- It's retro time!? Maybe, sort of.
I've been waiting for this for a long time. Like this unassuming looking package,
you can probably actually tell what it is by the tape on the top.
It's from a small company you might've heard of called Atari.
They had a console called the VCS which is currently called the Atari 2600 and that is,
I'm led to believe, what this is modeled after.
So I don't have a whole lot of nostalgia for Atari personally 'cause I didn't really grow up with it
but I am really interested in seeing what this is
because it's more than just a game console.
So let's get this open. Oh, here we go.
I might be able to finagle this side.
- [Jono] I taped over the top. - Yeah, yeah, you didn't tape over the bottom did you, Jono?
- [Jono] Well, you're not supposed to open things from the bottom. - Well I'm opening it from the bottom.
It's what you get. - [Jono] You mean like the back door? - Backdoor, best way to get in.
We're in through the back door and it is actually the bottom,
I guess they didn't expect me to open it from this end. So let's get this out of here.
Oh, look at that. So what size shirt did they send us?
XL. - [Andy] I'm XL. Thank you!
- let's show them the shirt First. (laughing)
Atari VCS. Quite a nice little logo there.
It kind of reminds me of the Atari boot screen with the like multicolored rainbow effect
that they had going on there and it actually says on the back here that it was backed in 2008.
So I was a year off, it was 2000,
- [Jono] 2018. - It was backed in 2018. I was 10 years off.
(laughing) Since Andy is XL and I am, well,
unfortunately not quite XL.
Here you go. - [Andy] Thank you, Atari!
- I don't know if we can keep that or not. Moving on. We have other things that we might be able
to keep like this, this here sticker.
They're actually pretty high quality stickers. So that's the ancillary stuff.
Let's get this out of the outer wrapping and take a look at the box.
Ooh, sexy. Actually that is quite fetching.
I actually really do like the like subtle dark walnut
that they got here, that's what they call it here, black walnut.
Video computer system, gaming plus PC streaming.
Okay. 800, I don't know what that means.
Does it mean that it has Atari 800 support? Can I play 800 games?
- [Jono] Could you? - Could I? - [Jono] Should you?
- Should I? - [Jono] Should you!? - I mean the Atari 800 was actually not a bad machine
if I remember correctly, it's like the 5200 except it's a computer.
One thing that might be throwing a couple of you off if you haven't been keeping up,
is this gaming plus PC plus streaming bit.
As it turns out, this is actually straight up an AMD Ryzen based machine.
It's actually a Ryzen embedded processor and the graphics are Vega 3 I think.
So it's not super powerful but it's more than enough to play.
- [Jono] Can I scalp it? - These kinds of games. Can you scalp it?
I don't know. I mean, it'll probably be scalped a little bit
but I'm not sure how big the market is for it.
So we'll have to see. - [Jono] But memories. - Memories, can you put a price on memory?
I mean, I lose mine all the time.
So yeah, it's got the new and retro games and apps built in,
a 100 plus Atari classics. Okay.
Discover Atari classics with a modern controller. Yep. Okay, featuring LED effects in rumble.
I dunno what the LED effects are all about but we'll find out and customize, unique PC mode,
upgradable RAM and storage. Every console should have this.
I mean, maybe not actually but you know, this is good.
This is basically a console on a PC. You remember the Subor Z+ that we looked at
on LTT a little while ago? That was basically the same kind of idea,
is to have like a special game OS filled
with games and then like a straight up PC OS like Windows
or Linux or in this case, it also supports Chrome OS.
Yeah, this could be a very useful little machine
for somebody who wants to, you know, play games and have a small little computer
to occupy a very little space in their home.
Let's get it out of the box.
Two chambers, this feels like it might be the main unit.
Oh yeah, almost certainly.
Let's work our way up in terms of size here.
That is adorable. I like the matte.
The mirror kind of works alongside it
but I know that this is gonna pick up fingerprints. This button here is the connect slash pairing button,
I'm sure, these two seem to be menu and back and oh yeah,
here's another button on the front here. So you've got two buttons like that
and then you've got your directions. Never been a fan of this particular layout for controls,
but it is classic. So they've got that going for them.
It feels, it feels pretty solid actually.
It's not like creaky or anything like that and two nice rubber strips on the bottom
so you can plant it down and really get going.
There's no suction cups and there's no place to put suction cups though.
So if you're into that, then you're out of luck unfortunately.
Nice lengthy micro USB cable.
I'm more interested in this box though. Okay, yeah.
So there's a little quick start in here. That button is in fact for pairing and for power
but these two buttons here, you can toggle between VCS and Xbox mode. That basically means that you can toggle
between like their proprietary like controller mode,
to being able to be used in the PC mode, so in Windows 10 or whatever.
And here's their, not an Xbox controller.
(laughing)
- Hmm.
Okay. So Atari is much lighter than Microsoft.
There's no knurling on the back or anything. It's just soft plastic.
It's actually pretty solid again, it's not creaky or anything.
This D-pad is at very least passable.
This D-pad is not good.
If you don't like how the Sega Genesis controller feels
with it's like disc shaped D-pad, this is a million times worse
because there's no like actual D-tense.
Yeah, Like I don't feel like I'm pressing anything in particular after this first press.
So if i were to do like a Dragon Punch
in Street Fighter that might or might not fire, I have no idea because there's no feedback.
I'm just like rubbing my finger across the D-pad.
So that's a thing, but I guess we'll have to see how it feels in game.
Triggers feel okay but they're a little spongy.
Yeah, these are a little bit spongy on the way down too I guess. It's soft, let's put it that way.
They're not bad though and then there's these bumpers, which
I mean, they're just bumpers. Presumably this has a built-in battery and yes it does.
It's at 75% charged right now if the three dots are
to be believed. That's Atari's controller.
It's basically this but it's different.
I would say for the worse, but I mean, they tried.
Yeah, just another micro B cable, and finally the main event, the Atari VCS itself.
There it is. These nice little tabs to pull it out.
That's cute.
It's got an external power supply. What are these different types of bags here?
This one is resealable. This one is just open and this one is sealed.
- [Andy] It gives you three types of unboxing experiences. - Yeah, you get three times the unboxing experience.
Anyway, this guy here is just the other end to this power adapter and we've got an HDMI cable.
Anything else in here?
Snack for later. All right. So all of this stuff is boring.
This is the real meat of the experience here.
Stop, thank you for your Atari VCS purchase.
If you have questions or problems with your purchase please do not return it
to the retail store. Great. We didn't get it from a retail store.
So I don't know where we return it if we had any problems with it.
So thank you. We're stuck with it.
(laughing) This is mine now. I'll just make it so
that the taking up space in the warehouse and then at some point they'll beg me to take them.
That is real wood. I'm touching real wood right now.
- [Jono] How much does this thing cost? - 399.
It's more than most mini consoles but when you consider it's like a Ryzen computer
that's upgradable, like it's not too bad.
You got your two USB ports upfront, these are 3.0 type A.
Around the back we've got two USB ports.
HDMI, Ethernet, Gigabit, AC power and power, power.
Okay, so should we get set up then?
I mean, I could like do this kind of thing. Verify the account, Jono.
- [Jono] I did! - [Presenter] Hi, Short.
- [Jono] Hi, Linus. (laughing)
- How to install Companion APP, yep. Okay, so I have the VCS Companion APP here.
I may actually have to connect it to the same Wi-Fi network but it's taking a minute
to find the VCS. Okay, you know what? I think I don't care enough about that feature.
- [Jono] I wanna play some games. - Yeah, let's play some games.
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Well, let's go to the VCS Vault, see what happens.
Ooh. Okay, so Asteroids, I guess these are the arcade versions?
Okay, so you can choose 2600 games or Atari arcade games.
Let's go with Asteroids. Up is thrust, directions are directions.
The A button is shoot. B is that teleport thing that almost always kills you.
It's got some pretty hefty rumble actually, like it's hefty.
So that's Asteroids. It's neat how the box is in 3D and the cabinet is in 3D,
ah, the back of the box isn't modeled, come on.
I'm gonna switch to the other controller for the authentic 2600 experience.
To be clear, I've never actually played a real 2600.
So I'm gonna suck at this. Sprint Master.
Oh cool. Oh, that's neat. It's got the owner's manual.
There was an NES emulator for Dreamcast called NesterDC SE
that let you do this as well. This is super sweet.
I love it. Oh, okay, you can turn on scan lines.
Oh, you can do realistic vector display, bright, bold, standard, okay, cool.
So they're actually giving you a lot of options here. Audio, yeah. Flicker authentic, yeah, you can,
I think what that means is either they're actually filtering
it or they're removing the Sprite Limit which I mean, I guess technically this didn't,
the 2600 hardware was weird. Right, These are all the settings that you would set
with jumpers, like switches on the original 2600,
it's kind of hilarious. Oh, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be.
Oh yeah, I crashed immediately and I crashed again.
I am not good at this game. I'm not good with this controller.
Yeah, he lapped me like twice. And oftentimes this is what happened
when you play a 2600 game,
the game just runs and you do a game and then it kicks you back out.
There's the back of the box. So I guess they have the back of the box
for some games but not all of them. Yars' Revenge, that's a classic.
I've never played it but this is far more minimal
to the joystick than Sprint Race
or whatever it was called was. Like I've seen this game played before
but I've never played it myself. Let's try something with like dial support here.
Oh yeah and I immediately missed.
Oh hey, this even has rumble in it. Okay, This rotary encoder is really good, I love it.
There is the slight issue of there being a little bit of stiction when you turn it,
making finer adjustments is a little bit difficult
but making flicks is super satisfying. What else is there to say?
This is a pretty neat little console. Oh, we don't, we didn't try the operating system PC mode
but they didn't have a PC mode. So I don't know what we can do with that. Yeah, like obviously there's more to this.
Let us know if you wanna see a full in-depth review in LTT,
like, I mean there's the PC mode, there's the upgradability,
there's so many different things that can be done with this.
I mean, I know there have been reviews of it already but maybe we can find some other angle to kind
of really push it or do something weird with it.
I don't know. All I know is that it's a really neat little mini PC
for 400 bucks you're getting a 100 games for free.
Well, a 100 games built in. Now they're not the most complex games,
they're certainly not the games that I have the most nostalgia for
but they are still like classic games and some
that I wasn't even expecting to see there, like the Swordquest games
which you should actually read up on. Those are ridiculously interesting.
So yeah, like, let us know if you want to see more about this,
otherwise for now, thanks for watching. Make sure you get subscribed
to see more ShortCircuits in the future. - Oh my, don't do this!