Posted December 31, 1969 by Ron Williamson

Atari is re-releasing 40 of its classic Atari titles on a compact Atari 2600 shaped plug n' play device.

Retro gaming is all around us. With the wildly popular plug n? play system Atari has found yet another way of packaging some of our favorite classics into one small, portable, and easy to use product: The Atari Flashback 2.0. The Atari Flashback 2.0 will be packaged in a box very closely resembling the classic Atari 2600, wood paneling and all. The controller is actually the same joystick that the 2600 had. It even goes as far as designing the chips to perfectly emulate the original Atari 2600 chip. That means that these are perfectly represented using the original code. These games are the actual original game, without any type of porting by a third party. This will be great for those collectors that want to relive the past but are dissatisfied by remakes and ports. Anything you liked or didn?t like will be in these titles. Among the 40 titles on this game many of your favorite titles will be included such as Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Lunar Lander, Yars? Revenge, Missile Command, Combat. There are even going to be some titles from the arcade that have never before been released on a home console. Playing it is a breeze. You plug it in and a menu shows on our television, you simply move up or down to select the game you would like to play, push the big read button, and at your finger tips are the classic, original games. Since it is made from the original code even the animations flashing and slowing down are there. It?s like having a 2600 all over again. Buying and Atari 2600 and all of those games would cost far more than this unit, and since this is new, it?s much more likely to work. It?s also compact and light, so transportation is easy.

In case you are curious the system is going to be about 2/3 the size of the original 1977 Atari 2600 console. 20 of the games will be original classic 2600 games, while the other 20 titles will be the arcade titles that have never been played on a console before. Even If you won?t appreciate the new titles for the nostalgia you will be excited to play new titles that you?ve never seen before. The system comes with 2 Atari 2600 joysticks. It will hook up to your television by way of an A/V cable. It will feature a single player mode as well as a 2 player head-to-head mode. The system also has, surprisingly, backward compatibility with all previous 2600 controllers including the paddle controllers and the trackball. Though this feature might be useless to most players since most people don?t have the 2600 anymore, but it is a great feature for those gamers that do. One really interesting feature is that the console will be ?hackable.? This means that the true Atari fans can actually make their own games on the system or even modify the games that are already on the system. This is a really interesting feature that may sell the system on its own. It is an inventive idea and it is something that we have never really seen on any kind of home system before. This system sounds very solid and will certainly be at the top of anyone?s wish list that has had the desire to play some of those classic Atari titles. Even if you are too young to remember those days, you don?t have to worry since they are now within your grasp.