Atari 2600+ *FULL REVIEW!* Unboxing, Games, Controllers, Testing, & Teardown! 

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video! Check out my Instagram: instagram.com/gregsgameroom/ Every Konami NES Game: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AO1qrfzyDtI.html Nintendo NES vs. Atari 7800: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OtB1vwTntcs.html Why I LOVE Atari! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YE7FbLzMA4Q.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.

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

Great Review! Awaiting my Atari 2600+ arriving tomorrow! Thanks for uploading this fun and honest review, cheers..... from Ireland.

Thank you for this review and for covering all the bases!

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.

Really great review much more in-depth than other "reviewers" thanks so much 🥂

Haha! Love the AVGN reference... love that episode! Can't wait for mine! It's on its way

Awesome job, Greg! The tiny but "real" boxes are really cool and fit better on "Media" shelves than the original sizes

Really good review, thank you so much for this!

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.

Brilliant review this, best I've watched by a mile.

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.

im impressed that you still have your original 2600 from when you were a children.

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.

Really nice review and testing. Gone are the days of fighting with broken RF switch adaptors.

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.

Great review. I'm so hyped. Now I have to wait until Christmas ;)

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!

Have to say this was a great video. You didn’t just do a surface dive like others.

Great review! Thanks for sharing!

The metal grooves on the switches is called a knurl (in manufacturing). Great review! I'm really looking forward to receiving mine.

Brilliant job mate! Thanks 🤜🤛

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.

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.

Thanks for the super in-depth review. I was surprised at how many third-party games didn't work.

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.

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.

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.

pretty thorough. much appreciated

Great video. You gave me nostalgia when you showed some of those games that I had forgotten about.

Great video. Really good to see a bunch of games tested. I have to say though, you sure hold a joystick strangely!

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?

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..

Awesome Review !!!!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Love your vids.

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

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. 👍

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.

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.

Congrats on your award!! Now when are we gonna play Aztec Challenge? 🎉😊

Awesome review! Makes me want one!! Lol

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.

My vintage Atari joystick literally has the same rattling sound.

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.

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.

Thank you for your video. Question - at 9:52 - what did you do after that screen came up? That is where I'm stuck.

Love your video! Does it connect to the internet?

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.

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

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.

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+ :)

The way it is off throws it off for me thanks for the review

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)

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 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?

“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!”

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.

It's nice to see the 2600 + plays original cartridges but does the original 2600 play the new games

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!

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 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

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.

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

So how close did the paddles come to playing like the original paddles on an original Atari? After all these years do we have something near perfect, yet?

Is that beautiful wood grain finish made of laminate or is it made of wood veneer?

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.

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.

Do we have any clarification as to whether flash carts will work on this yet?

I have the enhanced Berzerk cart with voice I got from Atari Age years ago. Is the one they selling now different?

I'm curious if you plug the USB into a PC, is the device recognised? Does anything happen if you plug in a powered USB C hub (eg maybe another way to connect HDMI via a hub with a HDMI adapter)?

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 wonder if there ever was an ATARI to COLECOVISION or vise versa so we can play both consoles games?

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.

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.

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 ^_^

I really hope they make a new trakball for the atari 2600+

I am worried if I hook this up to my big screen/projection tv it won't be clear or possibly blurry ?

On the Atari Trakball, there should be a switch on the bottom to change it from joystick to trakball mode.

Do Mr. Run and Jump and Berzerk enhanced work on the original 2600?

How do you get the original ATARI 2600 to work on a newer smart TV?

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.

Does anyone know if it's possible to buy an accurate Atari joystick that has USB connectivity? I've just recently got in to emulation and love having all my old games to play but I'd love to play with an authentic controller. Is there anywhere I can get one, or is there even an adapter that can be used to make the old joysticks work with a USB connection?

Disassemble the new and old joystick, you will see new modern electronics that control the games. Big difference from the original.

Does anyone know how I could get tron game to work with a track ball?

Will the enhanced berzerk work on an original Atari 2600? The sounds and stuff? Bought a fully refurbished 2600 with power LED and av composite mods and I don’t really want to get the 2600+ since my 2600 looks n runs minty

Did you try cleaning robot tank?

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 do know there are HDMI CRT TVs for playing light gun games on, don’t you?

the 4 in 1 cartridge works on the old consoles? thanks in advace

Makes you wonder if atari had plans for a system( 2600+) like this 40 years ago to replace the 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.

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