The Atari 400 Mini plays dozens of classic games, and it’s 15 percent off

It’s ever worthy revisiting the classics, and there’s nary shortage of retro consoles and emulators to alteration that. The Atari 400 Mini is much niche than we’re utilized to, however, and that’s what makes it truthful intriguing. The 8-bit retro replica console has dropped to $102 ($18 off) astatine Amazon successful a limited-quantity accidental that’s astir halfway claimed.

The Atari 400 was 1 of the brand’s archetypal location consoles and computers, noted for the inclusion of a keyboard alongside its iconic joystick. It launched successful 1979, which astir apt explains wherefore I haven’t heard of astir of the games successful the lineup (my feet touched the satellite successful 1988). Asteroids, Star Raiders II, Centipede, and Berzerk ringing a doorbell for me, and I’ve adjacent played a fewer of them implicit the years, but determination are much successful the database of 25 that I was simply excessively precocious for (you tin find a full lineup successful our hands-on here).

It supports not conscionable Atari 400 games but besides emulates titles that launched afterward up to the Atari 5200. If you privation much games, you tin usage 1 of the console’s 5 USB ports to sideload extras utilizing a flash drive, provided you person integer copies of them. That larboard is besides wherever you plug successful the classical joystick that comes with it oregon keyboards, controllers, and different supported peripherals.

You tin play successful 720p implicit HDMI, either successful the classical 4:3 facet ratio that CRT sets of the epoch were confined to oregon a “pixel perfect” mode that does a good occupation of scaling it for modern displays. There’s adjacent an enactment to overlay your games with integer scanlines to truly merchantability the effect. You tin besides rewind gameplay up to 30 seconds, and it supports snapshot saves with up to 4 slots per crippled truthful you ne'er person to suffer your progress.

The Verge’s Andrew Webster felt galore of the games person aged astir arsenic good arsenic they could. Atari’s had plentifulness of examples to get it right, aft all, with truthful galore different retro consoles to notation specified arsenic a clone of its ain 2600 and akin options from long-time rivals similar Sega and Nintendo. You could astir apt walk if you’re already flush with 8-bit treasure, but it’s a tenable acquisition if you’re looking for thing unsocial and obscure for your collection.