Nobody is making consoles quite like Atari these days.
That may sound like an ironic joke in 2024, but anyone who has been paying attention to the legendary company can attest to how serious that claim is. Over the past few years, Atari has gone to great lengths to preserve its history. It hasn’t accomplished that by simply bringing old games to new consoles, as it did with its excellent Atari 50 collection, but also by preserving hardware itself. Last year, the company took that to the next level with the Atari 2600+, a near-perfect recreation of its iconic system that actually played old cartridges. Now, Atari has done it again — and raised the bar in the process.
This year’s retro recreation is the Atari 7800+, which gives players a fully functional, but carefully modernized replica of its third home console (sorry to the 5200 fans in the house). Like the 2600+, it’s a nostalgic treat that captures the exact look, feel, and functionality of its 1986 counterpart. This time, though, Atari has gone the extra mile to lightly upgrade the original system without losing its charm. The result is the ultimate retro gaming machine for Atari history buffs.
Faithfully recreated
If the 7800+ looks a little different than you remember, that’s because it’s modeled after the European version of the system, which featured a more distinct rainbow decal across the top, as well as a totally different controller. It’s a gorgeous little console that retains the exact look of its ’80s counterpart, complete with its hard black plastic shell, familiar controller ports, and four control buttons (power, pause, select, and reset).
That’s one thing I love about Atari’s best consoles. I’ve always found it magical that I used to be able to control games at a hardware level rather than in menus. My favorite magic trick here is a switch on the back that lets me seamlessly flip the screen between 16:9 and 4:3 on the fly. It’s a small new touch, but one that’s very much in the spirit of Atari’s old approach to hardware design.
That same level of detail has gone into its CX78+ gamepads, which are based on the rectangular design of the European release rather than North America’s pedal-like one. On the outside, each one is a perfect recreation right down to the metal Atari logo in their top-right corners and the bright red buttons that have a soft, plasticky click to them. They felt perfectly responsive during my testing and are certainly easier to master than the 2600’s classic, but clumsy joystick.
Cloning the hardware is a fun trick, but Atari went the extra mile here to make the 7800+ more than just an aesthetic copy. The big change is that the CX78 can be used wirelessly. The box contains a transmitter that can be plugged in (via Atari’s vintage controller slot shape) to support wireless play. During my tests, my gamepad connected almost instantaneously with little fiddling needed.
blast from the past
To test it out, Atari sent Digital Trends a handful of newly recreated 7800 game cartridges (like the 2600+, it does not come with preinstalled games like typical retro reproductions). That list included Food Fight, Bounty Bob Strikes Back!, and more. I spent an evening testing each one, slotting the plastic cartridges into the top of the console with a familiar clunk. All of those games look and feel pixel perfect on the 7800+, giving me a good reason to revisit an era of Atari that I wasn’t as familiar with growing up.
The games themselves are a true blast from the past, showing off how much of a technical improvement the 7800 was over the 2600 at the time. You can see it in games like the lightning-quick Fatal Run, which shows off the system’s 256 color palette. The system’s oddball joystick/D-pad hybrid control scheme also makes it much easier to control a game like Asteroids Deluxe. The games I tested played quite smoothly considering their age; the only hiccup is that it takes a surprisingly long time to load them up.
These games are another area where Atari has gone the extra mile to create something special. It’s neat enough that the company is reproducing new cartridges of 40-year-old games to support the device. But it has gone one step further by creating a brand-new game too that comes : a full Crystal Castles sequel dubbed Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest. Despite being brand new, it feels like a long lost 1980s game. Its a colorful side-scroller with unforgiving jumps and tricky platforming sections that require mastery. That’s the level of effort that has gone into making the 7800+ more than an easy cash grab.
There’s one key detail that really seals the deal: backward compatibility. I mean that in two ways. For one, you can plug in an original 7800 cartridge and it’ll play on the device if it’s still functional. That’s the same feature that made last year’s 2600+ such a must-own system for retro enthusiasts. What’s even better here, though, is that the 7800+ is also fully compatible with both the 2600+ and the original 2600. I plugged my mother’s copy of Pitfall! in and it fired up with no problems. An even nicer touch is that it’s compatible with the 2600’s joystick, as the 7800+ uses the same controller port. It’s essentially two consoles in one.
Each of these details makes the 7800+ more than a nostalgic collector’s item. It’s the fully functional, all-in-one Atari console of your dreams. While “mini” consoles are cute artifacts (see the neat Atari 400 Mini), this is the kind of device I so desperately want to see from every major console manufacturer. Give me a working NES that I can stuff my old cartridges into and tweak it with wireless gamepad support. Make these old systems easier to buy again rather than forcing me to hunt for half-working ones at trade shows or live off a curated buffet of retro game catalogs. People who love games care about history, and it’s about time that the companies who hold the keys to the past do too.
So, yes, nobody is making game consoles like Atari in 2024. These are detailed historical recreations that encourage players to keep playing old games in the same way cinephiles return to black-and-white films. I hope everyone else is taking notes.