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Atari Gamestation

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fahlim003:

--- Quote from: Zakk on October 29, 2023, 02:12:59 pm ---Just picked up one of these...pretty interesting piece of hardware. They have included an SD port as a last minute addition, so that you can add roms, and supposedly will handle emulation of multiple systems. I was most interested in the HDMI port, and the non reliance on "cloud" storage. Plus the damn thing is only $99 with two controllers with working paddles built in, that's pretty decent for the price. Anyone else grab one of these? (I know, I'm on a bit of an atari nostalgia kick at the moment).

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How would you describe the build quality? The Flashback always seemed to cheap to me and while those stock photos look slick the real deal could obviously be different.

Zakk:

--- Quote from: fahlim003 on December 02, 2023, 05:11:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zakk on October 29, 2023, 02:12:59 pm ---Just picked up one of these...pretty interesting piece of hardware. They have included an SD port as a last minute addition, so that you can add roms, and supposedly will handle emulation of multiple systems. I was most interested in the HDMI port, and the non reliance on "cloud" storage. Plus the damn thing is only $99 with two controllers with working paddles built in, that's pretty decent for the price. Anyone else grab one of these? (I know, I'm on a bit of an atari nostalgia kick at the moment).

--- End quote ---

How would you describe the build quality? The Flashback always seemed to cheap to me and while those stock photos look slick the real deal could obviously be different.

--- End quote ---

I actually grabbed it as a gift to myself from my wife. Every year I tell her what to get, and she leaves it until the week before Christmas, and I end up instead getting things like "disney star wars box set", instead of what I wanted. I won't know until Dec 25 :)
That said, reviews say the controllers are a bit light compared to the classic sticks, and the console itself I "believe" has weights in it to add some heft. I just hope it works as an hdmi compatible emu box for the old games.

Zakk:
Okay, so now that it's been opened, here's my take on the Gamestation:

It's pretty awesome. The joysticks work "well enough" out of the box, and after the firmware upgrade even the paddle controller works.
Adding arcade/nes/snes roms are super easy, the trick is getting things to work with the joystick. Emulation seems pretty good, just a tiny bit of slowdown on some of the later snes games. Again, the trouble is trying to play on the atari "style" joysticks. But the thing works out of the box with a fair number of games. I had the daughter's boyfirends all here for Christmas and I forced them to play, and oddly enough, they really got into the VERY simple one on one games like combat/sky diver/3-D tic tac toe and the like. It got fairly competitive and a lot of fun, it was good to have a menu system with graphic depictions for the games, as opposed to fiddling around with carts, or just a text list of names (it also helped that I knew all the games or most of them anyway and knew how to play).  The joysticks are obviously digital, so if it doesn't register a move you did, you sometimes have to do it again, so not as good as an old analog stick, but not all that terrible since both players had the same handicap.

Overall, for $100 I completely recommend it. I do believe you can use an xbox elite stick on these, but kind of hard to justify $150+ per controller just for this, so I'll likely keep my original consoles on the table (was sort of hoping I could eliminate a couple). Oh and arcade roms seem to work perfectly. Simple games like pacman and donkey kong I've tested and they worked no problem.

Zakk:

--- Quote from: pbj on November 02, 2023, 07:30:24 pm ---I preordered a 2600+ but cancelled when it came out it was emulation and they refused to test Pitfall 2.  And if it’s emulation, why no 5200?  Assault on Dreadnaught is the best game on any of those three consoles.

So, I picked up a couple of the Flashbacks from Goodwill for $30 shipped.  One of them is a system on a chip and with a dremel and a lot of jumper wires you can make it read cartridges.  I was bored in 5 minutes.  No wonder they looked brand new.

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I meant to load up pitfall II and try it out and get back to you, I'll try and do that the next couple of days. There are 5200 games on there pre-loaded, but not many, and not ideal with the joystick. HOWEVER they just hinted at a new joystick which includes a number keypad, so likely 5200 support will improve. I'll admit that I never thought much of the 5200 because I had an atari 800 and the games were pretty much copies, but I have NEVER heard of assault on dreadnaught, I can't find anything online except some weird phone app I think?

They just announced a new controller for the gamestation, and it includes a numpad, so that likely means better 5200 support. https://x.com/GenXGrownUp/status/1742629242028900608?s=20  If they can produce a decent joystick for a good price, this console might really be something.

Zakk:
New joystick designs unveiled at game expo, should be available by Augist-ish.
Would make this a perfect vintage console all-in-one. I have an N64 and a SNES on the table, would be nice to get rid of one or both, at least off the table.

Oh and Pitfall II works perfectly as far as I can see. I don't think they just put an arduino in this thing. Not sure if N64 games work or not, but if it will emulate arcade okay, why not n64

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