Topic: New Atari systems on the horizon?

I just happened to go to Atari Age today and saw this latest news item from the 14th:

"Curt Vendel of the Atari History Museum and Legacy Engineering has been hard at work reconstructing several proprietary Atari chips, including the GTIA (used in the Atari 8-bit computers and 5200), the MARIA (used in the Atari 7800), and the TIA (from the Atari 2600). There is great potential for creating new Atari machines in a variety of form factors, based on Curt's work."

My dream machine would be a "system on a chip" that could play Atari 2600, 5200 or 7800 games and either took all three carts via two slots (you'd need a separate one for the 5200 carts) or better still would play ROMs off SD card. More likely it would be a Flashback 3 with games pre-installed, but if the selection was good enough (and ideally included Activision and Imagic games) that would be almost as good.

A boy can dream

My dream machine could be a game machine with preset 2600, 5200, and 7800 games: including many games I've never played before; like Ninja Golf, and Montezuma's Revenge, and Adventure, and Ballblazer, and Frogger II: Threeedeep!

A starboy can dream.

I see what you did thar.

My dream machine is all of the above, but it cooks dinner, too.

I'm nice.
@Dice - sorry, couldn't help myself.

Wow, I had to double check my calander to make sure it wasn't April Fool's Day!

Montezuma's Revenge is pretty cool. I had the Atari 8-bit computer version (one of the only games I actually paid for on floppy back then) and it was also on the C64, so there's always a chance it could come to the VC.

I doubt cart slots would be there just to keep costs down, but SD card reading should be possible (and hopefully reality) because it could be legitimately used to run homebrew games. Better still Atari and Activision could get off their assess and do something sensible like sell ROMs bundled with manuals and boxart over iTunes or something -- I really don't understand why this classic IP is just left to either float around the internet (with the risk you're copping a virus-laden image or something that doesn't work) or only get sporadically released.

Oh, also add USB ports for PC game controllers/keyboards (for the keypad using games) along with standard Atari joystick ports.

That would be sweet if Atari could release a new 8-bit console to go against the Wii 2. Hustle can beat muscle, at least in my book.

I'm sure Atari is out of the game -- they just seem to be doing online/web games now and ignoring all their old IP unless someone wants to pay them enough to license it. Any future hardware system would be like the Flashback: 3rd party developed; nothing to do with Atari directly. The chip designs don't appear to have anything to do with Atari; the only reason I'm aware of any licensing requirement from Atari in regards to Flashback/Flashback 2 was for the built-in ROMs.

What I'm really hoping is that Mr. Vendel plans on making some kind of limited-run hardware for hobbyists with a focus on running code rather than simply another "relive the glory days with this 10-in-one game system!"

Presently I'm happy to run my Stella and Atari 8-bit computer emulators, but they have less-than-sexy front-ends and can be a bit fiddly. A dedicated machine which developers could use to test homebrew and users could have to run it (along with other ROMs, thereby reducing the need to hunt for things on ebay) would be ideal. I'd easily pay £100 for a rig like that.

I do miss Atari, but I've got the systems and games, so I can just use them, although it can be a mess keeping them all hooked up at once. I might have to knock out a wall here and expand this game room if this keeps up.

There was the Flashback.

Some sort of SuperFlashback would be awesome. Although, for me, being strictly a 2600 gamer who never got into the 5200 or 7800, i'm content with my Flashback 2 and modded 2600 (for RCA-cable video output and stereo sound). One thing i like is that the Flashack 2 was intentionally designed to be hackable (allowing for addition of a catridge port), so maybe the next Flashback would expand on this design philosophy.

Oh, and RE: Montezuma's Revenge, first of all, an awesome platformer. Spent hours upon hours playing the 2600 version. There was a C64 version as well as a Master System version, so it's a definite possibility for VC.

Oh well, it was just a thought. Forgive me for my closing line in comment 3.