gaming

Let’s get one thing straight, this Atari Retro Handheld is not a Flashback portable console by ATGames! There, hopefully we have clarified this point for you all.

This cool Atari Retro Handheld is by powered by Blaze. With its iconic Atari faux wood veneer and Vader lines along its front, this portable system design screams late 70s kitsch. It is like having an Atari VCS woody in your pocket – almost! We say almost, cause you can’t really grab your old Atari 2600 carts and slam them in this handheld, but you can play one of 50 classic titles, including Asteroids, Adventure, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Sword Quest, Yar’s Revenge  and our absolute fave Atari 2600 game of all time, Missile Command – check out the full list of games below.

1. 3D Tic-Tac-Toe (31 in 1)
2. Adventure
3. Air-Sea Battle
4. Asteroids ®
5. Black Jack
6. Bowling
7. Breakout ®
8. Canyon Bomber ®
9. Casino
10. Centipede ®
11. Circus Atari ®
12. Crystal Castles ®
13. Demons to Diamonds ™
14. Desert Falcon ®
15. Dodge ’em
16. Double Dunk
17. Fun With Numbers
18. Golf
19. Gravitar ®
20. Haunted House ®
21. Home Run
22. Human Cannonball ™
23. Maze Craze
24. Millipede ®
25. Miniature Golf ®
26. Missile Command ®
27. Night Driver ™
28. Off the Wall
29. Pong – Video Olympics
30. Quadrun ™
31. Radar Lock ™
32. Realsports Football ®
33. Realsports Tennis ®
34. Realsports Volleyball ®
35. Sprintmaster
36. Steeplechase
37. Stellar Track ™
38. Street Racer
39. Submarine Commander
40. Super Baseball
41. Super Breakout ®
42. Super Football
43. Swordquest: Earthworld ™
44. Swordquest: Fireworld ™
45. Swordquest: Waterworld ™
46. Tempest ®
47. Video Checkers
48. Video Chess
49. Video Pinball
50. Yar’s Revenge ®

The Retro Handheld sports a 2.4″ screen, which surprisingly suits most of the games, however, there were a few that felt cramped on the tiny screen. The unit does come with a composite A/V out interface, so you can plug it into a TV (preferably a CRT) for some big screen action. Emulation was pretty much spot on, with the games playing like their cart counterparts. To round out its retro-ness, batteries, yes, batteries the AAA kind, are required to power this little Atari – relax, this isn’t like the original Atari Lynx, you’ll definitely get a considerable amount of playing hours out of 3 x AAA Duracell batteries.

We were a bit iffy when we first saw the controls, especially the funny looking d-pad nub. Once we started playing, the d-pad and the buttons felt good under the thumbs and were responsive. However, there was one game that was totally unplayable using the nub – not looking at you Pong! Apart from that little niggle, gamers will feel right at home with the controls. Oh yeah, one nifty feature is when changing games, you simply hit the Start and Select buttons at the same time and viola, you exit the current game and go back to the menu to select a new one – this was cool, as we didn’t want to turn off the unit every time we wanted to play a new game.

There will be some that will scoff at this little handheld and others that will absolutely love it for what it is – a portable little Atari that looks like your old Atari 2600 woody and plays your favourite games. We definitely love playing on it (bar the unplayable Pong!), even though we are not big fans of the current Atari SA company. If you can get past this, then this is a little winner.

If you are keen on one of these Atari Retro Handhelds, grab one from FunstockRetro right now! They will even throw in a limited edition Atari Centipede Gold Coin for free – but you better hurry, as this sale ends soon!

Disclosure: The Atari Retro Handheld was kindly supplied by FunstockRetro for this review.