Atari Announces an Official Portable 2600 System

Bill Kendrick writes: "Infogrames (the folks who now own Atari) have just struck a deal with another company to produce a 10-in-1 video game system based on the Atari 2600. It'll be joystick-shaped, plug into a TV set, cost only $20, and include games like Combat, Asteroids, Missile Command, and my favorite, Adventure! It won't replace my Atari 2600 Jr and 60 cartridges, but it's a step in the right direction!"

Re:Hell Yah

[Anonymous Coward]

try http://www.atarihq.de
they delivered to me 8 times reliably

Mega Joy 2

[FrenZon]

There's something like this already available in the mega joy 2 [firebox.com] - since the games are all unlicenced, they all have different names, but you get three-times the names.

Re:Original?

[Mimsy]

Here is what happened with Atari.

It got split into 2 seperate entities.

Atari. (Home Entertainment)
Atari Games (Arcade Entertainment)

Warner Communications sold Atari to JTS i think, which sold it to Hasbro Interactive which Hasbro sold off to Infogrames of France.

Warner Spun off Atari games as a subsiderary of them. Warner sold the Division to Midway.

So that's why there is a little confusinon here.

Hope this clears this up.

Sad really

[Diabolical]

It's sad to see Atari's legacy being abused by yet another company who just lives on Atari's fame.

Atari used to be a great systems manufacturer as well as a gaming company. Their ST line was very good and could compete with the Amiga in it's days. Their STacy an STBook were great portables where the STBook was way better then what any company could offer as a portable. It took years for the industrie to reach the same kind of portability as the STBook offered.

Alas, Atari is no more. The companies diverse owners just broke it into little parts and sold them to the highest bidders.. There are few companies which have had a change of ownership so frequently as Atari has.

Take a look at http://www.atari-history.com for some background information on Atari and it's products

It's NOT an Atari 2600 -- don't be confused

[psyconaut]

I believe, until I'm corrected, that this is not actually an Atari 2600 (or anything even vaguely similar) but rather Jakks existing hardware system with classic Atari games ported to it.

(Just to clear up the comments about "wish it had a cartridge slot).

-marc

Re:Hell Yah

[Tet]

Now if only I could get games for my lynx :)

If you live in the UK, head on down to your local Game [game-retail.co.uk] store. Mine's still selling Lynx and Jaguar games (and indeed, Jaguar consoles!).

Portable? I think not

[galaga79]

It's a bit deceptive to refer to it as a portable system considering you need to plug it into a TV to actually to use it. By using the word portable I thought something along the lines of Puma the portable Atari 2600 [tripoint.org] where a Sega Game Gear has been converted into a portable Atari 2600 complete with its own display.

There is a whole site dedicated to Atari 2600 portable conversion projects [classicgaming.com] that has been discussed in this [slashdot.org] and repeated in this [slashdot.org] Slashdot article.

Re:Sad really

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important reason why the ST could compete for a small period of time, with the Amiga was th result of it was somewhat cheaper.

The Amiga did have an alot more powerful graphics chipset, as well as better (stereo) audio and most of all a truly advanced multimedia operating system.

Re:Portable? I think not

[PsyQ]

That's not a Sega Game Gear, it's a Nomad. The Game Gear was an original system based off Sega's Master System hardware but with a better graphics subsystem (more colors). The Nomad was a complete Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) compressed into a handheld console. It played the original Genesis cartridges without any modification, giving it a library of hundreds of games right at its day of release.

To some, the Nomad is STILL the best handheld system ever released, because of the varied and deep selection of games.

Maybe I'm karma-whoring :)

Re:Original?

[MonkeyBoy]

Atari. ;)

The home entertainment division, which is the only Atari left. It was sold to Infogrames a while back, and since Infogrames is in the story, that's the division involved.

Midway's arcade division shut down months ago (a few months after the Williams pinball division got axed), so for all intents and purposes Atari Games (the arcade division) is dead. Midway, the home entertainment division, is still alive and kicking.

I'm not sure how the intellectual property is all handled, since Infogrames has been putting out PC ports of old arcade games under the Atari brand. Seems like Midway might be able to do the same with old Atari games.

But, then again, Midway needs profitability at this point... putting out old titles seems like wonderful ideas, I just so rarely see it actually result in profits.

Though, personally, I wish I had picked up more Infocom Treasures collections... I only got the first one released for the Mac, and there were one or two after that. Then there were a few that never made it far enough to get ported... (sigh)

Re:Atari 2600 schematics and details

[TheAlchemist]

Yes, we have schematics of the 2600 on our site, you can find them here:

Atari 2600 Schematics - NTSC [atariage.com]
Atari 2600 Schematics - PAL [atariage.com]

As for details of its construction and roms, there are quite a few knowledgable people who visit our message boards [atariage.com], and they can probably answer any specific questions you have.

Re:Original?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you were partially right.

Warner dumped Atari after the videogame crash of 1984, after which time the Tramiels of Commodore fame came into power. At this time Atari was completely autonomous and had no parent company. After the mismanagement of Atari at the hands of the notorious Tramiel family with botched XEGS, Lynx, and Jaguar releases and burning bridges with just about every third-party that dealt with them, they were forced to perform a reverse merger with JTS corporation. They got a whole $5,000,000 from Hasbro when JTS could no longer stay in business themselves. Pretty sad when you think about it.

It's a pretty well-documented saga, Atari's last days, and I really recommend reading about it.

Re:Hell Yah

[Bill Kendrick]

Songbird Productions ( http://songbird.atari.net/ [atari.net] ) produces NEW Atari Lynx games. :)

Re:Mega Joy 2

[raindog2]

The MJ2 and its various clones are actually based on the NES (8-bit Nintendo). Still nostalgic, and I'd buy it just to play Mappy on hotel room TV's, but really aimed at the generation after those who would buy this Atari thing ;)

OTOH, there is already a licensed Activision one which I see now and then at Toys-R-Us and Walmart, and that one is based on the 2600 (and includes Pitfall, among others.) In fact, it's from the same Jakks subsidiary, Toymax:

http://www.toymax.com/ToyCentral/EL/10in1.htm [toymax.com]

As I understand it, it's not actually a complete clone of the 2600, just enough to get those specific games working (and apparently the Atari-licensed ones in the new version as well.)

Re:A C64 Version would be cool

[WWWWolf]

Hey, that one was made ages ago: Commodore Executive 64 (SX64/DX64). =)

(Though neither had Datassette port, and I'm not sure about cartridge support - but on C64, floppy loading times were never Utterly Horrible (especially with disk turbo), even if they're slow by today's standards...)

(Oh, and getting a SX64/DX64 is a bit hard. An used laptop, a Linux install and VICE would probably be cheaper =)