Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

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Atariboy
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Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby Atariboy » July 8th, 2016, 5:40 am

Image

-It's from AtGames, the makers of the Atari Flashback line after the FB2.
-Reuses the mold from their Genesis handheld.
-SD slot to add your own roms to the lineup; Special chip games like Pitfall II aren't supported.
-Same screen, tv out functionality, and presumably the same buttons as their Genesis handheld.
-All 2600 functions are within easy reach thanks to the numerous buttons.
-Game lineup mimics the console version, with the two player and paddle games removed.

And as shown on the boxart, Frogger is joining the Atari Flashback lineup. And like Taito's Space Invaders in recent Atari Flashbacks, it's a brand new version based on the arcade original rather than the old 2600 conversion.

Unsure if that's because Konami didn't want to see the old Parker Brothers version released (That's why the superior Atari version of Space Invaders isn't allowed to be shown). or the music rights issue that made this more expedient than editing ancient 2600 code to excise out the copyrighted soundtrack that Konami "borrowed' back in the day.

Been tough to get excited about their consoles, but this one has me excited.

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scotland
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby scotland » July 8th, 2016, 1:33 pm

I've enjoyed all sorts of these At Games products, so I hope they keep them coming!

The portable Genesis seems to work fine, and also has the SD slot. Considering how inexpensive it was, its done just fine by me. Judged on that standard, I think this will do just as well as 2600 emulation should be pretty darn good.

Its a bit different to play Atari with a joypad and not a joystick, but for a portable, its the way to go. I'm excited for this.

Here's hoping there are more to come, like a Commodore 64 flashback or a PC Engine flashback.

Hardcore Sadism
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby Hardcore Sadism » July 8th, 2016, 2:26 pm

I kind of wish they went with the design seen years ago on Atariage.

Voor
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby Voor » July 11th, 2016, 12:41 am

Cool, I'm looking hard at the Flashback 6. Been wanting to play some of these games with my kids.

eneuman96
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby eneuman96 » July 11th, 2016, 2:49 am

This reeks of a hoax. Googling "atari flashback portable" just brings up information on a device of the same name that Atari planned to release circa 2008 but wound up cancelling. After doing some sleuthing involving reverse image searching the picture shown here, I found an atari.io thread: http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/ ... ack-7-and/

The OP of this thread claims that "AT Games just started sending out their pre-order forms for this holiday season's Flashback systems." Looking at AT Games's site indicates absolutely nothing about this handheld coming out, let alone in a few months. Given that I can count every source of information about it on one hand, it's quite unlikely that it's real.

TL;DR: it would be awesome if this were real, but it's probably not.

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Atariboy
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby Atariboy » July 11th, 2016, 5:46 am

Hardcore Sadism wrote:I kind of wish they went with the design seen years ago on Atariage.


Me too, primarily because of its guts.

Legacy Engineering's 2600 on a chip from the Flashback 2, despite some unauthorized but well meaning changes at the Chinese manufacturing plant that made it imperfect compared to the 100% accurate test samples, is much superior to the AtGames emulator.

But their emulator still is more than acceptable and their Genesis portable has reviewed well such as at this very site, so I'm excited to see the two combined to offer a portable 2600.

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LS650
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby LS650 » July 31st, 2016, 10:35 am

Bill Loguidice has confirmed that it's real.
http://armchairarcade.com/perspectives/ ... -products/

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Atariboy
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby Atariboy » December 1st, 2016, 1:19 pm

Wasn't much apparent interest in this unit and I saw just now that one poster humorously even refused to believe it was real, but bumping this to let people know that these are officially available now. Appeared a few weeks later than the rest of the 2016 AtGames lineup that the Critic already reviewed, but they weren't cancelled and are now reaching people's hands.

Bed Bath & Beyond seems to be the way to go to acquire it. Marked at $40 ($10 less than GameStop) and 20% off coupons are easily available that drop that down to $32, both for in-store and online purchases. I just ordered it online and standard shipping was free, which is nice if you're like me and don't have one of these stores nearby.

There's one caveat with this unit from reports. It has trouble playing a fair number of games loaded from SD card. Here's a handy thread about compatibility.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/258970 ... ist/page-1

Still a nice feature and opens up hundreds of games like the bulk of the Activision library, but it clearly shows that there's room for improvement with their emulator for 2017.

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LS650
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby LS650 » December 10th, 2016, 8:58 pm

I've ordered one from Bed Bath and Beyond:
https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/ ... word=atari

eneuman96
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Re: Atari Flashback Portable confirmed for Fall 2016

Postby eneuman96 » December 10th, 2016, 10:36 pm

To think I used to believe this was a hoax. Good times.

But the reason this device has been getting so little attention compared to, say, the NES Classic Edition, is that it's simply not a very good way to play Atari 2600 games, on the go or otherwise. As mentioned previously, there are a lot of games that have compatibility issues or don't work at all. In addition, the D-pad is annoyingly imprecise (then again, so is a vintage 1977 controller), and the wealth of buttons in place of the original system's switches make things confusing when you're trying to do anything but actually play the games.

Another thing worth noting is that SD cards over 8 GB in size are incompatible. This is particularly annoying because many stores don't even carry SD cards that small anymore and you'll probably need to buy one online. In my experience, it doesn't seem like you can use micro SD cards through an adapter either.


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