My Arcade has produced a number of miniature retro arcade cabinets supporting officially-licensed games from developers like Capcom and Sega. But now, they’ve just launched an Atari gaming handheld, the Gamestation Go, that just looks beautiful. Pre-orders have opened up earlier this week. You can head on over to Amazon to reserve yours at a price of $180.
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200+ Video Games
The library is impressively stacked. Over 200 video games from yester-year, spanning the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari 7800 along with Atari Arcade as well as Jaleco and PIKO platforms. Play titles like Breakout, PAC-MAN, Balls of Steel, Missile Command, Centipede, and Asteroids. They all come pre-loaded, no download necessary. It does state is has built-in Wi-Fi for easy updates, but it’s unclear if that could mean more games added at some point in the future.
Design-wise the Atari Gamestation Go looks similar to a Nintendo Switch at a glance, with controller inputs along the side of a big 7-inch display. Also, like a Nintendo Switch, you can play its games on your TV. No dock required. Just a simple HDMI cable will allow you to put these classic titles on the big screen. You’ll probably want one with some decent length though as you’ll still be using the Atari handheld as the controller. It’s battery life will grant you about four to five hours of playtime on a single charge.
The original Atari consoles were well before we established the quintessential layout and design of modern video game controllers. My Arcade’s Atari handheld looks backward to the weird oddities of these old controllers, implementing multiple options like a trak-ball and numeric keypad. You can play these Atari titles authentically to these quirky inputs you just don’t see any more.
There are also all the modern conveniences like an analog stick, D-pad, bumpers and classic A-B-X-Y gamepad buttons (Notably in Xbox’s layout with the A button at the bottom). The various buttons, sticks, and other inputs are all illuminated with SmartGlow technology to both see the inputs in the dark and, more importantly, look cool.
The price point or $180 is a little rough. That’s more than half the cost of a Nintendo Switch for a console that just plays games from the 80s that are pretty easy to get your hands on for next to nothing elsewhere. This seems like a collector novelty more than anything, but definitely a cool thing to pick up if you want to escape skill trees and battle passes for awhile.
The Atari Gamestation Go is available to pre-order at Amazon and is set to release October 31 of this year.
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