New Toy: (mini) Atari 400 Console

You can't go back, but sometimes, the past echoes and is improved. I relive a golden era.

In the early 1980’s I was in high school and I was spending untold hours in the computer lab. We had a room full of Apple ][+’s and my group of nerdy friends spent as many hours in the lab as we could.

I really (REALLY) wanted one, but the price for a system with 2 disk drives and no display was a wee bit out of my price range.

But, being the early 80s, just about every local strip mall had an arcade chocked full of cabinets of addictive, quarter eating video games. And the games I fed the most quarters (or tokens) into were made by Atari.

So, I saved up my paper route money, and I went down to buy one of their new computers. I tried to save a few bucks, so I bought the Atari 400 system. It had the worst fucking keyboard on the planet, a membrane piece of garbage, and it was impossible to type on. So, I returned it, and spent the extra ducats on the big brother, the Atari 800.

I will spare you the details, but I collected tons of games, ran a BBS, and added a ton of peripherals.

Then, in the 1990’s I packed it up, and stored it in my parents garage, ultimately telling them to donate it all to Goodwill or some similar place, and I had moved on.

Enter the modern mini-system

Over the past few years, there have been a slew of “mini” replicas of many iconic old-school systems. Commodore 64s, Amigas, and the like were limited run systems. Not full computers, but functional, and you can run all the old programs you might have.

In January, I learned that an Atari 400 mini was being released, and that pre-orders opened. $119, and it could be mine. I mashed that pre-order button so damn hard I almost broke my phone.

Last Friday, it arrived.

If you were a fan of the original systems, this packaging will be very familiar. It is a silver box, with the multicolor, period correct, Atari logo.

Opening it up, it is really simple. The system is on the left, and on the right is an enhanced CX joystick. It also includes a USB-C cable, that is how you power the system (a power brick is not included, but odds are good that anyone geeky enough to crave one of these has it covered in spades. Additionally, it includes an HDMI cable.

Sidebar: Supporting HDMI makes this 100% worth it!

I got it plugged in, turned it on, and kaboom, it powers up. Included is a pack of games, many of the classics, M.U.L.E., Centipede, Millipede, Asteroids, Missile Command, and many many more.

And, if you have disk image files, you can drop them on a jump drive and put it in. I have about 4 gigs of these I have collected, and I will be looking for killer games to play from my collections.

It fits in one hand. It is adorable, and it works. I am busy reliving my late teens, and feeding my nostalgia for the early days of video games.

Please excuse my beep, boop, bip sounds.