Everyone else already reviewed this.... - Atari VCS Console
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,562 words · ~12 min read
0:00
- It's retro time!? Maybe, sort of.
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I've been waiting for this for a long time. Like this unassuming looking package,
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you can probably actually tell what it is by the tape on the top.
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It's from a small company you might've heard of called Atari.
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They had a console called the VCS which is currently called the Atari 2600 and that is,
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I'm led to believe, what this is modeled after.
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So I don't have a whole lot of nostalgia for Atari personally 'cause I didn't really grow up with it
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but I am really interested in seeing what this is
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because it's more than just a game console.
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So let's get this open. Oh, here we go.
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I might be able to finagle this side.
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- [Jono] I taped over the top. - Yeah, yeah, you didn't tape over the bottom did you, Jono?
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- [Jono] Well, you're not supposed to open things from the bottom. - Well I'm opening it from the bottom.
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It's what you get. - [Jono] You mean like the back door? - Backdoor, best way to get in.
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We're in through the back door and it is actually the bottom,
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I guess they didn't expect me to open it from this end. So let's get this out of here.
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Oh, look at that. So what size shirt did they send us?
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XL. - [Andy] I'm XL. Thank you!
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- let's show them the shirt First. (laughing)
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Atari VCS. Quite a nice little logo there.
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It kind of reminds me of the Atari boot screen with the like multicolored rainbow effect
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that they had going on there and it actually says on the back here that it was backed in 2008.
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So I was a year off, it was 2000,
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- [Jono] 2018. - It was backed in 2018. I was 10 years off.
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(laughing) Since Andy is XL and I am, well,
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unfortunately not quite XL.
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Here you go. - [Andy] Thank you, Atari!
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- I don't know if we can keep that or not. Moving on. We have other things that we might be able
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to keep like this, this here sticker.
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They're actually pretty high quality stickers. So that's the ancillary stuff.
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Let's get this out of the outer wrapping and take a look at the box.
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Ooh, sexy. Actually that is quite fetching.
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I actually really do like the like subtle dark walnut
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that they got here, that's what they call it here, black walnut.
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Video computer system, gaming plus PC streaming.
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Okay. 800, I don't know what that means.
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Does it mean that it has Atari 800 support? Can I play 800 games?
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- [Jono] Could you? - Could I? - [Jono] Should you?
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- Should I? - [Jono] Should you!? - I mean the Atari 800 was actually not a bad machine
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if I remember correctly, it's like the 5200 except it's a computer.
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One thing that might be throwing a couple of you off if you haven't been keeping up,
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is this gaming plus PC plus streaming bit.
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As it turns out, this is actually straight up an AMD Ryzen based machine.
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It's actually a Ryzen embedded processor and the graphics are Vega 3 I think.
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So it's not super powerful but it's more than enough to play.
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- [Jono] Can I scalp it? - These kinds of games. Can you scalp it?
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I don't know. I mean, it'll probably be scalped a little bit
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but I'm not sure how big the market is for it.
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So we'll have to see. - [Jono] But memories. - Memories, can you put a price on memory?
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I mean, I lose mine all the time.
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So yeah, it's got the new and retro games and apps built in,
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a 100 plus Atari classics. Okay.
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Discover Atari classics with a modern controller. Yep. Okay, featuring LED effects in rumble.
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I dunno what the LED effects are all about but we'll find out and customize, unique PC mode,
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upgradable RAM and storage. Every console should have this.
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I mean, maybe not actually but you know, this is good.
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This is basically a console on a PC. You remember the Subor Z+ that we looked at
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on LTT a little while ago? That was basically the same kind of idea,
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is to have like a special game OS filled
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with games and then like a straight up PC OS like Windows
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or Linux or in this case, it also supports Chrome OS.
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Yeah, this could be a very useful little machine
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for somebody who wants to, you know, play games and have a small little computer
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to occupy a very little space in their home.
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Let's get it out of the box.
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Two chambers, this feels like it might be the main unit.
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Oh yeah, almost certainly.
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Let's work our way up in terms of size here.
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That is adorable. I like the matte.
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The mirror kind of works alongside it
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but I know that this is gonna pick up fingerprints. This button here is the connect slash pairing button,
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I'm sure, these two seem to be menu and back and oh yeah,
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here's another button on the front here. So you've got two buttons like that
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and then you've got your directions. Never been a fan of this particular layout for controls,
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but it is classic. So they've got that going for them.
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It feels, it feels pretty solid actually.
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It's not like creaky or anything like that and two nice rubber strips on the bottom
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so you can plant it down and really get going.
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There's no suction cups and there's no place to put suction cups though.
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So if you're into that, then you're out of luck unfortunately.
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Nice lengthy micro USB cable.
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I'm more interested in this box though. Okay, yeah.
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So there's a little quick start in here. That button is in fact for pairing and for power
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but these two buttons here, you can toggle between VCS and Xbox mode. That basically means that you can toggle
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between like their proprietary like controller mode,
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to being able to be used in the PC mode, so in Windows 10 or whatever.
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And here's their, not an Xbox controller.
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(laughing)
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- Hmm.
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Okay. So Atari is much lighter than Microsoft.
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There's no knurling on the back or anything. It's just soft plastic.
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It's actually pretty solid again, it's not creaky or anything.
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This D-pad is at very least passable.
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This D-pad is not good.
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If you don't like how the Sega Genesis controller feels
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with it's like disc shaped D-pad, this is a million times worse
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because there's no like actual D-tense.
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Yeah, Like I don't feel like I'm pressing anything in particular after this first press.
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So if i were to do like a Dragon Punch
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in Street Fighter that might or might not fire, I have no idea because there's no feedback.
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I'm just like rubbing my finger across the D-pad.
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So that's a thing, but I guess we'll have to see how it feels in game.
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Triggers feel okay but they're a little spongy.
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Yeah, these are a little bit spongy on the way down too I guess. It's soft, let's put it that way.
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They're not bad though and then there's these bumpers, which
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I mean, they're just bumpers. Presumably this has a built-in battery and yes it does.
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It's at 75% charged right now if the three dots are
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to be believed. That's Atari's controller.
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It's basically this but it's different.
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I would say for the worse, but I mean, they tried.
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Yeah, just another micro B cable, and finally the main event, the Atari VCS itself.
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There it is. These nice little tabs to pull it out.
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That's cute.
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It's got an external power supply. What are these different types of bags here?
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This one is resealable. This one is just open and this one is sealed.
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- [Andy] It gives you three types of unboxing experiences. - Yeah, you get three times the unboxing experience.
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Anyway, this guy here is just the other end to this power adapter and we've got an HDMI cable.
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Anything else in here?
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Snack for later. All right. So all of this stuff is boring.
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This is the real meat of the experience here.
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Stop, thank you for your Atari VCS purchase.
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If you have questions or problems with your purchase please do not return it
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to the retail store. Great. We didn't get it from a retail store.
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So I don't know where we return it if we had any problems with it.
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So thank you. We're stuck with it.
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(laughing) This is mine now. I'll just make it so
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that the taking up space in the warehouse and then at some point they'll beg me to take them.
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That is real wood. I'm touching real wood right now.
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- [Jono] How much does this thing cost? - 399.
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It's more than most mini consoles but when you consider it's like a Ryzen computer
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that's upgradable, like it's not too bad.
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You got your two USB ports upfront, these are 3.0 type A.
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Around the back we've got two USB ports.
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HDMI, Ethernet, Gigabit, AC power and power, power.
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Okay, so should we get set up then?
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I mean, I could like do this kind of thing. Verify the account, Jono.
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- [Jono] I did! - [Presenter] Hi, Short.
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- [Jono] Hi, Linus. (laughing)
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- How to install Companion APP, yep. Okay, so I have the VCS Companion APP here.
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I may actually have to connect it to the same Wi-Fi network but it's taking a minute
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to find the VCS. Okay, you know what? I think I don't care enough about that feature.
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- [Jono] I wanna play some games. - Yeah, let's play some games.
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11:17
Well, let's go to the VCS Vault, see what happens.
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Ooh. Okay, so Asteroids, I guess these are the arcade versions?
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Okay, so you can choose 2600 games or Atari arcade games.
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Let's go with Asteroids. Up is thrust, directions are directions.
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The A button is shoot. B is that teleport thing that almost always kills you.
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It's got some pretty hefty rumble actually, like it's hefty.
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So that's Asteroids. It's neat how the box is in 3D and the cabinet is in 3D,
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ah, the back of the box isn't modeled, come on.
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I'm gonna switch to the other controller for the authentic 2600 experience.
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To be clear, I've never actually played a real 2600.
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So I'm gonna suck at this. Sprint Master.
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Oh cool. Oh, that's neat. It's got the owner's manual.
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There was an NES emulator for Dreamcast called NesterDC SE
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that let you do this as well. This is super sweet.
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I love it. Oh, okay, you can turn on scan lines.
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Oh, you can do realistic vector display, bright, bold, standard, okay, cool.
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So they're actually giving you a lot of options here. Audio, yeah. Flicker authentic, yeah, you can,
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I think what that means is either they're actually filtering
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it or they're removing the Sprite Limit which I mean, I guess technically this didn't,
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the 2600 hardware was weird. Right, These are all the settings that you would set
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with jumpers, like switches on the original 2600,
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it's kind of hilarious. Oh, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be.
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Oh yeah, I crashed immediately and I crashed again.
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I am not good at this game. I'm not good with this controller.
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Yeah, he lapped me like twice. And oftentimes this is what happened
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when you play a 2600 game,
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the game just runs and you do a game and then it kicks you back out.
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There's the back of the box. So I guess they have the back of the box
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for some games but not all of them. Yars' Revenge, that's a classic.
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I've never played it but this is far more minimal
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to the joystick than Sprint Race
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or whatever it was called was. Like I've seen this game played before
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but I've never played it myself. Let's try something with like dial support here.
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Oh yeah and I immediately missed.
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Oh hey, this even has rumble in it. Okay, This rotary encoder is really good, I love it.
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There is the slight issue of there being a little bit of stiction when you turn it,
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making finer adjustments is a little bit difficult
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but making flicks is super satisfying. What else is there to say?
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This is a pretty neat little console. Oh, we don't, we didn't try the operating system PC mode
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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.
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Let us know if you wanna see a full in-depth review in LTT,
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like, I mean there's the PC mode, there's the upgradability,
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there's so many different things that can be done with this.
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I mean, I know there have been reviews of it already but maybe we can find some other angle to kind
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of really push it or do something weird with it.
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I don't know. All I know is that it's a really neat little mini PC
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for 400 bucks you're getting a 100 games for free.
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Well, a 100 games built in. Now they're not the most complex games,
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they're certainly not the games that I have the most nostalgia for
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but they are still like classic games and some
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that I wasn't even expecting to see there, like the Swordquest games
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which you should actually read up on. Those are ridiculously interesting.
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So yeah, like, let us know if you want to see more about this,
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otherwise for now, thanks for watching. Make sure you get subscribed
15:25
to see more ShortCircuits in the future. - Oh my, don't do this!