Atari Box

i think Power meant this...

https://ultra.io/articles/70-1/atari-partners-with-ultra

that said, i am not actually sure how blockchain is going to improve my gaming. unless the atari is goin to be mining bit-coin/other-coin/rubbish-coin/selling cpu-cycles et al, etc.. while/not playing games..
which in case in point will make me even more so regret backing VCS.

 

isnt atari flogging their own shit-coin for online casino/games?

 

*sigh* sure is.. Atari Token..

https://atarichain.com/

crappy eutherium based crapto-coin..

 

Holy crap! Has hell frozen over??

https://medium.com/@atarivcs/atari-vcs-backer-units-are-on-the-way-fe87b5cede93

 

I believe it has - apparently has a loud fan.... ahhh no tanks.

 

I'd have just been happy of they made it an ITX case. Would still love it on my TV cabinet

 

nice little cap of the final specs from the video, peripherals are made by Power A for those interested.

 

I wonder if it's rocked up at my house in Sydney yet?? probably lost at customs

 

Anyone pick one of these up? Zero access to my stuff in oz.

 

$849!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yea nah.

 

What ? 849 bucks ?....???
That’s just crazy...

 

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/atari-vcs-black-walnut-all-in-one-bundle

 

Holy shit !!! That’s crazy money... on sale at Aldi in 6 months for 50 bucks I bet.

699 for the basic unit.. what are they smoking? 300 bucks priced for the bundle would have been a good ball park, and would have maybe seen some units moved.. this is just stupid.

 

Hilarious pricing, deadset funny. Could buy a better Vega based gaming PC for that money.

Literally a 10 second search, better specs and cheaper, lol: https://au.banggood.com/T-Bao-TBOOK...oOIr4pc_XyyF6vm6rTMW9lnoTS_hgAsxoCeXgQAvD_BwE

Bout the same size, sure not as sexy and no controllers, but controllers are cheap.

Or get Vega 10 graphics, more RAM, more SSD, full Windows 10 for same price as your Atari! https://www.geekbuying.com/item/Min...BtMzcUPAvT55_UtoUCw6qqOL8USo4w2xoCmKAQAvD_BwE



Anyone on OCAU buying it anyway?

 

Anyone end up getting these? Although I'm flaming it above, it still interests me greatly as its released at a perfect time when many have shifted their spend to tech

 

Yeah I have a backers one, apperently... It arrived a few months back, though haven't unpacked it due to it being in Sydney.

 

Onyx base for $540? https://www.amazon.com.au/Atari-VCS-Oynx-Base/dp/B08JNYQ153/ref=pd_lpo_2?pd_rd_i=B08JNYQ153&psc=1

 

I got suckered into getting one of these with controllers from gamesmen for $599

All told its a pretty crappy experience so far lol. Should have bought a switch, or a NUC, or like any other mini PC... ah well. It looks good at least

 

Why so bad?

 

My mum taught me if I didn't have anything nice to say about something, not to say anything at all.

But enough of the nicety's here is a list of my gripes:

tldr:
Didn't Work Out of the Box
Not Many Games
PC Mode Doesn't Work
Fan is Loud
Its Slow & Big

• It didn't work out of the box.

Unboxing the unit and plugging in was a nice experience. My daughter and I were ready for some old skool action. Power the unit on, pair the controllers, looking good. Then it asks me to create an account. OK click the thing "something went wrong" check internet, reboot, try using cable instead of wifi, reboot, try switching the ports around, "something went wrong" OK I'll try guest account.
No games in the guest menu, clicking anything asks me to sign in. Attempt firmware update "something went wrong"
by this time my daughter has gone off to play minecraft instead.
Create an Atari VCS account using a separate PC & input the serial number of the unit, suddenly a firmware update is available (not sure if coincidence with servers coming online or if you need an account to register the device)
Firmware update takes a LOOOONG time to install after a ~1 min download (all the while I'm asking myself is it doing anything? has it crashed? at what point to I ignore the "please dont turn off the console" message?)
35 mins later I finally make it into the main menu of my account. GAME TIME!

• There arent many good included games

***UPDATE!
I found a secondary menu option that took me to an extra 86 x 2600 games. They were all pretty crap and took me like 40 mins to go through and get bored. So I probably should change my initial "not many games" to "Not many GOOD games"

I tried to search this on the Atari VCS page whilst waiting for postage. Its not very clear.
Being basically an expensive first party emulation box I would have thought that maybe there would be like 100? 50? carefully curated pre-installed Atari games from different systems to choose from. Nope. The only free option is the VCS Vault containing 18 games, some of which are VERY similar:

Arcade games include:
Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Black Widow, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, Red Baron, Space Duel, Sprint 2, Super Breakout, Tempest, Warlords.

+ an extra 86 x 2600 games, none of which are particularly memorable except maybe "real sports volleyball" which was kinda funny, for like 2 mins.

There is a relatively small collection of games available to buy within the store ranging from ~$2 to ~$20. One of which is the VCS Vault Version 2. And they dont list the games that come with it so I'm not taking the $5 punt on that.

The other way to play old Atari games on this expensive & powerful console made by Atari is via the Antstream service which boasts over a thousand games. Its a £90 per year subscription, yes pound. The free version gives you 500 coins and it costs you 30 coins to launch a game. Every time you launch it. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was using wifi, but it also suffered from occasional potentially game ruining FPS spikes... on old Atari games...

It does have potential as a home made emulation box though. Lets give PC mode a shot

• PC Mode Doesn't Work

To be clear, it sort of works. I am using windows 10 on it right now to type this. BUT, the "PC MODE" menu option does not actually boot it from the currently installed SSD. Instead, it just reboots the system back into Atari mode again. I can get into windows by pressing delete at boot, going into the bios and selecting the SSD. You can imagine how annoying that is during a multi reboot windows installation with a 60 second round trip into the Atari menu every time. The BIOS is password locked so I cant set the default boot as windows or do anything else. I tried various passwords suggested online such as the extremely easy to type: Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$ no dice.

• Fan is loud

The fan seems to have 3 settings. 10%, 20% and 100%. Its like a jetski, or whipper snipper. WEEEEoooooWEEEEEoooooWEEEEEEEEEEoooooooooooWEEoWEEooWEEEEEoooooo Sitting idle in windows is fine, basically silent. But it ramps up (like a vertical ramp, a wall) to 100% every time the CPU boosts, so if something in the background happens WEEEEEEoooooo, launch a game WEEEEEoooooo, Hover over the windows weather thing near the clock WEEEEooooo.
It would be better if they just set it to like 40% constantly, maybe getting into the BIOS would allow some tweaking to calm it down.

• Its Slow & Big

I expected a bit much from it I guess. But here's a basic firestrike run vs the other NUC's in my house. Its sandwiched in between an i3 4010u and i5 6260u with intel iris 540 from 2015 which is half the size ... Wait what? FFS




Anyway, I have buyers remorse in case you cant tell. You dont have to feel sorry for me, but hopefully this helps other people make better decisions than I did.

The stick is pretty cool with its spinny shaft. But thats about it.
If that's of interest then just get the controller save yourself some $