Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

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VideoGameCritic
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Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

Postby VideoGameCritic » September 23rd, 2022, 5:59 pm

Do you guys think there's a market for an HD Atari 2600??

https://www.amazon.com/Hyperkin-RetroN- ... YFD4W&th=1

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Atariboy
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Re: Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

Postby Atariboy » September 24th, 2022, 3:38 am

They've been selling these for a few years now, so Hyperkin seems to have filled a niche that has paid off reasonably well for them. It's been cosmetically redone and now looks like the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/Hyperkin-RetroN- ... B08WSFCSWM

I like my woodgrain unit and the joystick is great. But I'm glad my system is bit older these days since it sounds like the newer units have faulty ram. Not a problem when running the system stock with the very old version of the Stella 2600 emulator that Hyperkin installed, since it isn't stress testing the less than perfect ram.

But when installing the latest builds of Stella (highly recommend you do similarly if you purchase one) and running something complicated like Space Rocks, the faulty ram they're buying rears its head after a few minutes under load. So I'd suggest seeking out the woodgrain version.

Just don't expect all your original carts to be compatible. Only the more basic cartridges work thanks to Hyperkin's cart dumper program being far from perfect. You'll want to load roms on the included micro SD card if you want to take full advantage of this system.
Last edited by Atariboy on September 24th, 2022, 4:16 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Atariboy
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Re: Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

Postby Atariboy » September 24th, 2022, 3:47 am

I didn't want to overload my already too long reply up above (nobody likes a wall of text), but I want to add one final thing. A very cool feature of this is that you can buy what's called an OTG USB cable and then hook up virtually any USB controller to your Retron '77 (It allows a USB controller and the system's USB power supply to share the single USB port on the Retron '77).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QG ... wzbCv10MOY

With that cheap adapter, virtually any USB controller like your favorite arcade stick can be plugged into your Retron '77.

envytomdead
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Re: Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

Postby envytomdead » September 24th, 2022, 11:05 pm

I have one of these myself. Atari Boy summed it up nicely. Definitely want to update the firmware with what the Stella's team upgrade. I have an older unit. It's really a nice way to play 2600 games on a modern TV. I'd also recommend getting one of http://www.2600-daptor.com/ if you want to play paddle games. It's not perfect but not bad for the price.

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Atariboy
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Re: Retron 77: An HD Atari 2600

Postby Atariboy » September 25th, 2022, 4:31 am

Yeah, that's another good reason to buy an OTG cable.

For the Critic or anyone else interested in the Retron '77, the reason you'd even want to use that 2600 to USB controller adapter to play paddle games and Indy 500 when the system has 2600 controller ports built-in, is because Hyperkin's controller interface isn't as good as it should've been. I believe the issue is that there's tons of jitter on paddle and driving controllers connected to the Retron '77 joystick ports compared to the same controllers on real hardware.

The team behind the open source Stella emulator that Hyperkin utilized here have done some work to improve this in their Retron '77 compatible Stella builds. But there's only so much they can do from within Stella to address Hyperkin's shortcomings.


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