Also featured are a number of homebrews and hacks, such as Yars’ Return, Shield Shifter, Adventure II, and Return to Haunted House. No Activision or other third-party titles are included here, but I’m gonna talk about why that’s not an issue in a minute.
Almost all of them are Atari first-party titles, with some M Network (Mattel) games included as well. The 60 games that the AFP comes with are a range of classic, well-known titles such as Adventure, Yars’ Revenge, Centipede, and the like. Note the new cover art for unreleased titles There are two function buttons near the top of the unit that are used as Reset (to start your game) and a Menu button to call up the main game list. Why would you need six buttons for Atari games that only use one? One is of course the ubiquitous FIRE button, and the other five are assigned to the VCS’s console functions, such as Select, A/B difficulty switches, BW/Color, and the last one is used to Pause, which was never an original 2600 feature but is quite convenient here. The unit itself looks identical to ATGames’ Sega Genesis portable (which I have not played), with a d-pad and six action buttons. The spartan contents of the box: the console, manual, and USB cable But since the Portable is, well, portable, I thought it would be a fun little unit to have on the go, so I figured it might be cool to grab one. The one thing that was appealing to me about them was that their built-in library often included some unreleased games, homebrews, and hacks. I’ve never felt the need to own an Atari Flashback however, since I own several original 2600s and hundreds of games.
There’ve been mixed reviews on ATGames’ Atari Flashback units, but there’s no denying that they’re a convenient way to play classic Atari 2600 games on modern TVs. I figured I couldn’t go wrong at that price, so I made it my own. Normally retailing for around 50 bucks, I did a little bargain shopping and found one on clearance for only $28. Even though they’ve been out for quite a while, the other day I suddenly and inexplicably had the overwhelming urge to acquire an Atari Flashback Portable.