TRON: Ares is officially the best TRON film. Period.

I do not say this lightly. I was nine-years-old when the first TRON was released in theaters back in the summer of 1982. The same summer my father brought home an Apple II computer, this film comes out depicting programs as living beings. For me and an entire generation of curious kids, TRON brought the inside of computers to life. I cannot overstate what an impact TRON (along with other 80s films like WarGames and Cloak and Dagger) had on me. By the end of 1982 I owned the entire line of TRON toys (TOMY only released four action figures and two light cycles), which I looked at for inspiration as I poked BASIC programs into that Apple II “in the name of the users.” It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that my lifelong interest in computers and even my career can be traced back to TRON. It changed the trajectory of my life.

None of that changes the fact that 2025’s TRON: Ares is a better movie.

Ask most people what the original TRON was about and they’ll tell you it was about some guy named Tron who gets sucked inside a computer and becomes a real-life character who is forced to play video games for real. They’ll probably remember the light cycles and the digital tanks and guys throwing glowing Frisbees at each other. Actually, the main character most people misremember as being “Tron” is actually Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. Tron is the computer program written by Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner). Almost no one remembers that the plot of TRON involved Flynn hacking into ENCOM’s computer system in search of evidence needed to prove he was the original author of the arcade game Space Paranoids. Most of the parts people remember — all the CGI footage of light cycles and tanks and so on — only make up about fifteen minutes of the film. The big scene everyone remembers where Flynn (not Tron) is digitized and pulled into the digital world happens just after the 30 minute mark. The film contains multiple action scenes but if you go back and rewatch the film you’ll discover it’s not as fast paced as you might remember. Back in 1982, simply having people in glowing suits standing in front of glowing sets was exciting enough to make a movie interesting. Today, it’s not. There are parts of the movie that are, frankly, a little boring.

Nearly 30 years after the original, TRON: Legacy was released. I haven’t rewatched this film in many years, but the plot as I recall is that Flynn permanently disappeared into the computer and his son, Sam, goes looking for him and ends up in a nearly two-hour Daft Punk concert. TRON: Legacy changed the look, feel, and sounds of the world viewers previously knew of this digital world, largely dismissed the characters fans knew and loved from the original film. Frankly, few people can even tell you what the plot of TRON: Legacy was. The film currently has a 51% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When people discuss the movie today they talk about the Daft Punk soundtrack and the digital effects and nobody can remember what it was about.

This brings us to 2025’s TRON: Ares.

In TRON: Ares Julian Dillinger, the grandson of Ed Dillinger (David Warner), is the CEO of Dillenger Systems, a company now competing against the original ENCOM which is now being run by Eve Kim. In this new world, both companies have discovered a way to pull digital creations into the real world using what amounts to super-fast 3D printers, but these digital creations lack longevity and crumble into digital piles of rubble after exactly 29 minutes. Both CEOs are actively searching for the “permanence code,” programming that will allow these creations to remain in the real world permanently. If there’s any confusion as to who is the good guy and who is the villain, Kim wants the code to help ENCOM cure cancer while Dillinger wants to create armies of digital solders and vehicles to sell to the military.

Dillinger’s digital man on the inside is Ares (Jared Leto) who, if you’re not up on your mythology, was the Greek god of war. Ares, along with his second in command Athena (named after the Greek goddess of wisdom) run digital Bartertown. It is Ares who communicates with his User (Dillinger) and is the first member of Tron-town to make his way into the real world, only to derez into a pile of digital poop and return in twenty-nine minutes. Before long, light cycles, Recognizers, and Tron warriors are emerging from the digital realm to track down the Permanence Code, not only for their user but also their own chance at life outside the grid.

So here’s the thing. 1982’s TRON blended plot and action. The light cycle competition and deadly disc battles were broken up with talk about communication with the users through the input/output tower and lots of other high-tech gobbledygook. TRON: Legacy leaned into the spirituel and philosophical side of things to a fault while messing with the core of what TRON was all about.

TRON: Ares, on the other hand, knows exactly what it is, and what Tron films should be: it is an action-packed popcorn flick. The original film had light cycles doing battle inside a video game. TRON: Ares has Recognizers (those gigantic red ships) roaming the streets of Center City, and light cycles blasting down the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic at incredible speeds, occasionally turning on their “trail beams” to slice pursuing police cruisers in half.

Like any film TRON: Ares takes a few minutes to set up the plot, but once both parties are off in search for the Permanence Code, it’s time to strap yourself in and hang on for the ride. TRON: Ares is what TRON would have been if it had been made in 2025 instead of 1982. Despite being remembered for its groundbreaking special effects, TRON had the pacing of a 70s sci-fi film. Filmmakers had to explain what a “bit” was, or that evidence could be stored in “computer memory modules.” In 2025, we don’t need that. We’re told up front “something something” artificial intelligence and “something something” Permanence Code and that’s all we need. Back in 1982, the concept of programs wanting to communicate with their users was novel, but not particularly realistic. In TRON: Ares we have programs like Ares and Athena backed by AI and struggling with concepts like whether or not the directions they’re being given are good or bad and yearning for both survival and free will. 1982’s TRON was science fiction; the concepts in TRON: Ares can be found in headlines on Ars Technica and Wired.

TRON: Ares is not perfect. It relies a little too much on deus ex machina as our heroes are saved multiple times as, seconds before digital baddies prepare to terminate them, hit their 29-minute lifespan and crumble seconds before completing their mission. The first act is a little messy in explaining why the CEOs of two competing tech companies would be calling each other to compare notes on their search for a single piece of code… but by the time digital tanks start showing up and motorcycles are racing down the highway, you just won’t care.

The biggest failure of TRON: Legacy was that it broke ties with the original film. TRON: Ares rights that wrong. In the film we learn that the world of Tron — not the evolved, updated one we’re seeing but the vintage one we know and love from 1982 — still exists in a separate network. That also happens to be where Flynn resides, in some sort of eternal, digital version of himself. In the movie, Ares needs Flynn’s knowledge and wisdom to find the missing code, but for audiences this is both a sweet nostalgic treat and in some ways, closure. Kevin Flynn, the hacker we met more than more than 40 years ago, is okay. He exists eternally in this digital realm and he and Ares discuss how with life, comes death. It’s a moment as deep and thought provoking as anything from Blade Runner or The Matrix, but the movie only hangs here for a few minutes before getting back to neon glowing ass kickings.

TRON: Ares is not a perfect film, but it has better pacing and more action than the first film and a plot I can follow, unlike the second. It’s a Pink Floyd laser light show and a Nine Inch Nails concert wrapped in a digital blanket of video games and nostalgia. If all three films were showing side by side in some imaginary multiplex, TRON: Ares is the one I would choose to see again. My love for the original is as strong as my frustration with the sequel, but TRON: Ares, for two hours, gets everything right.

Go see it on the biggest screen with the loudest audio system you can find. You won’t be disappointed.

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Flack

I’m a man who loves a bargain. I buy my Halloween candy on November first and get my rolls of holiday wrapping paper from Dollar Tree. Phrases like “two for one” and “half price” pull me in like moths to a flaming car in Grand Theft Auto. I am also a fan of b-movies. When it comes to horror movies and 70s kung-fu flicks, I like ’em so bad they’re good.

That is why I decided to buy this, the M8 20,000-in-1 Retro Gaming Console. At least, that’s what I think it’s called. There was no name on the box or branding on the console — in that sense it’s a bit like buying beer that says “BEER” on the can. And while I fully expected this thing to be terrible and full of tears, the part of my brain that saves old power supplies “in case I need them for something else someday” can’t resist a good deal. At only $40, that’s $0.002 per game.

For $40, you actually get a lot of stuff. Included in the box is the console, two controllers, and all the cables and adapters needed to hook this thing up to any HDMI TV. The only thing not included in the box were the AAA required for the controllers (you’ll need two per controller). The “console” (if you can even call it that) is the same shape and only slightly larger than a traditional USB stick. The console has an HDMI connection on the end, a USB-C port for power, and a USB-A port. To use the included 2.4GHz wireless controllers you’ll need to insert the included USB wireless dongle into the console’s USB port. If you want to use your own USB controller, you can connect one there instead. Included in the box is a small HDMI extension cable which makes connecting the to the rear of a television much more convenient, a USB-C cable for power, and the SD card containing all the system’s ROMs. It’s a surprising amount of hardware for the money. Sure, the USB-C cable isn’t the thickest and those knock-off PlayStation controllers weigh less than a slice of Mappy-lovin’ cheese, but by my count there are seven individual items
in the box.

Once connected and powered on, the console boots into an easy to navigate menu system that includes screenshots of each game, and while physically navigating the menu is simple, someone (the Riddler?) thought it would be funny to sort the list of games randomly. The game list seems to be sort of organized by emulator, but none of the games are in alphabetical order and so if you plan to manually scroll through 20,000 games looking for a specific title… bring a lunch. Fortunately the interface includes multiple ways to view the included game library. You can browse by console, create lists of your favorite games, browse your history, or search for a specific title. The search feature doesn’t work as well as you might think as there are lots of duplicates and hacks, and the results don’t tell you which system the game is on. A search for “Donkey Kong” returns the arcade release, the NES version, and the Atari 2600 port, and lots of clones.

Another “feature” that can make finding specific games challenging is that many of the games have been renamed, because ha ha, the Chinese have a real sense of humor. I could not find “Bubble Bobble” by searching for “Bobble,” but it showed up later in the menu under “Bubble Fun Time.”

The console I purchased makes use of nine emulators that cover the following systems: MAME, Nintendo/Famicom, Super Nintendo/Super Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Atari 2600, and PlayStation. All of the emulators are serviceable, but none of them seem perfect. Many of the features (like toggle switches for the Atari 2600) are either buried or missing. Game selection is also hit or miss. for 20,000 games, I expected to see every Atari 2600 title. Instead there are only 20, and not the 20 you would hope for. The same goes for PlayStation, which only has about 40 titles.

For Christmas I sent my sister a link to the same console I bought last month. Her console has 18 emulators and a different selection of games. I don’t know if this means the consoles are constantly being updated, or if these things are being smuggled into Amazon’s warehouses inside pinatas and the one you’ll receive is random. As the teachers at my kids’ daycare used to say, “you get what you get and don’t throw a fit.”

The console is set to 16:9 (widescreen) mode and there does not seem to be any way to change it from within the console. While the menus seem to be designed with widescreen televisions in mind, the games, of course, are designed to be played in a traditional 4:3 ratio. If you’re the type of gamer (like me) who hates playing old games stretched out, you’ll have to make that adjustment on your television itself. In 16:9 mode, the menu looks great but the games are stretched wide. In 4:3 mode, the menu looks tall and skinny but the games look correct. It’s hard to believe the same people who build iPhones couldn’t figure this out, but here we are.

The list of included games is all over the place. While lots of obvious classics are missing, you’ll find things like Donkey Kong 2001 and Mario vs. King Kong, among other weirdo titles. If you’re into exploring ROM hacks, this console will keep your attention for months. One of the joys to these types of consoles is seeing just how seep the rabbit hole goes. I’ve been a retrogamer for a long time and probably have enough Raspberry Pis and Android-based consoles to play Super Mario Bros. in every room of my house, but discovering and spending some time with “Super Mario Bros. 3X” was a real treat.

For what it’s worth, I did attempt to insert the system’s SD card into my PC and was not able to read the partition where the games are stored. I don’t know how easy or difficult it would be to add additional games to the console. There may be tools out there to do it, but I wouldn’t plan on it if you decide to purchase this thing.

So, final verdict? If you’re thinking “I already have every emulator and ROM on my computer,” then yeah, this is probably not for you. And if you’re thinking “I could put a Raspberry Pi together and have essentially the same thing,” then this is probably not for you either.

A few years ago in an attempt to get my nephew into retrogaming, I purchased a Raspberry Pi, installed RetroPi on it, filled it full of ROMs, and gifted it to him. Within two weeks, the thing wouldn’t boot. Somehow he had found the admin settings and hit enough random buttons to muck the whole thing up. I can tell you I spent a lot more than $40 putting that system together, and more than that, I spent a lot of time. Even when you already have all those old ROMs downloaded, there’s that whole process of transferring them over, scraping to get all the metadata, and organizing stuff to cull out all those weird slot machine games. This Chinese console, as wonky as it is, eliminates all that. For a gamer with an eye for detail or a technical whiz who actually likes figuring out which Neo Geo BIOS is the most compatible can safely pass on this. But people looking for a relatively iron-clad and ready-to-go-out-of-the-box console for kids to bang on or something to put in a spare bedroom (mine’s in my workshop) who just wants to avoid all the setup, hassle, and boot times associated with rolling your own solution one more time… you could do worse than this thing.

Link: Amazon Retro Gaming Console

10. System Shock Remake

Fantastic visual design that recreates the crazy abstract wall textures of the original to create a space station that is at once distinct and creepy. The genre of immersive sims really lost their immersion value when System Shock 2 added RPG jank and Bioshock added a morality tracker linked to certain tools. System Shock Remake has none of that and is the most fun I’ve had since Thief 1, despite beating the original version decades ago.

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If “arcade games are too easy” was the problem, Capcom’s Ghosts ‘n Goblins was the solution. Ghosts ‘n Goblins made its arcade debut in 1985 and ports of the game found their way to multiple video game consoles and home computers the following year, eventually selling millions of copies. In the game, Sir Arthur must overcome never-ending hordes of zombies, demons, and dozens of other dark denizens of Demon World in an attempt to rescue Princess Prin-Prin from the demon Astaroth. Despite being one of the most difficult arcade games of all time, Ghosts ‘n Goblins launched one of Capcom’s most beloved franchises made up of some of the most difficult sequels of all time.

The latest game in the series is Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection, released for the Nintendo Switch in 2021 before making its way to Steam. The game resurrects popular levels from the first two games in the series (Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts) and remixes them by adding even more treachery, something most players of the original series might find difficult to imagine.

In Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection, Sir Arthur must once again find his way through cruelly crafted levels while armies of adversaries swarm him from every direction. Most enemies respawn, so there’s no point in waiting for a break in the action to advance. Fans of the original series will recognize locations such as the first level’s graveyard, but each one has been restructured to add even more traps than before. While some new features have been added to the game, gameplay feels overwhelmingly familiar.

An endearing part of the original series was its pixel artwork. While the character and background artwork in Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection honors those games, the art has been updated with a “Flash-like” style. The backgrounds are highly detailed, but some of the characters move in that “paper cutout-style” of animation that occasionally gives the impression this began life as an online browser game.

True to its heritage, Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection is hard. Like the original series, the game often teaches you what not to do by killing you. This series has always been less about avoiding enemies the first go ’round and more about trying to remember where and how you died the last time you played. Like the original this game features checkpoints that prevent players from having to restart from the beginning of a level each time they die, but added to this version is the ability to respawn exactly where Sir Arthur met his demise. Die enough times in the same spot and the game will offer to temporarily lower the difficulty level, a feature that adds as much relief as it does guilt.

New to the franchise are Umbral Bees, which can be collected and used to acquire upgrades like magic spells and the ability to carry (and swap between) multiple weapons. The original was infamous for rewarding players with the worst possible weapon at the most inopportune time (we’re looking at you, stupid flaming torch), so the ability to swap weapons is greatly beneficial. All of the weapons from the original series are back including a few new ones for a total of eight.

Part of the game’s “resurrection” includes adding modern features to a nearly 40-year-old franchise. Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection features 31 challenges for players to unlock ranging from simple and unavoidable (“Use Magic for the First Time”) to the next to impossible (“Complete a Stage Without Dying Once”). Also new to the series are branching paths, offering players multiple ways to reach certain death.

At the end of each of the game’s seven levels players will face a boss. At the end of the first level I encountered a gigantic fire-breathing green pig with an even larger battle axe guarding the exit. After shooting the guard what seemed like a hundred times, his head flew off and landed on a second enemy to my left, making poor Sir Arthur the meat in a killer pig sandwich. After failing to defeat the boss dozens of times the game began offering me strategic hints; when that failed, it began offering to lower the difficultly level. After another dozen attempts I took the game up on its offer, and on my next attempt the guard that I had previously shot at least fifty times keeled over and died after half a dozen hits. Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection is more than happy to hand out all the abuse you’re willing to take, but will, eventually, offer you mercy when it feels you’re about to give up.

Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection features seven levels of increasingly maddening difficulty — and if that weren’t enough, once you’ve beat them all (so I’m told) you can replay “shadow” versions of them — which is a bit like saying if you get tired of climbing Mt. Everest, you can try again in the dark while wearing a blindfold.

If you grew up receiving participation trophies for everything you ever tried and having adults cut the crust off of your sandwiches, Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection isn’t for you. This game abuses you. On the other hand if you ever had your lunch money stolen by a bully or got told to “suck it up” after breaking a bone, this could be the game for you. Life isn’t fair and neither is this game, but if you can find the humor in getting kicked while you’re down, Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection might be the kick you’re looking for.

Circuit Superstars is one of the most adorable looking racing games I’ve ever played. The cars are small and cute, the tracks are bright and colorful, and the whole game just screams fun. By the time you’re halfway through your first lap you’ll realize that none of that matters. Underneath its thick layer of cuteness lies one of the most challenging, diabolical, and devilishly addicting racing games around.

Circuit Superstars looks like a kid-friendly arcade-style racer, and if you play it as such you’ll quickly find yourself in last place — that is, if you finish at all. Enter turns at full throttle and you’ll repeatedly introduce your car’s bumper to metal guardrails and rubber tires. Take corners too quickly or smash the gas pedal a little to hard and you can drift your way around the track… for a while, until your bald tires begin to handle as as if they were slathered with Vaseline. The more you race the more you’ll realize laps are won by sticking to the perfect line, something that’s increasingly hard to pull off with opponents closing in from behind. Swap too much paint with other cars and your engine will take the brunt of the damage, spewing out smoke and dropping your top speed to a crawl.

The game features plenty of online and offline modes. As tempting as jumping into online racing sounds, unless you enjoy pain and humiliation it’ll behoove you to get a feel for the controls. The delicacy of the game’s controls are literally where the rubber hits the road. When using the keyboard, cars are controlled with the four arrow keys (gas, brake, left and right). Winning races is all about feathering and tapping those keys. This ain’t Pole Position, where whipping the steering wheel and stomping the accelerator will get you through a hairpin turn. In Circuit Superstars, if you’re barreling down a straightaway and haven’t already begun to slow down, it’s probably too late for you anyway. Let your wheels drift off the roadway into the grass and you’ll find yourself spinning faster than a freshman at his first kegger. It’s not always about going fast; it’s about being perfect and taking advantage of the few times your opponents aren’t. On this scaled down racer, the fastest line through a corner can be measured in fractions of an inch. The key to staying on the track is moderation, and you may find yourself tapping the arrows five, six, maybe seven times to find a corner’s perfect line.

The offline Grand Prix mode features twelve unique classes that feature everything from zippy hatchbacks and 70s muscle cars to offroad trucks. Each series contains five tracks, and each track must be raced twice — once in a timed qualifier, and immediately again against eleven other opponents. Winning the qualifying round is much easier than winning races with other cars that hold the perfect line and don’t budge when rammed. Note that progress cannot be saved here. Once a series has begun, players must complete all ten races in order to save their progress, which unfortunately prevents Circuit Superstars from being a “pick up and play” game. Drivers must earn a spot on the podium to unlock the next series, and each series contains four difficultly levels.

Taking the lead and maintaining it are two different things in this game. Even when you’re out front, I found myself one or two mistakes away from losing the lead. A single spin-out on the grass or a hard slam into the outside wall will have your opponents back on your six in no time. Whatever small leads you are able to build are quickly negated by the other racers’ innate ability to take the perfect line at the perfect speed around every corner every time. I found myself gnashing my teeth as I pulled slightly ahead on the straightaways only to be passed on the inside of every hairpin turn. Winning races feels like a real achievement — and again, this applies to the amateur class. When the game references difficulty levels, it’s being quite literal.

About the time players get a handle on the game’s controls they’ll graduate to ten-lap races with enough gas in their tanks to make it through about seven. Like most everything in the game, perfect pit stops come down to a matter of tight controls and expert timing. Too much time in the pit gulping fuel you don’t actually need to finish a race is a waste of precious seconds. Your pit crew will handle changing tires and engine repairs without your assistance so the trick to a successful pitstop is when and how long to stop. You’ll also need to monitor the status of your car’s health, tires, and fuel while racing. Finding the time to do that in a game where fractions of a second count is a challenge in itself.

Along with the game’s built-in modes, additional add-on content is available that will let you pit your driving skills up against television’s The Stig. One allows you to race against the Stig’s times on a digital replica of the show’s famous track, and the other places you on tricky-tracks that more resemble the skateparks from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater than any real track. Don’t bother until you’ve mastered the other modes, but the add-on is a good way to squeeze more entertainment out of the game’s engine.

At the time of this review I could not get the online option to work reliably. I spent large periods of time sitting in the solo only racing lobby waiting to be matched with other racers, something that rarely seems to happen. And when it did, the results were jerky (at best) and races frequently end when other players disconnect. The online mode is so bad that I assumed it must be a problem on my end (despite having gigabit fiber internet), but others have reported similar experiences. Currently the dream of racing others is a nightmare; whether or not this feature if fixed remains to be seen.

Circuit Superstars is one of those games that will have you quitting in frustration and returning with hopes of shaving extra seconds — maybe even a single second — off your lap times. The game doesn’t give out first place spots on the podium easily, and when you finally earn one there’s both joy and dread in the knowledge that more races (and difficulty levels) await you.

I only have vague memories of the world before Atari. Mostly what I remember is how amazed adults around me were with our new, magical box that turned our television into an interactive gaming experience. For the first time in most people’s lives they were able to control the images on their television. The Atari 2600 wasn’t the first videogame console released, but when it arrived, it exploded into homes. The Atari 2600 dominated the videogame market for several years. Everyone either had one or had a friend who did. Mattel’s Intellivision featured Atari 2600 games in most of its ads as a basis of comparison. The ColecoVision, a far more capable console, released an add-on peripheral that allowed inferior Atari 2600 games to be played on its console. After the 2600’s successor (the Atari 5200) failed to gain traction, Atari made sure their next console, the Atari 7800, was backward compatible with the 2600, which was a major selling point. The Atari 2600 was the sun around which the entire gaming universe orbited. The console’s final form factor, the Atari 2600 Jr., was still being manufactured and sold in stores in 1992 — that’s three years after the Sega Genesis was released.

Technology constantly evolves and it’s literally amazing that a game system containing 128 bytes of RAM remained so popular for so long. Games like Pitfall and Yars’ Revenge, both of which frequently appear on lists of the best video games of all time, were constrained to 4k worth of code. To many Gen-X gamers, the Atari 2600 retains a powerful nostalgic draw; for others, the system falls somewhere between technological curiosity and prehistoric footnote in gaming history.

Atari, or rather the modern conglomerate who purchased the trademark and is currently operating as Atari, is a mess. As owners of one of the most recognizable brands of all time, the company has experienced more misses than hits in recent years by selling pictures of vintage cartridges as NFTs and the recently released Atari VCS console, which went from “delayed” to “discounted” in record time. They are a company that does not understand their own brand, or what fans of it want. While all old fans of Atari really want are ways to play the original (and in some cases, updated versions of those) games, Atari spent the past two years creating virtual tennis shoes that could be worn in a metaverse that doesn’t exist and selling them to nobody.

In a case of “hit the hyperspace button enough times and you’ll eventually land inside an Asteroid,” Atari seems to have finally developed something their customers might actually want to purchase. Announced this week with a release date just in time for the 2023 holiday system is the all new Atari 2600+, Atari’s latest console. The Atari 2600+ is an updated version of the original Atari 2600 console that marries old and new technology in an interesting, amusing, but somewhat confusing way.

In the simplest of terms, the Atari 2600+ is a console that plays original Atari 2600 and 7800) cartridges from nearly 50 years ago, but comes with the ability to connect to a modern television. The system comes with 10 classic Atari games, one joystick, and an MSRP of $139.99.

Physically, the 2600+ closely resembles the vintage console on which it is based. It has been modeled after the slightly less popular “four-switch” model that relocated its difficulty switches to the rear of the machine and looks to be slightly smaller (and undoubtedly lighter) than a vintage model, but to anyone standing on the far side of the room, it passes. Along with those difficulty switches on the rear of the system, the past mingles with the present. The 2600+ features the same DB9 joystick ports as the original and is compatible with all old Atari joysticks; new features include a USB-C power connection, an HDMI port, and a switch to toggle between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios.

Included in the box is an all new 10-in-1 cartridge. Many of the games, including Dodge ‘Em, Missile Command, Surround, Video Pinball, and Yars’ Revenge are all highly regarded games from the original Atari library. Unsurprisingly the cartridge does not contain any third-party or licensed titles, so there’s nothing from Activision or Imagic, and no arcade ports like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong. The included game pack should provide hours of entertainment, but those wanting to play other titles they remember will need to use their own cartridges which, fortunately, are still relatively inexpensive to acquire and amazingly resilient despite their age. In all my years of collecting Atari cartridges I could count the number of dead ones I’ve purchased on one hand. In the 2014 documentary Atari: Game Over, cartridges recovered after spending nearly four decades in an Alamogordo landfill worked perfectly. The weakest link for most Atari 2600 cartridges was the glue used to affix the labels.

While finding cartridges to play on the Atari 2600+ might be relatively simple, finding the market for this new console may prove to be a bigger challenge.

In 2017, Hyperkin released the RetroN 77, a third party clone that not only plays Atari 2600 cartridges and offers HDMI output, but also provides the ability to play Atari ROMs by way of SD-card. Obtaining Atari 2600 ROMs via the internet is elementary, and in just a few minutes RetroN 77 owners can sit down and play every 2600 game known to ever exist. To put it bluntly, the RetroN 77 beat the Atari 2600+ to the market by six years, has a highly desirable feature lacking from the 2600+, and is available on Amazon for less than half the price ($69.99) of the Atari 2600+.

It gets worse. While the original Atari 2600 used a built-in RF cable requiring an old-timey “computer/TV” switchbox to pump its video signal into a television, those old systems can be connected to any modern television with a coax connection using an inexpensive ($5) RF-to-Coax adapter, and for those more technically minded, A/V modification kits that add RCA video and audio output to an original Atari 2600 are available. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that people who own Atari 2600 cartridges most likely already own a console that can play them, whether it’s an original model from the 1970s or the reimagined RetroN 77. That doesn’t mean the Atari 2600+ isn’t a tough sell; it’s that it’s a tough sell today.

The final blow against Atari’s newly announced system is that under the hood, all the processing is being handled through emulation. Technically speaking it’s the most logical choice — from a price and manufacturing standpoint it makes much less sense to develop new versions of old chips and processors when Atari emulators have existed for nearly 30 years (the earliest ones were released for Windows 3.1 back in 1995) and can run on processers that cost as little as a few dollars; however, the biggest potential audience for this console is hardcore Atari fans. When a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero contains 1,000x the power required to accurately emulate Atari 2600 games and emulators exist on essentially any electronic device made in the past 30 years, launching a $140 console that leverages that same technology could be a tough sell. To the normal person the difference between emulation and a hardware-based system is imperceivable, but it is fair to say that people excited about a console able to play Atari 2600 cartridges in 2023 might not be a normal person.

For people disinterested in procuring piles of plastic or dabbling in emulation, there are alternative, legal ways to play these games. Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, a beautiful collection of Atari games, interviews, and historic information, is available for $39.99 via Steam. The same collection is for sale through Atari’s website and is available for the Xbox One, PS4, and PS5. The collection is not all encompassing, but includes plenty to see and do for most gamers.

A final barely-mentioned feature of the Atari 2600+ is that, despite its name, also plays Atari 7800 games. The 7800 library consists of approximately 60 licensed games with graphics that rivaled other 8-bit systems of time (NES, Commodore 64), but was crippled by recycling the same sound chip used in the Atari 2600. Additionally, the Atari 7800 controller included two fire buttons, so any games requiring both buttons won’t work without the purchase of a vintage 7800 controller, which aren’t cheap. The fact that the 10-in-1 doesn’t include any Atari 7800 games and no Atari 7800 games are being shown in any of the promotional material shows that this is a side-feature and not a major selling point. The most logical explanation is that the emulator being used to power the system plays both.

Also touted in the launch and available separately are two new games (an enhanced version of Berzerk and a new title, Mr. Run and Jump) along with a “Paddle Bundle” that includes a set of paddles and a 4-in-1 cartridge including Breakout, Video Olympics, and Night Driver, and doesn’t include Warlords, Circus Atari, or Kaboom. The new games are being sold for $30 and the paddle pack is $40, which is a good price for anyone who doesn’t have a closet full of old paddles.

When broken down into its individual components, the Atari 2600+ faces an uphill battle — once again, we’re being offered moderately priced emulation machine that requires the use of original cartridges and lacks the ability to play acquired ROMs. It’s tough to see anyone but the most fervent Atari fans picking this up, and even then it feels like the potential market is limited. That being said, I also failed to see a market for other recent classic consoles including the NES and SNES classic, both of which flew off shelves and continue to sell today. When it comes to nostalgic gamers, common sense is not always the primary deciding factor.

Link: Atari 2600+

The tank mouse is a wireless mouse, meant to look like the mouse the Amiga had. There was a Kickstarter for it, but I can’t give money to Kickstarter any more, after all the times I have been burned. The amount hasn’t been much, but I get obsessed with being cheated. So I waited to see if this would actually be produced.

It was! It is!

It does not come with an instruction manual and it runs on batteries. I am ok with it running on batteries because it means they never considered having the power plug come out of the bottom of it as Apple does with the “Magic Mouse” (which is still the all-time worst “form over function” garbage design decision in anything, probably the worst single design decision in the whole of humanity).

It supports a Bluetooth connection in theory, and it also has a USB dongle if you want to go wireless. There are two versions you can buy – if you buy the more expensive version, you also get a plug for your Amiga (or other retro computer) and you can use this wireless Tank Mouse that way.

I did not know where the wireless dongle was. I went to put two AAA batteries in it, so I opened the door…. and there it was. It was something, as a decision, but who cares, I found it. I couldn’t get my Macbook for work to see it in Bluetooth mode, but it seems perfectly happy to work with the non-Bluetooth USB connector, so I am doing that.

I like how it feels. The buttons feel sturdy and responsive when I press them. It does seem really light, just in terms of mass, but I am ok with that, and a better reviewer would have a scale to compare the weight to the original Amiga version. But the Amiga version can’t be this light, it just caaaain’t. But that’s fine.

The Tank Mouse has a scroll section too! It’s right down on the top of the mouse itself. There is no visual way of “knowing” this – you just move your finger up and down the top of the thing, and you will scroll. It’s not 100% smooth just yet. We’ll see. The Gameball I was using, reviewed earlier, was a bit frustrating in that respect at first as well, so I am ok here giving this some time.

But yeah, I like it. I think I can get work done with it. I did find myself having to pick it off the wooden pad I “made” for it, and place it back in the middle. I don’t know how you people live like this and it means I will go back to a trackball for work eventually. Someday.

There is the matter of how it looks. I like how it looks. It looks…. odd, doesn’t it? BIT ODD INNIT? I do not like how many modern mice look. They are eyesores. I have a theory I am working on for designs like mice and trackballs and other computer hardware. What we used to see a lot in superhero films would be the discarding of the stories that, in the comic world, became famous. Well, that was dumb because if a story set in a comic survived well enough to become famous in 40 years it was probably good. Someone getting the go-ahead to make a “Fantastic Four” script from scratch and reinventing anything had an uphill battle and they lost those battles because all of those movies are terrible. I feel the same way about mice. I don’t think I will use this as a daily driver – I need to fix my CST Trackball – but they cared as much about design in the 1980s as we do now. The tank mouse has a good design for me: it fits my hand well and the buttons are satisfying. I like it well enough and I love it as a successful Kickstarter event.

You can get your own tank mouse over here at Sordan.ie.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Ice Cream Jonsey

This is long, so if it’s not interesting enough to read all the way through (and it isn’t), maybe when you’re playing GC4 and staring at the screen wondering WTF, bring this up and skip to the appropriate section and hopefully things will be slightly more comprehensible. Note that the comparison is Gal Civ 3 with all the expansions, and the current state of GC4: Supernova, which is at 1.6 as of this writing.

Fleet info from Galactic Civilizations 3 vs Galactic Civilizations 4.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my late 20s I began wearing cargo shorts, not because I liked them but because I needed the pockets. Along with my wallet and keys, I needed a pocket for my cell phone, a pocket for my Palm Pilot, a pocket for my digital camera, a pocket for my mp3 player, and, sometimes, a pocket for my handheld gaming system. It took a few years, but eventually I replaced all of those devices with an iPhone. Today the thought of carrying around an additional gadget to listen to music or access my calendar seems downright archaic, which fundamentally makes the Retroid Pocket 3+ a tough sell.

Retroid, a China-based company, released their first gaming system back in 2020. The original Retroid Pocket resembled an old school Gameboy but with Android guts and an impressive screen. The Retroid Pocket 2/2+ changed to a more modern horizontal layout, a form factor the 3/3+ have stuck with. From just a few feet away the Retroid 3+ could easily be mistaken for a Sony PSP or even a Nintendo Switch. All the magic is hidden inside.

The Retroid Pocket 3+ (RP3+) is approximately 3x faster than the Pocket 2+ and significantly outperforms the previous Retroid Pocket 3, a model that was only on the market a few months. The RP3+ runs on Android 11 and comes with 128GB of storage (there’s an external slot waiting to receive a second SD card). Under the hood it’s got a processor with eight cores running at 2GHz, a separate GPU, 4GB of RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, a headphone jack, USB-C, and a mini-HDMI port. I’ve owned many laptops with less power and fewer ports. The RP3+ has an MSRP of $150, plus shipping (from China). For a few bucks more, they can be obtained through resellers on Amazon and eBay.

For controls, the device features a d-pad, four buttons, two clickable analog sticks, and two shoulder buttons per side along with start and select buttons. The device’s 4.7″ touchscreen (rumored to be new/old iPhone 6 stock) is responsive, bright, and beautiful. The 1334×750 (720p) display is more than adequate for handling your old games. Both the case and the buttons are available in multiple coors, all carefully designed to evoke feelings of nostalgia.

The RP3+ ships with a basic in-house game launcher, although you’re always only a swipe away from dropping into Android OS. Gamers well-versed in setting up emulators like RetroArch should have things up and running in no time. The front end creates all the necessary folder structures; all that’s required of you is to drop your ROMs onto the device (either over USB-C or directly onto the device’s SD card). Each emulator takes a bit of configuration and ROM scanning and all the things that go with Android emulation. If you’re familiar with this world you won’t have any trouble getting things moving. If I had any trouble at all configuring the console for the first time it was due to the tiny text and my aging eyeballs.

I was unsurprised to watch the device flawlessly handle every 8-bit and 16-bit game and emulator I tried. Sure, it’ll play your favorite vintage Atari 2600 games, but everything from NES and Super Nintendo to Sega Genesis and Gameboy Advance games play without breaking a sweat.

Computers from the same era have been invited to the party as well, with emulators for the Commodore 64/128, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and others available. All of these computer emulators have been designed for systems without physical keyboards and are relatively simple to navigate and use without one. The systems default emulators include ScummVM, for fans of point and click adventures like Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island.

Where things really start to get interesting is with the next generation of consoles, and the generations after that. Nintendo 64 and PlayStation games run perfectly on the handheld, as does pretty much everything from the following generation including the PlayStation 2, Sony PSP, GameCube, and Dreamcast. And in all fairness, to say these systems run perfectly is a bit of a disservice; they actually run better. Nearly all of the RP3+’s emulators leverage the unit’s CPU/GPU to improve the resolution of these old games. The fact this thing can play Dreamcast games is impressive enough. The fact that it can upscale them 3x from 640×480 up to 720p and make them look better than they did running on original hardware is a pleasant surprise.

Notoriously difficult to emulate systems like the Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn also run perfectly. It’s not until you hit the Nintendo Wii that the system starts to stutter, and — I mean, the fact that this thing can run Wii games at all is bonkers — but with a few tweaks to the emulation settings it does a fairly competent job running many of the system’s side-scrolling and racing games.

While the RP3+ is heavily geared toward emulation, ultimately it’s running on Android which means it can do more than that. You can play Android games like Minecraft, listen to music, stream movies, and with the use of Steam Link, play Steam games. The RP3+ answers the meme “but will it run Doom?” by installing Quake out of the gate.

I can’t tell you if the Retroid Pocket 3+ is for you because I’m not even sure that it’s for me. The thought of owning a single handheld gaming console that can play everything from old blocky Atari games to relatively modern CD-based games would have blown my mind as a teenager. The problem is I’m no longer a teenager, and while it’s generally acceptable to play a few rounds of Candy Crush at your desk between meetings, pulling out a gaming device and shooting your way through Grand Theft Auto missions in the workplace is frowned upon. It’s true that the RP3+ is capable of playing tens if not hundreds of thousands of games, but my iPhone plays a few good ones and that’s usually all I have time to play while on the go — and, I always have it with me.

I don’t know if I have room in my life (or my pockets) for a dedicated handheld gaming console these days, but if I had to choose one, the Retroid Pocket 3+ would be it.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Flack

Ice Cream Jonsey
This is a great game.

The sound and graphics are amazing. Even the screeching zeros that descended upon Steam to ruin its reviews when Arkanoid: Eternal Battle had an initial free weekend — all of whom gave their worthless game design, marketing and biz advice! — more or less avoided the topic of how it looks and sounds. That’s because both are incredible. It’s a gorgeous video game with a soundtrack that I’d buy separately. It somehow incorporates the sounds that the arcade version of Arkanoid made with a modern electronica experience.

But more, this game was created by people that obviously have a lot of fondness for Arkanoid as an experience and franchise. I am playing it with a USB spinner from BD Retro Mods that simulates mouse controls and the fine-grain control I have over the paddle is flawless. Flawless! I used to own an Arkanoid arcade cabinet and the control here feels just as good as it did on real hardware. The original Arkanoid spinner had pretty great granularity, they had an extra set of teeth on the rotary dial. There hasn’t been a single time where I lost a life where it wasn’t my fault. You can zip around the boards in a way that feels right. I played with a trackball for this review and it was also really good. Controls are the best thing about this game, except for the sounds and graphics.

The retro mode, where you can play the original Arkanoid, is a delight. Yes, the screen has a filter on it to give it a curved CRT experience. I guess everyone complaining about this one lives in a reality without MAME, but in this one, anyone who wants to be playing the original on a flat rectangle of a screen can do so. I’m glad that the creators tried something different. The retro mode is the best thing about this game, except for the controls, sounds and graphics.

The new single-player mode is fun with new boards. It is true that I have only faced AIs in “Battle Mode,” but that’s fine. I prefer it actually. A computer frustrates me every single day, I’m glad to have the chance to spank them in this.

As for the initial cost of $39.99, I don’t know what to say, I guess global inflation is allowed to affect every single small business and large corporation on Earth with the exception of Pastagames. Who knew that the collective pent-up anger of a mercurial global economy was going to take its rage out on a small group of modern-day retro game enthusiasts. Five bucks on Steam gets you the worst port of Frenzy they could dig up a few clicks over; this is what a good game costs now. Plus, it’s on sale as I type this and the Thanksgiving and Christmas sales are coming.

This ware and Atari’s Gravitar: Recharged are the two best contemporary games involving 1980s arcade IP. Arkanoid – Eternal Battle is fun. It’s beautiful to look at and listen to, it has a wonderful flow, the new levels have just the right kind of learning curve and I didn’t even get into the new powerups, which I like. I hope Taito works with them for other games like Elevator Action or Qix or something next. Well done.

Get it on Steam.

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Ice Cream Jonsey