casting a vote for an Atari series as well - at the quality level of the Commodore series. Am not a Atari fan boy, but just would like to learn more about them - 8-bit Guy style
@@tygattyche2545By a difference of 6 months. I'm sure the C64 was a consideration by EA from the conception of the game, which is why it ported so well, although nearly every significant difference or bug came from either a shortcoming of the C64 or the amount of time to properly adapt the code to the C64.
@@tygattyche2545 I guess I'm missing some greater purpose of why one must not forget MULE was originally written for the Atari. All of Ozark Softscape used Apple IIs and SC Assembler to program and build MULE. One might argue that the Apple was their preferred system. I think they were just following the market, dropping Atari support shortly after.
Encounter was written by Paul Woakes, who went on to create one of the most important bits of software on the Commodore 64 called "Novaload". He also wrote "Mercenary" which still is a massive classic on the c64.
Mercenary was also available on Atari 8-bit. I played that one a lot back in the 80s, even though I could never figure out what I was supposed to do besides wandering mazes and flying that giant cheese wedge.
@@DTM-Books I was able to finish that game. I remember discovering the building in the air (flying the cheese), that was a wonderful moment. Paul Woakes was a great programmer (RIP).
@@DTM-BooksMercenary and the follow up, the Second City were incredible 8 bit games. Paul Woakes was a huge Atari fan, he originally created them on the Atari. He provided two versions, one for the 48K Ataris and one for 64K machines. Amazingly, you could play the exact same game, just in a lower resolution on the older 48K machines. I still have my official Mercenary map and hints pack which was available to order from Novagen. 😀
I think it’s very cool how there are mini retro computers like the amiga 500 and commodore 64 and now Atari 400! It introduces these old computers to a whole new generation! And also being nostalgia to people that owned the original computers in the 80s
Well , just get yourself a BlackView 16 Tablet ... add Emulators on it of Vice for C64\Atari , UAE for Amiga and you got the same deal + more since its so beefy it can emulate N64\PS1\PS2\Xbox1\Dreamcast\SegaCD... with a inbuild battery that can last for 18h
@@PHSPictures Too much Work ? Its easy as 123... google Play , find those emus and install those , then go to the rom site David mentioned in his video ... and your set , 3min tops and you will transform a tablet into a gaming console ... that even can play PSP and Vita games ...
My uncle had an Atari 800 back in the early '80s -- actually I think he bought it for himself for Christmas of '79. He had this game for it -- not sure if it would've run on the original Atari 400 or not, but I guarantee it'd run on your 400 Mini there, if you put it in 800-mode. Anyway, you were in a spaceship -- first-person PoV from inside the cockpit looking out at space all around you. You had to hyperspace-jump to different sectors and shoot at (and hopefully blow up) the enemy space ships in each sector, to try take over the whole galaxy. You had to defend your star-bases, too, or else you lost points if you let enemy ships destroy them. I think it was called Star Commander or Star Raider or something like that. You should definitely try to find a copy -- guarantee you'd enjoy it. Heck, I might buy one of these just to play that game, if I can find a copy of it. LOL! EDIT: Star Raiders. That's the name. I was close. Not a bad memory considering I was 10, 11, 12 years old when I played it. EDIT2: Oh, the 400 Mini comes with Star Raiders II -- I didn't know there was a sequel. Neat! Anyone know if it was any good?
Some copies are actually mislabeled “Star Raider” so you were right even before the edit. :) Another game in that vein that goes a whole lot deeper is Elite.
4:41 I‘m from Germany and at the time this game came out I was about 6 years old. My mum was an enthusiastic computer nerd and bought an ATARI 800. What a machine. Little did we know English BUT: We called it “Miner Twenty Fourty Niner” which - call me wrong - to me sounds much more like a rhyme and cooler than “Miner Two Thousand Fourtyniner” 😜 However, great channel, I am watching you since the beginning and you are great. ❤ This is just one minor story where I somehow think I know something better than you do. Which is pretty rare! 😂
The Time Rift Arcade vids have been great! But please (continue to) promote that channel more on here, David. A few weeks/months ago I remembered Time Rift was supposed to be a thing (as mentioned in the end of one of your videos earlier this year, I believe), but I couldn't remember what the new channel was called. I'm happy to report that I was able to figure it out by digging through this year's videos, but I'm sure there's a bunch of your fans who are missing out. Anyways as always thank you for another great video!
Great stuff! My first computer was an Atari 400, and hearing the sounds of certain games in your video reminded me of me vividly of the many hours I poured into that little machine gaming, learning BASIC, writing music, etc. Good times indeed! By the way, I accessorized my 400 with an external keyboard. It was called the Sidewriter, and greatly facilitated typing on the 400. Thanks! I’m a longtime fan of your channel.
I had an atari 800. I learned to program BASIC on it in 1983 when I was in 5th grade. In 7th grade I spent the summer dialing up BBS's on my 300 baud modem. Takes me backl
Ah, so you were one of the enemies, haha! I grew up on Atari, and you could say that an Atari 400 that a friend got for Christmas back in 1979 (IIRC) is what started me down the Computer Science path. While my friend was solely interested in the games, I became fascinated with HOW the games worked under the hood. I was able to get myself an 800XL not long after release after a season of mowing lawns, and that’s how I became enamored with programming. To this day, I still have a copy of the Atari BASIC book, not to mention the very famous Atari Bible, “Your Atari Computer”. Atari stopped painting the joysticks around the time that the black variant of the 2600 was released (the “Vader” model, if you will). Aside from matching that console’s aesthetic, it was actually a cost-cutting move (the trim around the control panel of earlier 2600 models also used to have that same orange trim around it). Glad to see that the retro versions of this iconic controller brought back the Orange paint!
I was more of a Commodore user back in the 90s. However I have always also loved the Atari 8-bit computer line and consoles. I have plenty of Commodore and Atari stuff now, and a couple of Apple IIs.
@@basicforge Nice! I personally had nothing against Commodore back in the day - but before there was Nintendo vs. Sega, there was Atari vs. Commodore. Some kids took it that seriously, haha!
You are definitely a part of the nostalgic story that all of us who were able to experience this time carry in our hearts and minds. Thank you for investing so much time and effort. Many greetings from Europe/Germany
@@YourMotherSucksCocksInHell: I believe the bankruptcy came afterwards. I vaguely recall that unreasonable drama (or maybe that was _just_ Commodore, instead of including Atari?), and the _results_ of stereotypical business skeeziness (trying to anonymize programmers and thus inspiring 3rd party competition, ET + infinite PacMan releases, etc.) were what ultimately killed them (and in fact hindered them all throughout, as they didn't fully recover after the initial 80s console crash).
@@absalomdraconis Atari had an opportunity to effectively be Nintendo of America (a little more complicated than that, but yes). It's kind of like Netflix proposing their model to Blockbuster (I hope I got that generally right). Well, hindsight, etc.
When I heard the announcement for this, I snarked that people might think THE 400 is a prequel to THE A500 even though they're based on different lines, but from what I learned about the history of Atari and Commodore computers on this channel, that actually isn't wrong.
No, it's not. The Amiga continued the Atari (Jay Miner) practice of trading off more color for resolution, having multiple display lists, 4 channel sound, etc. The ST, likewise, was more similar in it's approach to the C64.
Spot on. The Commodore Amiga is ironically- in effect- far more the true spiritual heir to the Atari 400/800 than the Atari ST was. Before Commodore bought it, the Amiga was designed by an independent company which included ex-Atari designers (including Jay Miner). The design and its use of custom chips was arguably a next-generation evolution of the 400/800 architecture (which in turn had been a development of the VCS/2600 design). And the Amiga was- like the 400/800 had been- state-of-the-art and very expensive when first launched. Whereas its rival, the Atari ST, was effectively the baby of Jack Tramiel... the guy who had originally founded Commodore! After acrimoniously leaving Commodore, Tramiel bought out Atari Inc's former computer division to form "Atari Corp." Then almost straight away he got rid of virtually all the existing staff and hired a new designer to build a 68000-based machine from much more off-the-shelf-parts following his very different "Power Without the Price" philosophy. So, yeah. The Amiga was created by ex-Atari designers following the same approach and philosophy as the 400/800, and the ST was the product of a very different "Atari" run by the ex-owner of Commodore following the same ruthlessly price-focused philosophy.
The first time I had heard about the Amiga, I was in high school, a 1984 graduate. A friend of mine told me about some computer called the Amiga Lorraine which was displaying 4096 colors at the same time. I told him that there was no way that was happening yet. But he insisted. Two years later I bought an Amiga 1000. Having been an Atari computer fan for years up until that point, I could see, even then, that the machine was clearly a more advanced version of what I'd already been using. The same year I graduated, I went to a computer show where the Macintosh was displayed. I was blown away by the mouse and the GUI. But the price made me very angry at the time. There was absolutely no way I could afford a machine like that, close to $6 or $7,000 today's money.
@@Chordonblue I'm afraid you're mistaken- the Amiga didn't trade off colour for resolution. With one *major* caveat (below), it offered pretty much the *same* resolutions as the ST, but- as far as I'm aware- allowed more colours on-screen in every case. For example, both offered 320 x 200 (NTSC) or 320 x 256 (PAL) modes- the one most common for games and graphics. The Amiga could have 32 completely-independent register colours (from a palette of 4096) on screen at once versus 16 (from a palette of 512) on the ST. (*) "Medium" resolution (640 x 200/256) on the Amiga allowed 16 colours versus the ST's four. The Amiga's "interlaced" versions of the two modes above, offered the *same* number of colours at 320 x 400/512 and 640 x 400/512 respectively. The caveat above is that those interlaced modes flickered *horribly* on a regular TV, so weren't very usable unless you were willing to invest in a "flicker fixer" *and* a new monitor. Whereas the ST's corresponding "high resolution" mode was only monochrome and still required a separate monitor, but didn't have that problem. So I'd probably chalk that specific area up as a win for the ST. (*) And this doesn't include the Amiga's 64-colour 'Extra Half-Brite' mode (offering an additional 32 non-independent registers), or HAM mode (4096 colours, but with limitations).
@@NotATube What you say is true, but you have to keep things in context. The trade off of color for resolution (and there's ALWAYS a trade-off due to memory/budgetary constraints back then), also made the Amiga more suitable for NTSC video. What you got in return was the FLEXABILITY of using half-bright or other resolutions. I don't deny the flickery resolutions, but given earlier 8-bit 80 column attempts on TV (to varying degrees of success), this was not a surprise. Remember, in 1985, color monitors were EXPENSIVE. The ST was terrific for Midi and desktop publishing - so long as you had the monochrome monitor. My earliest 1000 used a TV because that was all I could afford at the time, having barely been able to afford the computer in the first place. Later? Sure, I got a 1080, and then a 3000/flicker-fixed w/a VGA-style monitor. But with my 2000, it was all about the Video Toaster - a device that played to the Amiga's strengths as a GREAT NTSC video device.
That "zombies" game was called "Realm of Impossibility" on the C64. It's pretty much a multi level maze game where you gotta grab certain Items before you solve each maze. The crosses only purpose is to block the enemies from chasing you. I used to play the heck out of that game!
@@onlysublime No, both versions came out on the Atari. If anything "Realm of Impossibility" is the "hack". "Zombies" came out first and (according to Atarimania) was released by Bram, Inc. in 1983. "Realm of Impossibility" was a slightly improved reissue released by EA the following year.
When I was a teenager, a good friend of mine had an Atari800xl, while I was in the C64 team. The 2 machines were on par about gaming. Next we followed different routes, he has an ST and I had an Amiga, obviously
And the hilarious thing about that is that the ST was more of a 16/32-bit C64, whereas the Amiga was more of a 16/32-bit Atari computer. Weird how that worked out! Having owned both of them, as in the previous generation, they all had their strengths against each other.
Realm is a reworked Zombies sold by EA. The was new audio music, additional levels and the difficulty was tweaked. Zombies was the original sold directly by Bram and completely created head to toe by Mike Edwards.
I actually sold my C64 copy of the game like a year ago as I'm trying to reduce my game collection because moving house was a pain with 80+ big moving boxes of full of games.
In 1993 and 1994 (when I was 14/15/16) me and my friends (oh, God, talk about the social rejects!) hung around outside a room with some kind-of social work techers (who, honestly, were among three of the nicest people you'd ever meet, teachers or otherwise). In that room, just because they had nowhere else to go, was the last three working Apple IIe computers. And we used to play on them. Mainly because there was this awesome game "Prince Of Persia". Many, many lunchtimes were spent playing (what we didn't know was) the original version of that game on the machine it was written for.
The original Atari 400 keyboard was awkward to use, so a miniature version would be a nightmare to use. The only keys they could sensibly have enabled are the 4 function keys on the far right of the computer. But joystick buttons are a better solution, and any USB keyboard works way better. I do hope they do a 'Maxi' version like they did with the 64 and Vic20.
@@another3997 I don’t think it would matter, no one would be word processing on the thing, it would be 2-3 letters for high score initials and a fun way of interacting with the system.
@@another3997 Calling that keyboard awkward is being kind. I remember how bad it was, and they had it beep each time you pressed a button, since there were no real keys to click. Just horrible.
In high school my best friend bought a VIC-20 and we were excited because we wanted to run programs from the PETs we had in the computer lab. Unfortunately, the low ram and inferior display meant that most didn't work. Over the summer he returned the VIC-20 and got an Atari 800. By coincidence, I got the 800 as well. This set off some great game piracy. Didn't know about the C64 until later. I often wonder what it would be been like if we both stayed with Commodore.
Videos like this bring me back to my childhood, especially friday nights. My friends mom would take us out for 33 cent tacos, then to the video store. We would get a Nintendo game and a movie. Get back to his house, swim for a bit ,watch the movie, play Nintendo and then play around on his Amiga 500 and laugh all night. I feel bad that kids really have nothing to do these days and yes I myself have a ps5 and play online with new friends, but it was nothing like the 80s and early 90s.
commenting to vouch for the restoration of the arcade machines (the other channel) - I like the additional dimensions of things to deal with and very much like seeing the restoring of the cabinets to their original arcade glory and splendor.
Played it tonight... not for me. Too fidly, kept pressing buttons unintentionally due to the stick layout. I also wasn't an Atari guy, so this wasn't nostalgia I was buying it just for the experience. Only enjoyed three games (Encounter, Flip Flop and Basketball oddly) everything else was too difficult to control on the included stick. Games I did enjoy on other consoles, like Bezerk, I just couldn't play properly with that stick... there were some games that were just "okay" but I'd never play them again such as Bristles, Capture the Flag and Yoomp.
Thanks for taking a look at this. The stock/out of the box software seems average at best, but it's great to know you can load up whatever you want with a USB stick. I may eventually get one of these!
man, seeing the 400 takes me back to when my pops was teaching me basic. They keyboard was absolute trash, but I loved the damn thing to be able to play games and code them all in one unit.
I still have an original 400 stashed in my attic, sadly no power supply or game cartridges though, so I couldn't say whether it still works or not. 🤷♂
From what I heard, the reason that the 400 only had that cheap membrane keyboard is that it was really meant just as a console and originally wasn't even going to include a keyboard at all... until the people in charge realised that Star Raiders was going to be a "killer app" but it'd need a keyboard to play it.
@@NotATube in reality, I think the real issue was production cost as a 400 was about 1/2 the cost of the 800. There were membrane keyboards on other inexpensive computers and they were all very difficult to use!
@@davidmartin8211 Yes, I'm aware of that. (The first computer I ever used was a Sinclair ZX81 with a flat membrane keyboard!) And yes, it would have been to keep the cost down since mechanical keyboards were expensive back then. But my point was that the reason Atari assumed they could get away with including that cheap- but suboptimal- keyboard was that it was only ever meant for minimal gaming use on a machine that wasn't even intended to have a keyboard- nor to be a "serious" computer- in the first place. Or more that they wouldn't even have bothered at all if it hasn't been for Star Raiders.
My first computer was a 400. Star raiders still gives me flash backs. I would play until I fell asleep. I can still hear it to this day. Amazing stuff for its time
Yes back in the day Star Raiders was the "killer app" so to speak. It was insanely popular. Back in 1984 when I finally got an Atari 600XL Star Raiders was as good or better than any real "arcade game".
Interesting. My first computer was the Atari 800 XL, Then I bought the 130 XE and upgraded the ram in it. These hold some fond memories for me. I learned how to program in basic on the 800 XL I think. Played a lot of games on them both. I ended up trading them off to a friend for something that I don't even remember. I with I'd of kept them. Been trying to get them back over the past few years.
I still have an Atari 800 and 800XL that I picked up from a second-hand store many years ago, as well as most of my software for it. This Atari mini was tempting for its compatibility with new I/O hardware, so I’m glad you reviewed it. One thing that may be a deal breaker for me is the fake keyboard; the main issue I have with Atari emulators like Colleen is they don’t support some of the Atari-specific keys like Break which lets you interrupt BASIC programs or the Atari logo key (/|\) which switched characters to or from inverse video, and control characters don’t type out graphics characters like they should.
Absolutely love this mini. I do agree with you that it is really only worth the price if you have a USB with more games. Great video. The save states, 4 for each game (including USB games), is a welcome addition.
Zombies is basically Realm of Impossibility on the C64, a game that I to this day love and which in two-player mode is especially fun! There is also the catchy intro tune on the C64 version that I remember. Great times.
I had entered the pre-order for the 400 mini, but canceled it a week later as I was getting a bad vibe. After seeing the problems as reported on AtariAge, I'm glad I did.... I still have my original 800 I bought new in 1983 with the help of a Home Improvement loan :) I am also one of the guys that assembled a working Atari 1450XLwith the modem and Speech Chip. Thank you for all the videos you have produced, I enjoy watching the 8-bit PC reviews / repairs. I'm also the proud owner of the X16 Dev Board #0069 :) Also have 2 C64c's and a C128...
Really would love to see you do a history series on Atari 8-bit computers like you did for the Commodore line. That would fantastic. Thanks for reviewing this product!
0:37 - Sorry to be the guy, but if this photo was unedited, it couldn't have been taken in 1980. The game on the screen is Pitfall, which was released in 1982.
Here's the thing about Atari Computer Software: Many of the very BEST Atari games came at the end of its lifespan. I particularly remember 1983/4 being EXCELLENT between Master of the Lamps, Rescue on Fractalus, Koronis Rift, Alternate Reality, BallBlazer,, Pitfall II, and many, MANY more. The C64 was a literal open book, whereas Atari was close-lipped about their custom architecture. Towards the middle of its life, Atari finally opened up, but, much like T.I.'s 99/4a, it was MUCH too late. The amazing thing to think about is that the 400/800 was designed back in 1979, and was STILL competing w/the C64, years later. Commodore KILLED Atari with on-point advertising, better software and documentation, and pricing. After all, the 400/800 was using an MOS (Commodore) chip at it's heart!
I hope if they do a full size version of it, that they do the 800 or 130xe with a proper keyboard. Like you, I was on Commodores (and Apples in school), so an Atari 8 bit computer would be new to me. I have used the Atari ST, but that's a different beast altogether.
I notice that some of the colours seem a slightly off on some games (e.g. Elektraglide 5:51, Henry's House 6:08). Possibly this is because they're being run in NTSC mode? (The palettes are slightly different between the NTSC and PAL models, so games designed for the PAL palette will look slightly different under NTSC and vice versa).
I had a 400, but I eventually moved on to a C64. I didn't have anyone to share my own software with or to trade commercial software with others on the Atari, hence the switch. That thing was built like a tank but even typing in one full line of text hurt your fingers. Utterly wretched keyboard. Very good BASIC, with sound and graphics and input reading commands. I wrote my own little graphics doodle program that used four different joysticks and could save the result (to tape). The C64's abominable BASIC forced people to move to assembly and machine language, which was a mixed blessing - great if you were able to understand assembly, and created a generation of very capable programmers, but horrible if you weren't going to learn assembly/ML and just wanted to access the C64's resources with its built-in language.
The only game I played from their game list for this system is Missile Command, and that's only because it was included with the XEGS. The games I played were pretty esoteric though, it was mostly just stuff out of the $5 bargain bin at target, and things in Compute! magazine in source code form. I probably would have ended up with a C64 if it wasn't for my parents finding someone selling a 130XE when I was a kid, along with a whole heap of random floppies and software for it, a monitor, printer, a couple indus floppy drives, a tape drive, a stack of Compute! magazine and random books, all for $100... He was getting into the Atari ST and needed some cash...
I still have my Atari 400 in a box in the closet with all my games. I should hook it up. Sadly the disk drive and tape drive both died long ago. I modded mine up to 48k of memory. It's weird they included Star Raiders 2 but not the original. Star Raiders was the game for the 400/800 back in the day. It actually came with mine.
Atari 800 was my first console/computer... I still have it. I still think it's a beautifully designed machine. Nothing triggers the nostalgia like the little squeak it makes when I open the cartridge door. lol
I find it amazing that games like Prince could run on those older platforms - it makes me think about what COULD have been possible back then seeing games like yours and these ports. Prince of Persia on a VIC-20??? Like that's not insane. I don't remember any VIC-20 games even CLOSE to that good. Stuff like Cosmic Cruncher comes to mind.
The relevant fun fact about ATARI 8-Bit computers in relation to modern technology: Its SIO interface used to connect various devices in a chained way including a direct power supply from the main computer was the predecessor of the modern USB interface. Another fun fact: Some engineers from the ATARI 8-Bit developed the Commodore Amiga while C64 engineers went on developing the ATARI ST.
Another fun fact was Atari were competing with the Commodore PET and Apple II. Ask C64 fans who post here what they were playing in 1979. Star Raiders in 1979 was mind blowing.
Same intro for me on Atari Computers. Started out with 2600 at home for gaming, while I learned about computers from our Commodore Computer Lab (Pets, Vic-20, 64, & 128) at school. I only saw the Atari Line of Computers briefly, when I shopped with my parents, at a local department store. Makes a person wonder, if Atari would have handled marketing differently, how their impact would been on the home & school market?
The only tragedy here is that they didn’t make the 4 control keys work on the 400 itself. Being able to open the door and see the giant metal bay would have been awesome too. There’s 1000 ways to play old atari games and I think the only point of this is to feed into the nostalgia. Thanks for the review!
Yes, I agree with the function keys, way better than a super custom joystick bodge. As for the lid, even a picture under there would have been better, if I end up with one of these I may just take a Dremel to it and 'make it so', to steal a line from Star Trek
Can we get an update on the commander x16 with an emphasis on what SOFTWARE has been / is in the works for development and possible tools helpful to people who have never programmed / limited programming?
I was an Atari loyalist and it always seemed like their 8-bit computers never quite got the level of commercial success they deserved. The Atari 800 was about 90% of the way to being a Commodore 64, but in 1979--kind of an amazing achievement. (In *some* ways they were better than the 64--the disk interface was much faster, and the BASIC, while it was less sophisticated as a BASIC, did a far better job of exposing the system's graphics and sound capabilities, which was fantastic for people learning programming.) But it seemed like they were just a little too slow to move with the times after the initial release, and a lot of ambitious projects got announced and never shipped. The game on the platform that I got most addicted to was probably their port of Defender, which was brilliant, but doubtless not included here because it's a Williams license (now part of "Midway", owned by Warner I think). The port of Missile Command is closer to the arcade version than the 2600's except that it still has only the one missile base. That Asteroids port is actually quite different from the 2600 port but not in a way that makes it much better; I think that was one of Atari's earliest 400/800 games, and it shows. The game selection here is kind of odd. I understand the relative lack of non-Atari arcade ports (like their terrific ports of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, far superior to the 2600 versions), but including Star Raiders II but not Star Raiders seems like a crime. The original Star Raiders was a monumental game, arguably the birth of the whole space-combat-sim genre, the games like Wing Commander and X-Wing. Star Raiders II was a largely unrelated game (though there was an unreleased Star Raiders II that really was more of a sequel to Star Raiders--it resurfaced recently).
The Atari 8-bit home computers simply weren't all that profitable; the money for Atari came from licensing GAMES for their 2600 platform. When the 5200 and later 7800, all decent machines, flopped, the Warner Communications division was hemorrhaging cash to the tune of ONE MILLION DOLLARS, DAILY, in 1984! The problem, of course, was the inevitable shakeout that any burgeoning new industry goes through, and many at the time predicted the demise of home gaming platforms. It would prove to be just a "hiccup", but when you had to spend huge sums just burying E.T. cartridges in a New Mexico landfill, well, it was a helluva "unrecoverable error". Warner, facing bankruptcy if it didn't bail, found a willing buyer for Atari in Jack Tramiel, who'd endlessly squabbled with his partners at Commodore and had recently been forced out; Jack assumed a small portion of Atari's outstanding debt for the company's assets, with Warner taking a big "charge off" to liquidate its Atari-related debts it couldn't foist off on others. Tramiel and his sons continued with the Atari 8-bit products due to the fact that they sold decently enough at consumer outlets like Toys R' Us, and, of course, they had no sunk costs in the 8-bit lines. The 130XE was already in development when Trameil took over, but like the XE Gaming System, they put very little into further product development and marketing; believing the ST to be the future of the company. What's ironic is that Amiga Corp, with its prototype Amiga, was looking for a partner or buyer as they lacked the means to bring it to market, and they'd originally approached Atari, but the timing was awful as they had even worse cash flow issues at the time. Tramiel's former partners at Commodore were more than willing to snap up Amiga, if, for nothing else, to spite him.
You can only add one of those USB ports internally, the one closest to the front of the console. The back one has data traces going to the ribbon cable that goes to the hub on the front, so it's already in use.
I never had an Atari 400, but I got a couple of the later models, like the 800 and the xe along with a 5.25" disk drive and tons of software for free from my local pawn shop in the mid 90's, all because it was in a bin to later be taken to the trash. Sadly, because the XE's buttons eventually failed to work properly so I could load disks, I regretfully threw away the entire collection of hardware and software, ONLY TO NOTICE the floppy drive alone sold on eBay, merely a couple years later, for a large sum of money... I never suffered from such heartache due to my own hand since NOW I know my way around a soldering iron and could have easily repaired every if ONLY I held onto everything a few years later... Someday, I will get another Atari computer and get one of those custom network adapters just so I can connect to a modem/hobbyist BBS and play my favorite Atari computer game: Forbidden Forrest I want an Atari computer more than and old IBM, Apple IIE or a Commodore 64. I loved mine so much for the limited time I had it. What a mistake I made disposing of it. 😢
3:46 As 54 years old and still own about 20 Atari games still I can only , on the surface of things Recommend 8 of these games out of these selections for this system. Bezerk I still have from back in those days too , one of my very faves. I still have Asteroids also.
I taught myself 6502 assembly language on an Atari 400 in 1983. It’s an excellent machine. I still have it, as well as a few cartridge games like PacMan and Missile Command. The graphics seem far superior than those in most of the included games that you showed.
Love the large amount of usb ports. I did pull out the xe the other day to check the weather with the fujinet. I have been going down the rabbit hole of the Vic 20. I will be using it for a project in the fall so its getting lots of attention from me. That being said I would love to see this Artri as a Maxi as will as the Amiga one.
On one hand this is a cool little toy. On the other, I already have an Atari 400, 800, 800XL, and XEGS. These mini systems often become less expensive over time both new and used, so maybe I'll get one if it goes down to $70 or $80.
In the 80s Eastern Europe was all Atari, and I mean Atari65xe, 130XE, XEGS, or 800. Best games were Monty (version of Montezuma's revenge), River Raid, International Karate, Zybex, Karateka, Ninja, Panther, Draconus, Ninja Commando, Boulder Dash. And of course, a masterpiece from Poland, Robbo
It might not be a stretch to say that the popularity of Western personal computers, which, sure, were "toys" compared to what we take for granted today, like the Atari 8-bits (and later STs) did a LOT to bring down the fall of Communism. Also popular, enough that a Polish company contracted with Timex Portugal, which continued on with the Timex 2068 after the USA branch dropped it (as well as their two-year venture into home computing) in early 1984, and produced the UniPolBrit 2068. I believe this version, although it had the 2068 casing, had the ZX Spectrum ROM, not under license at first, but that was "handled" soon after the Polish knock-off came out, as Amstrad had bought out the floundering Sinclair Computers and carried on with the Spectrums for several years, alongside their own line of 8-bit machines. That their "carefully" planned Marxist, Socialist economies had utterly failed to produce anything like an affordable 8-bit machine like the Ataris, was testimony to the failure of Communism to the average Eastern European. It's not that they didn't have programming or design talent, their electronics expertise and programming skills were very good, it's just that they lacked "know how" to actually PRODUCE anything. The differences between a scientist, a technician, an engineer, or a project manager, which simply couldn't be dictated from on high from the Party.
@@selfdo I think you exaggerate a lot. USSR had a lot of it's own computers, just a lot! Even Oracle's representatives who went right after USSR fall to copy a technology they didn't have, were amazed that an entire institution were working to create a single computer, and not mass production. It was nonsense in a capitalist world, but for USSR was totally ok. Many factories were working without profit.
@vladalexeev8529 Soviet computing was tailored to specific applications , depending on usually military requirements. The concept of a consumer product, CA 1983, was utterly lost on a bureaucracy accustomed to fulfilling "Five-Year Plans" which utterly disregarded the desires of the average Soviet citizen. Never mind that any "cottage industry" was usually about whatever Western tech they could get their hands on, by "hook or crook".
@@selfdo no, absolutely not. You are not familiar with Soviet computers. Korvet, Agat, Bk-10/11, Lvov, Apogei, Iskra. It's all I remembered from top of my head, it was home/school computers. Nothing connected to military. It's just your assumptions, not connected to reality. Military computers were not open and not known to public. But consumer/school computer numbers were huge
I had an Atari 400 back in the day and remember entering a huge basic program for pacman which was awesome after i fixed my many mistakes. Oh how i miss peeks and pokes!
Cool little unit. But good chance I would get bored with it really quick. A friend of mine has the Nintendo one and even then it seemed like we just kept playing the same 3 or 5 games over and over. So is it possible to get a USB to actual Atari cartridge slot? Then you at least get to play whatever cartridge you want.
Thank you for this review. I was worried, due lack of information on the pages of resellers, that 400 is "Nome omen," strictly limited to the oldest games.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
Bruce Lee's estate refused to license the game anymore. They don't own the game, only the name. So bye-bye name.
Better bye-bye name than bye-bye game.
@@daniel_kos Exactly!
I always really liked the Bruce Lee title screen. I may just put a rom on a USB stick of the original.
Isn't that literally refusing free money on their part?
@@jesusmgw Pretty much. I dunno, maybe the original devs and them have a tainted relationship. Could be anything.
I’m always excited for your Atari computer content! Crossing my fingers for a series of Atari computer history videos from you!
Same!
casting a vote for an Atari series as well - at the quality level of the Commodore series.
Am not a Atari fan boy, but just would like to learn more about them - 8-bit Guy style
Ooh -- that would be fun!!
Hear hear!
M.U.L.E was our favorite game for the Atari 800. Fantastic game for up to 4 players. I still have my Atari 800 and my copy of M.U.L.E.
I think that has to be one of THE best 8-bit era games! I played the C=64 version myself.
And not to forget, that M.U.L.E was originally written for the Atari (IRATA).
@@tygattyche2545By a difference of 6 months. I'm sure the C64 was a consideration by EA from the conception of the game, which is why it ported so well, although nearly every significant difference or bug came from either a shortcoming of the C64 or the amount of time to properly adapt the code to the C64.
@@puzzud
Which does not change anything. The Atari was Ozarks then prefered system.
@@tygattyche2545 I guess I'm missing some greater purpose of why one must not forget MULE was originally written for the Atari. All of Ozark Softscape used Apple IIs and SC Assembler to program and build MULE. One might argue that the Apple was their preferred system. I think they were just following the market, dropping Atari support shortly after.
Encounter was written by Paul Woakes, who went on to create one of the most important bits of software on the Commodore 64 called "Novaload". He also wrote "Mercenary" which still is a massive classic on the c64.
I still play Encounter, it's my go to first game testing an emulator. Still an excellent game.
Mercenary was also available on Atari 8-bit. I played that one a lot back in the 80s, even though I could never figure out what I was supposed to do besides wandering mazes and flying that giant cheese wedge.
@@DTM-Books I was able to finish that game. I remember discovering the building in the air (flying the cheese), that was a wonderful moment. Paul Woakes was a great programmer (RIP).
@@DTM-BooksMercenary and the follow up, the Second City were incredible 8 bit games. Paul Woakes was a huge Atari fan, he originally created them on the Atari. He provided two versions, one for the 48K Ataris and one for 64K machines. Amazingly, you could play the exact same game, just in a lower resolution on the older 48K machines. I still have my official Mercenary map and hints pack which was available to order from Novagen. 😀
Awesome game I owned this one
I think it’s very cool how there are mini retro computers like the amiga 500 and commodore 64 and now Atari 400!
It introduces these old computers to a whole new generation! And also being nostalgia to people that owned the original computers in the 80s
Forget them. I like these minis because they let me re-live my youth.
Well , just get yourself a BlackView 16 Tablet ... add Emulators on it of Vice for C64\Atari , UAE for Amiga and you got the same deal + more since its so beefy it can emulate N64\PS1\PS2\Xbox1\Dreamcast\SegaCD... with a inbuild battery that can last for 18h
@@hfric Too much fricking work.
These are being marketed towards a specific age group for the purpose of nostalgia. Maybe be a few younger people but it's a niche product.
@@PHSPictures Too much Work ? Its easy as 123... google Play , find those emus and install those , then go to the rom site David mentioned in his video ... and your set , 3min tops and you will transform a tablet into a gaming console ... that even can play PSP and Vita games ...
My uncle had an Atari 800 back in the early '80s -- actually I think he bought it for himself for Christmas of '79. He had this game for it -- not sure if it would've run on the original Atari 400 or not, but I guarantee it'd run on your 400 Mini there, if you put it in 800-mode. Anyway, you were in a spaceship -- first-person PoV from inside the cockpit looking out at space all around you. You had to hyperspace-jump to different sectors and shoot at (and hopefully blow up) the enemy space ships in each sector, to try take over the whole galaxy. You had to defend your star-bases, too, or else you lost points if you let enemy ships destroy them. I think it was called Star Commander or Star Raider or something like that. You should definitely try to find a copy -- guarantee you'd enjoy it. Heck, I might buy one of these just to play that game, if I can find a copy of it. LOL!
EDIT: Star Raiders. That's the name. I was close. Not a bad memory considering I was 10, 11, 12 years old when I played it.
EDIT2: Oh, the 400 Mini comes with Star Raiders II -- I didn't know there was a sequel. Neat! Anyone know if it was any good?
Star Raiders. We had a copy of it for the Atari 5200 console, and maybe the 2600 as well. I played the crap out of that game.
Star Raiders II is *awesome* and probably one of my favourite games for the system.
My friend and I played it at the same time. One person was the pilot, and the other handled speed, and everything else.
Star Raiders 2 was supposed to have been The Last Starfighter. A version of it with movie references leaked back in the day.
Some copies are actually mislabeled “Star Raider” so you were right even before the edit. :) Another game in that vein that goes a whole lot deeper is Elite.
Wow, your full size 400 is super clean, looks great!
4:41 I‘m from Germany and at the time this game came out I was about 6 years old. My mum was an enthusiastic computer nerd and bought an ATARI 800. What a machine. Little did we know English BUT: We called it “Miner Twenty Fourty Niner” which - call me wrong - to me sounds much more like a rhyme and cooler than “Miner Two Thousand Fourtyniner” 😜 However, great channel, I am watching you since the beginning and you are great. ❤ This is just one minor story where I somehow think I know something better than you do. Which is pretty rare! 😂
The Time Rift Arcade vids have been great! But please (continue to) promote that channel more on here, David. A few weeks/months ago I remembered Time Rift was supposed to be a thing (as mentioned in the end of one of your videos earlier this year, I believe), but I couldn't remember what the new channel was called. I'm happy to report that I was able to figure it out by digging through this year's videos, but I'm sure there's a bunch of your fans who are missing out. Anyways as always thank you for another great video!
Great stuff! My first computer was an Atari 400, and hearing the sounds of certain games in your video reminded me of me vividly of the many hours I poured into that little machine gaming, learning BASIC, writing music, etc. Good times indeed! By the way, I accessorized my 400 with an external keyboard. It was called the Sidewriter, and greatly facilitated typing on the 400. Thanks! I’m a longtime fan of your channel.
I had an atari 800. I learned to program BASIC on it in 1983 when I was in 5th grade. In 7th grade I spent the summer dialing up BBS's on my 300 baud modem. Takes me backl
Ah, so you were one of the enemies, haha! I grew up on Atari, and you could say that an Atari 400 that a friend got for Christmas back in 1979 (IIRC) is what started me down the Computer Science path. While my friend was solely interested in the games, I became fascinated with HOW the games worked under the hood. I was able to get myself an 800XL not long after release after a season of mowing lawns, and that’s how I became enamored with programming. To this day, I still have a copy of the Atari BASIC book, not to mention the very famous Atari Bible, “Your Atari Computer”.
Atari stopped painting the joysticks around the time that the black variant of the 2600 was released (the “Vader” model, if you will). Aside from matching that console’s aesthetic, it was actually a cost-cutting move (the trim around the control panel of earlier 2600 models also used to have that same orange trim around it). Glad to see that the retro versions of this iconic controller brought back the Orange paint!
I was more of a Commodore user back in the 90s. However I have always also loved the Atari 8-bit computer line and consoles. I have plenty of Commodore and Atari stuff now, and a couple of Apple IIs.
@@basicforge Nice! I personally had nothing against Commodore back in the day - but before there was Nintendo vs. Sega, there was Atari vs. Commodore. Some kids took it that seriously, haha!
He chose a Vic 20 so you won. Not even close. 😂 if he’d had a c64 directly then it would have been competitive.
You are definitely a part of the nostalgic story that all of us who were able to experience this time carry in our hearts and minds.
Thank you for investing so much time and effort.
Many greetings from Europe/Germany
I found an Atari 400 at goodwill back in the 90s. i forgot how much i bought for it. i still have it today
those early Atari home computers had a build quality as though they were milspec equipment
@@TheSulross No wonder they went bankrupt.
@@YourMotherSucksCocksInHell: I believe the bankruptcy came afterwards. I vaguely recall that unreasonable drama (or maybe that was _just_ Commodore, instead of including Atari?), and the _results_ of stereotypical business skeeziness (trying to anonymize programmers and thus inspiring 3rd party competition, ET + infinite PacMan releases, etc.) were what ultimately killed them (and in fact hindered them all throughout, as they didn't fully recover after the initial 80s console crash).
@@absalomdraconis Atari had an opportunity to effectively be Nintendo of America (a little more complicated than that, but yes). It's kind of like Netflix proposing their model to Blockbuster (I hope I got that generally right). Well, hindsight, etc.
@@YourMotherSucksCocksInHell Atari never went bankrupt.
This is a very cool machine. I didnt get to play with these when they were still in production. Wouldnt mind getting my hands on one to check it out.
Thanks for the great content David. I’m loving the new channel as well. I love all things Atari!
When I heard the announcement for this, I snarked that people might think THE 400 is a prequel to THE A500 even though they're based on different lines, but from what I learned about the history of Atari and Commodore computers on this channel, that actually isn't wrong.
No, it's not. The Amiga continued the Atari (Jay Miner) practice of trading off more color for resolution, having multiple display lists, 4 channel sound, etc. The ST, likewise, was more similar in it's approach to the C64.
Spot on. The Commodore Amiga is ironically- in effect- far more the true spiritual heir to the Atari 400/800 than the Atari ST was.
Before Commodore bought it, the Amiga was designed by an independent company which included ex-Atari designers (including Jay Miner). The design and its use of custom chips was arguably a next-generation evolution of the 400/800 architecture (which in turn had been a development of the VCS/2600 design). And the Amiga was- like the 400/800 had been- state-of-the-art and very expensive when first launched.
Whereas its rival, the Atari ST, was effectively the baby of Jack Tramiel... the guy who had originally founded Commodore!
After acrimoniously leaving Commodore, Tramiel bought out Atari Inc's former computer division to form "Atari Corp." Then almost straight away he got rid of virtually all the existing staff and hired a new designer to build a 68000-based machine from much more off-the-shelf-parts following his very different "Power Without the Price" philosophy.
So, yeah. The Amiga was created by ex-Atari designers following the same approach and philosophy as the 400/800, and the ST was the product of a very different "Atari" run by the ex-owner of Commodore following the same ruthlessly price-focused philosophy.
The first time I had heard about the Amiga, I was in high school, a 1984 graduate.
A friend of mine told me about some computer called the Amiga Lorraine which was displaying 4096 colors at the same time. I told him that there was no way that was happening yet. But he insisted.
Two years later I bought an Amiga 1000. Having been an Atari computer fan for years up until that point, I could see, even then, that the machine was clearly a more advanced version of what I'd already been using.
The same year I graduated, I went to a computer show where the Macintosh was displayed. I was blown away by the mouse and the GUI. But the price made me very angry at the time. There was absolutely no way I could afford a machine like that, close to $6 or $7,000 today's money.
@@Chordonblue I'm afraid you're mistaken- the Amiga didn't trade off colour for resolution. With one *major* caveat (below), it offered pretty much the *same* resolutions as the ST, but- as far as I'm aware- allowed more colours on-screen in every case.
For example, both offered 320 x 200 (NTSC) or 320 x 256 (PAL) modes- the one most common for games and graphics. The Amiga could have 32 completely-independent register colours (from a palette of 4096) on screen at once versus 16 (from a palette of 512) on the ST. (*) "Medium" resolution (640 x 200/256) on the Amiga allowed 16 colours versus the ST's four.
The Amiga's "interlaced" versions of the two modes above, offered the *same* number of colours at 320 x 400/512 and 640 x 400/512 respectively.
The caveat above is that those interlaced modes flickered *horribly* on a regular TV, so weren't very usable unless you were willing to invest in a "flicker fixer" *and* a new monitor. Whereas the ST's corresponding "high resolution" mode was only monochrome and still required a separate monitor, but didn't have that problem. So I'd probably chalk that specific area up as a win for the ST.
(*) And this doesn't include the Amiga's 64-colour 'Extra Half-Brite' mode (offering an additional 32 non-independent registers), or HAM mode (4096 colours, but with limitations).
@@NotATube What you say is true, but you have to keep things in context. The trade off of color for resolution (and there's ALWAYS a trade-off due to memory/budgetary constraints back then), also made the Amiga more suitable for NTSC video. What you got in return was the FLEXABILITY of using half-bright or other resolutions. I don't deny the flickery resolutions, but given earlier 8-bit 80 column attempts on TV (to varying degrees of success), this was not a surprise.
Remember, in 1985, color monitors were EXPENSIVE. The ST was terrific for Midi and desktop publishing - so long as you had the monochrome monitor. My earliest 1000 used a TV because that was all I could afford at the time, having barely been able to afford the computer in the first place. Later? Sure, I got a 1080, and then a 3000/flicker-fixed w/a VGA-style monitor.
But with my 2000, it was all about the Video Toaster - a device that played to the Amiga's strengths as a GREAT NTSC video device.
That "zombies" game was called "Realm of Impossibility" on the C64. It's pretty much a multi level maze game where you gotta grab certain Items before you solve each maze. The crosses only purpose is to block the enemies from chasing you. I used to play the heck out of that game!
I played it a bunch too (& watch my buddy - who owned the c64 - play it even more). Came here to say just this :)
"Realm of Impossibility" was apparently an expanded and reissued version of "Zombies" and also came out on the Atari.
it's also Realm of Impossibility on the Atari. the Zombies version is more of a hack.
@@onlysublime No, both versions came out on the Atari. If anything "Realm of Impossibility" is the "hack". "Zombies" came out first and (according to Atarimania) was released by Bram, Inc. in 1983. "Realm of Impossibility" was a slightly improved reissue released by EA the following year.
@@NotATube Sweet! I had no idea, I never played zombies. I'm gonna have to revisit those games
When I was a teenager, a good friend of mine had an Atari800xl, while I was in the C64 team. The 2 machines were on par about gaming. Next we followed different routes, he has an ST and I had an Amiga, obviously
And the hilarious thing about that is that the ST was more of a 16/32-bit C64, whereas the Amiga was more of a 16/32-bit Atari computer. Weird how that worked out! Having owned both of them, as in the previous generation, they all had their strengths against each other.
Omg, Zombies is the same as C64 Realm of Impossibility. I loved that game!
I had both games on my Atari 800.. they’re slightly different, it felt like Realm was a sequel or expansion
It was called Realm of Impossibility on Atari as well. At least I'm the United States. EA game. Came in a flat package kinda like a record.
Realm is a reworked Zombies sold by EA. The was new audio music, additional levels and the difficulty was tweaked. Zombies was the original sold directly by Bram and completely created head to toe by Mike Edwards.
Menu screen of Realm of Impossibility shows how to play. Great music too!
I actually sold my C64 copy of the game like a year ago as I'm trying to reduce my game collection because moving house was a pain with 80+ big moving boxes of full of games.
In 1993 and 1994 (when I was 14/15/16) me and my friends (oh, God, talk about the social rejects!) hung around outside a room with some kind-of social work techers (who, honestly, were among three of the nicest people you'd ever meet, teachers or otherwise). In that room, just because they had nowhere else to go, was the last three working Apple IIe computers. And we used to play on them. Mainly because there was this awesome game "Prince Of Persia". Many, many lunchtimes were spent playing (what we didn't know was) the original version of that game on the machine it was written for.
Great review. Also, loving your work moonlight over at the Time Rift Arcade channel! Thank you 🙏
It would have been pretty cool and a differentiator from the other mini systems if they had squeezed a cheap membrane keyboard in there.
The original Atari 400 keyboard was awkward to use, so a miniature version would be a nightmare to use. The only keys they could sensibly have enabled are the 4 function keys on the far right of the computer. But joystick buttons are a better solution, and any USB keyboard works way better. I do hope they do a 'Maxi' version like they did with the 64 and Vic20.
@@another3997 I don’t think it would matter, no one would be word processing on the thing, it would be 2-3 letters for high score initials and a fun way of interacting with the system.
@@caseycu I don't particularly enjoy membranes, infact, I don't like them at all, they are horrid even for typing one or two lines.
@@gearsgamer7115 cool story man
@@another3997 Calling that keyboard awkward is being kind. I remember how bad it was, and they had it beep each time you pressed a button, since there were no real keys to click. Just horrible.
good video....and David takes the best pics ....and doesn't hesitate to show one...when ever he can......
In high school my best friend bought a VIC-20 and we were excited because we wanted to run programs from the PETs we had in the computer lab. Unfortunately, the low ram and inferior display meant that most didn't work. Over the summer he returned the VIC-20 and got an Atari 800. By coincidence, I got the 800 as well. This set off some great game piracy. Didn't know about the C64 until later. I often wonder what it would be been like if we both stayed with Commodore.
The arcade restorations are beyond radical! Amazing work to you and the team!!!
I swear the intro music for Henry’s house is literally Rule Britannia
It tottaly is :)
It is. The game was made with Prince Henry in mind, and came out some time after he was born.
@@Akira625Yes
When are you going to restore the Odyssey 200 I sent two years ago?
@@TheAlphaWoomy he's going to keep it
Videos like this bring me back to my childhood, especially friday nights. My friends mom would take us out for 33 cent tacos, then to the video store. We would get a Nintendo game and a movie. Get back to his house, swim for a bit ,watch the movie, play Nintendo and then play around on his Amiga 500 and laugh all night. I feel bad that kids really have nothing to do these days and yes I myself have a ps5 and play online with new friends, but it was nothing like the 80s and early 90s.
commenting to vouch for the restoration of the arcade machines (the other channel) - I like the additional dimensions of things to deal with and very much like seeing the restoring of the cabinets to their original arcade glory and splendor.
Fun review. Always happy to see more content from you.
We loved M.U.L.E. on our Atari 800XL
@The 8-Bit Guy You always have the most simple yet best intros to your videos, new and old.
Played it tonight... not for me. Too fidly, kept pressing buttons unintentionally due to the stick layout. I also wasn't an Atari guy, so this wasn't nostalgia I was buying it just for the experience. Only enjoyed three games (Encounter, Flip Flop and Basketball oddly) everything else was too difficult to control on the included stick. Games I did enjoy on other consoles, like Bezerk, I just couldn't play properly with that stick... there were some games that were just "okay" but I'd never play them again such as Bristles, Capture the Flag and Yoomp.
Thanks for taking a look at this. The stock/out of the box software seems average at best, but it's great to know you can load up whatever you want with a USB stick. I may eventually get one of these!
I've definitely been enjoying the restoration videos! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the vid! Waiting to get out of the hospital before I try my Atari 400. Looking forward to it!
man, seeing the 400 takes me back to when my pops was teaching me basic. They keyboard was absolute trash, but I loved the damn thing to be able to play games and code them all in one unit.
I still have an original 400 stashed in my attic, sadly no power supply or game cartridges though, so I couldn't say whether it still works or not. 🤷♂
The membrane keyboard brings back a lot of memories, most of them very frustrating!!
However, I did love playing Star raider on a friend's 800!!
From what I heard, the reason that the 400 only had that cheap membrane keyboard is that it was really meant just as a console and originally wasn't even going to include a keyboard at all... until the people in charge realised that Star Raiders was going to be a "killer app" but it'd need a keyboard to play it.
@@NotATube in reality, I think the real issue was production cost as a 400 was about 1/2 the cost of the 800. There were membrane keyboards on other inexpensive computers and they were all very difficult to use!
@@davidmartin8211 Yes, I'm aware of that. (The first computer I ever used was a Sinclair ZX81 with a flat membrane keyboard!)
And yes, it would have been to keep the cost down since mechanical keyboards were expensive back then.
But my point was that the reason Atari assumed they could get away with including that cheap- but suboptimal- keyboard was that it was only ever meant for minimal gaming use on a machine that wasn't even intended to have a keyboard- nor to be a "serious" computer- in the first place.
Or more that they wouldn't even have bothered at all if it hasn't been for Star Raiders.
My first computer was a 400.
Star raiders still gives me flash backs.
I would play until I fell asleep. I can still hear it to this day.
Amazing stuff for its time
Me too, " _Pew pew, pew pew_ " is seared into my consciousness..😅
Yes back in the day Star Raiders was the "killer app" so to speak. It was insanely popular. Back in 1984 when I finally got an Atari 600XL Star Raiders was as good or better than any real "arcade game".
Ballblazer is the best test for it. Make sure it is the NTSC version
Interesting. My first computer was the Atari 800 XL, Then I bought the 130 XE and upgraded the ram in it. These hold some fond memories for me. I learned how to program in basic on the 800 XL I think. Played a lot of games on them both. I ended up trading them off to a friend for something that I don't even remember. I with I'd of kept them. Been trying to get them back over the past few years.
I still have an Atari 800 and 800XL that I picked up from a second-hand store many years ago, as well as most of my software for it. This Atari mini was tempting for its compatibility with new I/O hardware, so I’m glad you reviewed it. One thing that may be a deal breaker for me is the fake keyboard; the main issue I have with Atari emulators like Colleen is they don’t support some of the Atari-specific keys like Break which lets you interrupt BASIC programs or the Atari logo key (/|\) which switched characters to or from inverse video, and control characters don’t type out graphics characters like they should.
Absolutely love this mini. I do agree with you that it is really only worth the price if you have a USB with more games. Great video. The save states, 4 for each game (including USB games), is a welcome addition.
Thanks for the cool video Dave, really impressed with this mini Atari 😮
Zombies is basically Realm of Impossibility on the C64, a game that I to this day love and which in two-player mode is especially fun! There is also the catchy intro tune on the C64 version that I remember. Great times.
7:48 What are you saying David! The 130XE shares little in common with the 7800. The graphics systems are completely different from each other!
I had entered the pre-order for the 400 mini, but canceled it a week later as I was getting a bad vibe. After seeing the problems as reported on AtariAge, I'm glad I did.... I still have my original 800 I bought new in 1983 with the help of a Home Improvement loan :) I am also one of the guys that assembled a working Atari 1450XLwith the modem and Speech Chip.
Thank you for all the videos you have produced, I enjoy watching the 8-bit PC reviews / repairs.
I'm also the proud owner of the X16 Dev Board #0069 :) Also have 2 C64c's and a C128...
Thank you for mentioning Stellar 7 I have been trying to remember that game for the past few months and it was driving me crazy!
I had a Atari 800 back in the day. Hey! What about Star Raiders?
Star Raiders would need a functioning keyboard, wouldn’t it? I miss Star Raiders too.
Really would love to see you do a history series on Atari 8-bit computers like you did for the Commodore line. That would fantastic. Thanks for reviewing this product!
Man the part where you showed the included games reminded me so much of the old "the best 8 bit gaming machine" video
0:37 - Sorry to be the guy, but if this photo was unedited, it couldn't have been taken in 1980. The game on the screen is Pitfall, which was released in 1982.
Just wondering why he is lying to us.
@@w.w.7148 I wouldn't use the word "lying." I doubt it's malicious.
@w.w.7148 Chill, dude. Not everything is a conspiracy. Actually few things are.
@@w.w.7148 lying? More like he probably forgot when the picture was taken.
@@volvo09 or he's just a reptilian gaslighting us forr nefarious purposes /s
I painted my VCS controller rings with a sharpie metallic silver permanent marker when they're only plain, it's a good enough improvement..
Here's the thing about Atari Computer Software: Many of the very BEST Atari games came at the end of its lifespan. I particularly remember 1983/4 being EXCELLENT between Master of the Lamps, Rescue on Fractalus, Koronis Rift, Alternate Reality, BallBlazer,, Pitfall II, and many, MANY more.
The C64 was a literal open book, whereas Atari was close-lipped about their custom architecture. Towards the middle of its life, Atari finally opened up, but, much like T.I.'s 99/4a, it was MUCH too late.
The amazing thing to think about is that the 400/800 was designed back in 1979, and was STILL competing w/the C64, years later. Commodore KILLED Atari with on-point advertising, better software and documentation, and pricing. After all, the 400/800 was using an MOS (Commodore) chip at it's heart!
I hope if they do a full size version of it, that they do the 800 or 130xe with a proper keyboard.
Like you, I was on Commodores (and Apples in school), so an Atari 8 bit computer would be new to me. I have used the Atari ST, but that's a different beast altogether.
Really appreciate the time rift arcade channel.
I notice that some of the colours seem a slightly off on some games (e.g. Elektraglide 5:51, Henry's House 6:08). Possibly this is because they're being run in NTSC mode? (The palettes are slightly different between the NTSC and PAL models, so games designed for the PAL palette will look slightly different under NTSC and vice versa).
The original 400 didn't come with any games either. You had to buy them one at a time with your allowance.
Hahaha
@@volvo09 Why are you laughing at his misfortune?
Seems like a pretty neat toy that easily fits inside your TV cabinet and will be good fun when you break it out for old Atari fans.
Nothing like a new 8-Bit Guy upload as soon as I open RUclips
We need more of Dave!
Sadly, this one was lightweight and half-baked
It would be nice to play with any game from original cartridges or SD Cards.
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@@jean-jacquescortes9500 I agree, or they could sell a cartridge loader as an accessory.
Thanks for the review Dave!
I had a 400, but I eventually moved on to a C64. I didn't have anyone to share my own software with or to trade commercial software with others on the Atari, hence the switch. That thing was built like a tank but even typing in one full line of text hurt your fingers. Utterly wretched keyboard. Very good BASIC, with sound and graphics and input reading commands. I wrote my own little graphics doodle program that used four different joysticks and could save the result (to tape). The C64's abominable BASIC forced people to move to assembly and machine language, which was a mixed blessing - great if you were able to understand assembly, and created a generation of very capable programmers, but horrible if you weren't going to learn assembly/ML and just wanted to access the C64's resources with its built-in language.
The only game I played from their game list for this system is Missile Command, and that's only because it was included with the XEGS. The games I played were pretty esoteric though, it was mostly just stuff out of the $5 bargain bin at target, and things in Compute! magazine in source code form. I probably would have ended up with a C64 if it wasn't for my parents finding someone selling a 130XE when I was a kid, along with a whole heap of random floppies and software for it, a monitor, printer, a couple indus floppy drives, a tape drive, a stack of Compute! magazine and random books, all for $100... He was getting into the Atari ST and needed some cash...
I am stoked to visit Time Rift during VCF SW! WOOOOOO
I still have my Atari 400 in a box in the closet with all my games. I should hook it up. Sadly the disk drive and tape drive both died long ago. I modded mine up to 48k of memory. It's weird they included Star Raiders 2 but not the original. Star Raiders was the game for the 400/800 back in the day. It actually came with mine.
Atari 800 was my first console/computer... I still have it. I still think it's a beautifully designed machine. Nothing triggers the nostalgia like the little squeak it makes when I open the cartridge door. lol
I find it amazing that games like Prince could run on those older platforms - it makes me think about what COULD have been possible back then seeing games like yours and these ports. Prince of Persia on a VIC-20??? Like that's not insane. I don't remember any VIC-20 games even CLOSE to that good. Stuff like Cosmic Cruncher comes to mind.
Henry's House was one of my favs in the Commodore64! was something different from the typical platformer. Nice vid!
The relevant fun fact about ATARI 8-Bit computers in relation to modern technology: Its SIO interface used to connect various devices in a chained way including a direct power supply from the main computer was the predecessor of the modern USB interface.
Another fun fact: Some engineers from the ATARI 8-Bit developed the Commodore Amiga while C64 engineers went on developing the ATARI ST.
Another fun fact was Atari were competing with the Commodore PET and Apple II. Ask C64 fans who post here what they were playing in 1979. Star Raiders in 1979 was mind blowing.
The mention of Miner2049er brings back memories as I had it on the ColecoVision as a kid. Miner2049er and Gateway to Apshi stand out as favorites.
Let's go. Always a treat these uploads.
Same intro for me on Atari Computers. Started out with 2600 at home for gaming, while I learned about computers from our Commodore Computer Lab (Pets, Vic-20, 64, & 128) at school. I only saw the Atari Line of Computers briefly, when I shopped with my parents, at a local department store.
Makes a person wonder, if Atari would have handled marketing differently, how their impact would been on the home & school market?
The only tragedy here is that they didn’t make the 4 control keys work on the 400 itself. Being able to open the door and see the giant metal bay would have been awesome too. There’s 1000 ways to play old atari games and I think the only point of this is to feed into the nostalgia. Thanks for the review!
I was really let down they didn't bother to make a working membrane keyboard 😞
Yes, I agree with the function keys, way better than a super custom joystick bodge.
As for the lid, even a picture under there would have been better, if I end up with one of these I may just take a Dremel to it and 'make it so', to steal a line from Star Trek
Can we get an update on the commander x16 with an emphasis on what SOFTWARE has been / is in the works for development and possible tools helpful to people who have never programmed / limited programming?
I was an Atari loyalist and it always seemed like their 8-bit computers never quite got the level of commercial success they deserved. The Atari 800 was about 90% of the way to being a Commodore 64, but in 1979--kind of an amazing achievement. (In *some* ways they were better than the 64--the disk interface was much faster, and the BASIC, while it was less sophisticated as a BASIC, did a far better job of exposing the system's graphics and sound capabilities, which was fantastic for people learning programming.) But it seemed like they were just a little too slow to move with the times after the initial release, and a lot of ambitious projects got announced and never shipped.
The game on the platform that I got most addicted to was probably their port of Defender, which was brilliant, but doubtless not included here because it's a Williams license (now part of "Midway", owned by Warner I think). The port of Missile Command is closer to the arcade version than the 2600's except that it still has only the one missile base. That Asteroids port is actually quite different from the 2600 port but not in a way that makes it much better; I think that was one of Atari's earliest 400/800 games, and it shows.
The game selection here is kind of odd. I understand the relative lack of non-Atari arcade ports (like their terrific ports of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, far superior to the 2600 versions), but including Star Raiders II but not Star Raiders seems like a crime. The original Star Raiders was a monumental game, arguably the birth of the whole space-combat-sim genre, the games like Wing Commander and X-Wing. Star Raiders II was a largely unrelated game (though there was an unreleased Star Raiders II that really was more of a sequel to Star Raiders--it resurfaced recently).
The Atari 8-bit home computers simply weren't all that profitable; the money for Atari came from licensing GAMES for their 2600 platform. When the 5200 and later 7800, all decent machines, flopped, the Warner Communications division was hemorrhaging cash to the tune of ONE MILLION DOLLARS, DAILY, in 1984! The problem, of course, was the inevitable shakeout that any burgeoning new industry goes through, and many at the time predicted the demise of home gaming platforms. It would prove to be just a "hiccup", but when you had to spend huge sums just burying E.T. cartridges in a New Mexico landfill, well, it was a helluva "unrecoverable error". Warner, facing bankruptcy if it didn't bail, found a willing buyer for Atari in Jack Tramiel, who'd endlessly squabbled with his partners at Commodore and had recently been forced out; Jack assumed a small portion of Atari's outstanding debt for the company's assets, with Warner taking a big "charge off" to liquidate its Atari-related debts it couldn't foist off on others. Tramiel and his sons continued with the Atari 8-bit products due to the fact that they sold decently enough at consumer outlets like Toys R' Us, and, of course, they had no sunk costs in the 8-bit lines. The 130XE was already in development when Trameil took over, but like the XE Gaming System, they put very little into further product development and marketing; believing the ST to be the future of the company. What's ironic is that Amiga Corp, with its prototype Amiga, was looking for a partner or buyer as they lacked the means to bring it to market, and they'd originally approached Atari, but the timing was awful as they had even worse cash flow issues at the time. Tramiel's former partners at Commodore were more than willing to snap up Amiga, if, for nothing else, to spite him.
8:45 - I did the same thing with the tone matching puzzles in Impossible Mission… except I used a crayon.
Okay the trigger in the button corner of the atari joystick is actually brilliant.
You can only add one of those USB ports internally, the one closest to the front of the console. The back one has data traces going to the ribbon cable that goes to the hub on the front, so it's already in use.
I never had an Atari 400, but I got a couple of the later models, like the 800 and the xe along with a 5.25" disk drive and tons of software for free from my local pawn shop in the mid 90's, all because it was in a bin to later be taken to the trash.
Sadly, because the XE's buttons eventually failed to work properly so I could load disks, I regretfully threw away the entire collection of hardware and software, ONLY TO NOTICE the floppy drive alone sold on eBay, merely a couple years later, for a large sum of money...
I never suffered from such heartache due to my own hand since NOW I know my way around a soldering iron and could have easily repaired every if ONLY I held onto everything a few years later...
Someday, I will get another Atari computer and get one of those custom network adapters just so I can connect to a modem/hobbyist BBS and play my favorite Atari computer game: Forbidden Forrest
I want an Atari computer more than and old IBM, Apple IIE or a Commodore 64. I loved mine so much for the limited time I had it. What a mistake I made disposing of it. 😢
I spent the first day with my 400 mini confused about input until discovering the extra control buttons on the joystick. Fun times.
3:46 As 54 years old and still own about 20 Atari games still I can only , on the surface of things Recommend 8 of these games out of these selections for this system. Bezerk I still have from back in those days too , one of my very faves. I still have Asteroids also.
I taught myself 6502 assembly language on an Atari 400 in 1983. It’s an excellent machine. I still have it, as well as a few cartridge games like PacMan and Missile Command. The graphics seem far superior than those in most of the included games that you showed.
Great job with the arcade cabinet restorations on the other channel! Love em!
Great video. Would you consider a deep dive on the history and internals of RadioShack family of computers mainly the TRS-80?
I’d love to have my Atari 800 back. What a great system. One of my favorite games was a baseball game called hardball so advanced for its time.
As always, thank you for making a video !
Good video! I got one of these Atari Mini's and I like it! I grew up on Atari computers, my first one, was the Atari 130xe system! Nice!
Excellent video as always david
Love the large amount of usb ports. I did pull out the xe the other day to check the weather with the fujinet. I have been going down the rabbit hole of the Vic 20. I will be using it for a project in the fall so its getting lots of attention from me. That being said I would love to see this Artri as a Maxi as will as the Amiga one.
And, as always, Thanks for Making, David.
On one hand this is a cool little toy. On the other, I already have an Atari 400, 800, 800XL, and XEGS. These mini systems often become less expensive over time both new and used, so maybe I'll get one if it goes down to $70 or $80.
I didn't even know this was a thing
In the 80s Eastern Europe was all Atari, and I mean Atari65xe, 130XE, XEGS, or 800. Best games were Monty (version of Montezuma's revenge), River Raid, International Karate, Zybex, Karateka, Ninja, Panther, Draconus, Ninja Commando, Boulder Dash. And of course, a masterpiece from Poland, Robbo
Robbo is so cool!
It might not be a stretch to say that the popularity of Western personal computers, which, sure, were "toys" compared to what we take for granted today, like the Atari 8-bits (and later STs) did a LOT to bring down the fall of Communism. Also popular, enough that a Polish company contracted with Timex Portugal, which continued on with the Timex 2068 after the USA branch dropped it (as well as their two-year venture into home computing) in early 1984, and produced the UniPolBrit 2068. I believe this version, although it had the 2068 casing, had the ZX Spectrum ROM, not under license at first, but that was "handled" soon after the Polish knock-off came out, as Amstrad had bought out the floundering Sinclair Computers and carried on with the Spectrums for several years, alongside their own line of 8-bit machines.
That their "carefully" planned Marxist, Socialist economies had utterly failed to produce anything like an affordable 8-bit machine like the Ataris, was testimony to the failure of Communism to the average Eastern European. It's not that they didn't have programming or design talent, their electronics expertise and programming skills were very good, it's just that they lacked "know how" to actually PRODUCE anything. The differences between a scientist, a technician, an engineer, or a project manager, which simply couldn't be dictated from on high from the Party.
@@selfdo I think you exaggerate a lot. USSR had a lot of it's own computers, just a lot! Even Oracle's representatives who went right after USSR fall to copy a technology they didn't have, were amazed that an entire institution were working to create a single computer, and not mass production. It was nonsense in a capitalist world, but for USSR was totally ok. Many factories were working without profit.
@vladalexeev8529 Soviet computing was tailored to specific applications , depending on usually military requirements. The concept of a consumer product, CA 1983, was utterly lost on a bureaucracy accustomed to fulfilling "Five-Year Plans" which utterly disregarded the desires of the average Soviet citizen. Never mind that any "cottage industry" was usually about whatever Western tech they could get their hands on, by "hook or crook".
@@selfdo no, absolutely not. You are not familiar with Soviet computers. Korvet, Agat, Bk-10/11, Lvov, Apogei, Iskra. It's all I remembered from top of my head, it was home/school computers. Nothing connected to military. It's just your assumptions, not connected to reality. Military computers were not open and not known to public. But consumer/school computer numbers were huge
I had an Atari 400 back in the day and remember entering a huge basic program for pacman which was awesome after i fixed my many mistakes. Oh how i miss peeks and pokes!
Is this David’s first ever 400/800 video?
Cool little unit. But good chance I would get bored with it really quick. A friend of mine has the Nintendo one and even then it seemed like we just kept playing the same 3 or 5 games over and over.
So is it possible to get a USB to actual Atari cartridge slot? Then you at least get to play whatever cartridge you want.
You can load whatever games you want from a USB flash drive with the 400 mini if that's what you mean.
Thank you for this review. I was worried, due lack of information on the pages of resellers, that 400 is "Nome omen," strictly limited to the oldest games.
Had me at the mention of Mule. I have the updated version on my wishlist on steam. It’s said releasing soon for awhile now.
My 1st personal computer was a 800XL, I did go to the store and just look at the ATARI 400, But I wanted the ATARI 800 for the keyboard.