is nice, honestly for those who are against the system, i understand but i also wanna mention, this could've been a genesis firecore situation, but it wasn't, it's using the opensrc emulators many use to play atari 2600/7800 games on the PC or other platforms.
and i imagine if it was FPGa it wouldn't be worth it for me, i do hope eventually they do lower the price (maybe by making a 2600+jr?) so if they go down that route then at least most would have an option of software emulation consoles. And in general just hoping for more software updates come along to let us play more fun titles.
By the way, i tried commando on mine, which hasn't been updated yet and it did take at least 5 tries but now it works perfectly on 2600+ :)
Great video! Can you test these other titles?
Burger Time
Gyrus
Frogger II
Omega Race
Pinball
Frostbite
Worm War I
Airlock
Saboteur
Sea Hunt
Aqua Venture
Conquest of Mars
Elevator Age
Raptor
Ruby Q
Space Taxi
Amoeba Jump (Homebrew)
Save Mary (Homebrew)
Yars Return (Homebrew)
HERO (Homebrew)
Ninjish Guy (Homebrew)
Stay Frosty 2 (Homebrew)
Lead (Homebrew)
Ardvark (Homebrew)
Galagon 7800 (Homebrew)
The 16:9 4:3 is important if you want to hook it up via HDMI adapter to a 4:3 CRT or 4:3 LCD screen. When doing that via HDMI you would actually set it to 16:9 and then in theory it should look notrmal on 4:3 then as it will be desqueezed.
Sounds about right.
Brilliant job mate! Thanks 🤜🤛
oh thank god you play four player paddle games!!! thanks for testing that no one else has thought to do it for some reason. :D :D :D :D :D I had that silver joystick back in the day. :P
Right? 4-player is what makes Warlords the best paddle game ever!
@@GregsGameRoom and 4 player video olympics is pretty sweet too both have fallen through the cracks in terms of being able to be played easily .
I figured Pitfall 2 cart wouldn't work, same as the R77. The paddle lag looks disappointing. Uh oh. I just made your upvote count a scary number!
You can usually either take a picture of the chip info and put it into Google lens, it will tell you about those chips. Or just type in the info on the chips and research and then find out about the hose chips. There has got to be some kind of schematic out there for you to modify the 2600+ boards for some kind of additional or augmenting?
I saw the 2600+ at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and thought it looked super cute! Loved the mini form factor. I was however disappointed to learn it doesn't support a majority of modern homebrews.
Yeah, the 7800 ones especially. I’m getting some more homebrews soon so I’ll give them a test too.
Yes but it's also possible that homebrews can be rewritten to take advantage of this new hardware. Might be neat to have a virtual 7800+
They're supposed to be patching compatibility
Good review. When I do my own, I might put a link to your review in the description because so far your review has been the most comprehensive and is the only one that has all that video testing which I can’t duplicate because I don’t have nearly as many cartridges nor do I have the 7800 stuff.
The way it is off throws it off for me thanks for the review
pretty thorough. much appreciated
It's nice to see the 2600 + plays original cartridges but does the original 2600 play the new games
Yep! Check the chapters in the video!
I saw it shortly after I had time to watch your video without family interruptions. Awesome review
You suggested that future firmware updates might fix some of the compatibility issues. The catch is that there's no obvious method to update the firmware. There's no network. I suppose they could issue a firmware update cartridge that you could order, but only if the current firmware is designed for that. And while you mentioned that you expected one game to fail because of custom chips in the cartridge, Ballblazer has a Pokey sound chip, and that works, so if it's one where they detect a known game, they can emulate the special cartridge features. But there are a lot of those, so it's not surprising that they only got the best known ones.
37:28 its a Recovery button
Yeah it was hard to see with the naked eye.
Great video. Really good to see a bunch of games tested. I have to say though, you sure hold a joystick strangely!
hah, that’s because I was trying to get the joystick onscreen with the game.
@@GregsGameRoom i know, just messing. :D
Awesome Review !!!!!
Thanks!
Awesome review! Makes me want one!! Lol
Thanks buddy!
Love your vids.
Thanks!
The secret has been revealed: inside, it is yet another Rockchip console… just like Powkiddy and Anbernic. You _could_ hack it to run all kinds of other software, but… why would you bother? You'd be better off buying a separate device… even one made with the same Rockchip architecture.
I love mine. It's not perfect, but it works very well. I do hope that they reduce movement jitter in paddles games with a future firmware update, but the jitter isn't terrible, and Super Breakout is the only game I've found so far in which the jitter is prominent enough to be a bit annoying.
As for those games you tried that didn't work, it's very possible that some of them just need to have the contacts cleaned. This system does seem to be more sensitive to dirty contacts than the originals. There have also been some beta and experimental firmware updates available on AtariAge. They make some improvements and also allow some games that didn't previously work to now do so. One of those games is Pitfall II, though with the experimental firmware, not the beta firmware.
I've found that og paddles were jittery on the plus although they're perfect on an original system
Rockchip makes Arm SOCs. The board with the HDMI port looks like a single board computer. The others are most likely just for I/O.
Thanks for the tear down, I’ve been dying to see the guts of one of these!
Very good video, but not greatly impressed, but no real surprise.
I think it would generally be better for people to save their money, run the Stella emulator, and spend the money on a quality joystick or something else.
The lack of output to any kind of CRT is a huge disadvantage, although I realize a lot of people are using LCD's (which greatly affects the experience).
Several game titles as you've shown aren't working. They'd probably nearly all run with the regular Stella emulator, and most of the home brews.
Stella adds a bunch of extra features, such as emulation of the Super Charger
So many copies of classic joysticks today don't feel like the originals. The stiff movement is how parts are often copied today. The same with arcade joystick re-issues. Really annoying, so I use only classic original controllers. The CX-40 joysticks were not stiff like that when new. I owned several. Been a classic video game fanatic since getting my Atari Sears Pong in 1975 I still have.
The paddle controller issue most likely has something to do with the LCD screen. I played an Arkanoid machine this past weekend with LCD, and the frame-rate didn't feel right Yet, I run some spinner control games on a spinner in my MAME cab on a CRT monitor and their perfect. I doubt the issue with the paddles is do to the emulation. I bought a USB adapter for classic Atari controllers, but haven't got my paddles working yet. Hoping I missed a setting in Stella. Perhaps that is about the only advantage I see to the hardware is ease of use, and the physical form of it, but it's still not the original.
I'm surprised the 10 in 1 cartridge requires jumper changes rather than an easy menu to select with the joystick. And some really classic titles like Air Sea Battle, an original VCS game, should be included.
All and old, save your money. I've seen worse, but there are better options such as Stella on a PC or collecting the original system.
For the light gun games I hope the company makes a new version of the light gun to play the light gun games for the Atari 2600+ on a hdmi tv.
So the three chips appear to be a Rockchip RK3128 which is a low power CPU/GPU system on a chip thingy, the H5TC4G63CFR is 512 MB of RAM and the third chip is 256 MB flash storage.
They could have made it use the same hardware logic directly. You can do a full hardware emulation using an FPGA, so all the chip details needed to make a real Atari 2600 or 7800 on a chip are out there. Still, this is the best option they've put out since the 80s. It was always disappointing that the Flashback devices lacked a cartridge port.
Great video. You gave me nostalgia when you showed some of those games that I had forgotten about.
Glad to help you remember!
Disassemble the new and old joystick, you will see new modern electronics that control the games. Big difference from the original.
I don’t know if anyone addressed this elsewhere, but my recollection is that the keypad for Star raiders is plugged into player two and the joystick is in player one
I had it plugged into controller port 2. No dice.
Sorry about that
Star raiders was one of my faves on the 2600
It only works with some original cartridges. Mainly atari cartridges. It didn't run river raid, or tennis, or frog's n flies, or well more than half of my stash doesn't work on it. Thankfully I have old vader model and a CRT. I don't know, what it does play it does play well and the HDMI is nice. The emulator is superb, it feels like the original console.
The OG one probably had Velcro to stick to a surface so it's easier to move the joystick with how stiff it starts out at lol. Also no power brick but if you hook up to an HDTV, the USB slot on the back of the TV should be enough power for the console, saving on a wire going down to an outlet and finding a usb power brick.
On the Atari Trakball, there should be a switch on the bottom to change it from joystick to trakball mode.
Hm, don’t remember seeing that but I’ll check!
I thought not all of them had the switch. When I bought mine on the Bay of E, I looked for one that had a picture showing the switch.
But besides that, does the 2600 even support that kind of input? I thought only my 5200 had actual trakball analog input. For the 2600 - AFAIK - only the paddles (and the 360 spinning driving version) provided analog input. Hmmm…
@@nickpalance3622 My 2600 supports the trakball.
I'm pretty positive that Micro USB port is a data port and I don't think it well be even a month until someone found a way to hack it
The OG 4 switch moves all the plug ins up so this is actually correct i dont care for it also but you have a great collection if these carts are CIB its a big money collection if not i recommend looking for MT box and completing the more valuable ones. Good job on the review also did you run out to buy any games? there seems to be a rush of bidders now on everything Atari.
Makes you wonder if atari had plans for a system( 2600+) like this 40 years ago to replace the 2600.
Well this review nailed it for me. Think I'm going to cancel mine and just stick with my 7800 and get the AV mod done instead.
Personally I’d rather keep my systems unmodded and original.
@Greg's Game Room Please do a followup and leave as a comment trying the games that didn't work in the first half after cleaning. I suspect at least some of them WILL work, but the contact pins were dirty. Please varify this!
I probably will do another video if a new firmware is released.
@@GregsGameRoom Can you at least please double check on Pitfall 2 really doesn't work and your copy was just dirty? That's my favorite 2600 game and one I'm really looking forward to playing on this.
You do know there are HDMI CRT TVs for playing light gun games on, don’t you?
I really hope they make a new trakball for the atari 2600+
I don't think i got the Atari but a cheaper imitation system which had the atari games built in. Not sure what it was called but it had a cowboy on the box?
This system definitely needs some firmware updates for controllers and game support in the future. But it looks like a sweet system for modern setups
Yeah it’s good now, but it can be great (for an emulation system.)
I am jealous. I am still waiting for mine.
I do want to make a guess here. This is going to be hackable. Atari just can't say that due to copyright being held by Activision/Microsoft on a good amount of titles that one can find in rom format. That Micro USB port, and the button on the motherboard? That opens up the strong chance of hackability. With a simple OTG cable, a USB drive (assuming compatibility with a certain brand/size), I could really see the possibility of updates and upgrade packages that could be delivered. What is best, this wouldn't require any major hardware knowhow. Just open it up. find the usb port on the side it is on, plug stuff in, hold button, power on, and boom. Of course, the hard part will come in the awesome work that the software modding community comes in and makes our little Atari 2600+ the best Atari console it can be.
I’m sure hacks are coming. But I wonder how much flash memory it has? Even a tiny amount would be enough for the entire 2600/7800 library.
The vents are there to collect all the dust😂…I can’t figure out why so many consoles have those ridges. People in the 80s really liked making dusting harder.
The system looks great but that input lag on the paddle controllers is a huge let down. Circus Atari is my favorite 2600 game and requires a very precise amount of control. Would be incredibly difficult with the way emulation handles the input. It is what it is I guess.
If the paddles lag this much, it seems likely that the other controllers also lag 😞
37:14 The flash is the Toshiba TC58NVG1S3HTA00 TSOP48 chip. It's a 2G-bit (256MByte) NAND flash ROM. It's very curious why they used such a large amount of storage to hold what boils down to an ARM port of a Atari 2600 emulator and not much else. Clearly they are not using the best and most recent emulator code otherwise more games would work. Also, am I the only person who noticed the board has a space for a microSD card slot.... hmmmm ^_^
This console could've been the best one if it were compatible with homebrews and the rest of the library as well.
Pity the 2600+ doesn't work with the Harmony multi cart. Hopefully there's a firmware update to fix it. It should be easy to fix that because the Harmony cart can be put into auto-load single game mode just by putting one rom on the sdcard. But the Harmony cart downloads the rom to memory which takes a couple of seconds after power-on. The problem is the 2600+ is basically a cart dumper so it tries to dump the cart ROM before the Harmony cart has actually loaded it. A simple 3 second delay at power-on would be enough time to allow the Harmony cart to get the game ready and then the 2600+ can dump it to memory and run it. Or alternatively allow the reset+color switches when pressed together on the console to re-dump the cart which would also fix it. But ideally the 2600+ should just run the Harmony cart as-is without having to jump through hoops.
That was some serious lag you showed earlier. No one can ever hope to get any high scores with that kid of lag. Especially on paddle games. A shame.
It was more noticeable on the paddle games. Hoping a firmware update corrects it a bit.
@@GregsGameRoom surely so. How long has Atari 2600 emulation been excellent, as far as lag goes? 20, 25 years maybe?
I had one when I was 9 back in the day. I can still remember the new console smell. Does this one replicate the olfactory branding of the original?
You might know this already but you're driving your tube too hard. You can see the vertical retrace. This will wear out your tube much quicker and give you a poor picture overall. But there might not be much life left and that's why you've got it so high, I dunno.
I wonder if there ever was an ATARI to COLECOVISION or vise versa so we can play both consoles games?
Nija golf was a game my gram bought me new but I only had a 2600
If they can get 90% of the gsmes to work, they have done their job. Those dmall bosrds will be easy to replace. I also bet it onky costs like $40 to make. Huge profit margin. Lastly, i wonder if the 7800 and light gun is coming soon.
Why did they use dip switches on the cartridges themselves rather than just using the game select button right next to the reset button. Or is the setup different on this system. I'm blind so I can't see the setup of the 2600+. Still love your video. I used to be a fairly good video pinball player lol, don't ask me how I did it.
Thanks.
I knew the 7800 homebrews wouldn't work yet but a little concerned about some of the 2600 compatibility (except things such as Pitfall II, which has an extra on-board chips). Hoping for some updates and/or community involvement.
They are working on 100% compatibility
Love your video! Does it connect to the internet?
Must have demon attack
I pre-ordered mine and am looking forward to it. Shame to hear that Pitfall 2 isn't running (which was to be expected) and the Sega Genesis Controller isn't supported, which I didn't expect. Can you tell if PAL and NSTC games run with correct colors on the 2600+? That would be great. I come from Germany and the PAL games here are often significantly more expensive than the NSTC versions. Thanks for your great review 👍😊 Holger
I don’t have any PAL games to test, but I heard they do work.
Thanks for the great video. I am curious if you ever got Smurf to work? I seem to be having the same issue you were with it and the cart was thoroughly cleaned.
Thank you for your video. Question - at 9:52 - what did you do after that screen came up? That is where I'm stuck.
That’s basically a raspberry pie with emulator
Looks like it, not hard-ware based. Then all the games would work.