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Comment by MenhirMike | Hacker News Reader

That's because I completely forgot about it immediately after seeing it's just a Linux Emulation Box with a cartridge slot, so more like a Hyperkin RetroN instead of a Mister/Analogue FPGA-based product.

I do wonder how compatible it will be with expansion chips (like the DPC in Pitfall 2). I assume they have an internal list of recognized games, but I wonder what happens if someone wires up their own homebrew game with one of those chips and plugs it in?

But you're right, I should have mentioned it because it's a good idea to do and a legit product, I just had it purged from memory because I wasn't interested in it.

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Unfortunately, it's not compatible with DPC or DPC+, CDFJ+, etc. The emulator works by "dumping" the ROM binary from the inserted cartridge. This is fine for simple cartridges but for more advanced bank switching technologies it's difficult to do correctly and for processor-cartridges it's impossible.

As you suggest, one way around that is to fingerprint the cartridge and then to load a binary into the emulator from internal memory (if they're using Stella then the emulator is capable of emulating the processors on those chips) but I don't believe that is an option provided by the 2600+. And if it was, it's a very limiting option for the end user because new homebrew games wouldn't work.

Are processor cartridges at all common, even among homebrew games? Just curious.

I think we need to be reasonable about how much magic we really expect them to put into this thing, since running Atari and Activision cartridges, like the 2600 (and 7800!) of old, is what most people would expect the machine to do. On the other hand... if they make the machine easily hackable, that might be pretty great, and earn this version of Atari a little respect.

Yeah. Many of the most popular games released in recent years have contained an ARM chip. As it happens Atari Age have removed many of those games from distribution (in readiness for this takeover by Atari) because they weren't properly licenced. A good exception to this rule is LodeRunner which has been licenced and uses an onboard ARM.

If the market for this product is people who only want to play the older ROMs on a HDTV then I'm sure the 2600+ is a fine product.

I am not sure what the real market is then, though. If it's for people that want to re-live their memories, then a system with built-in games (of which plenty exist) makes much more sense, or one with a digital store (so, the VCS, or digital collections like Atari 50). Whereas people that still held on to their cartridges and want to play them seem to be more the crowd that kept up with newer and homebrew games as well?

Maybe I'm projecting from myself, but if I'm that kind of enthusiast that held on and wants to play their actual cartridges, I'd expect compatibility with any cartridges I might still buy in the future.

(Then again, both the RetroN and Polymega seem to do well enough, so what do I know, apart from not liking the idea of these systems as half-baked in-between solutions.)

I agree with you. I don't begrudge the 2600+ but it's not one for me.

It seems to me that compatibility with any cartridge would require a recreation of the actual VCS hardware. That sounds expensive to me and is probably why Atari haven't gone down this route. But as you say, that leads to a half-baked solution.

The other option is an emulator that can communicate with the cartridge in real time - but that doesn't exist and I doubt Atari have gone to the trouble of making one (we're all assuming they're using Stella at this point, but I don't think that's been confirmed).

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