Atari's Flashback systems 

 

With the exception of the first 3 models, all of these were produced and released by AtGames.

 

MODELS
Atari Flashback (2004)
Atari Flashback2 (2005)
Atari Flashback2+ (2010)
Atari Flashback 3 (2011)
Atari Flashback 4: Special Edition (2012)
Atari Flashback 4: 40th Anniversary Special Edition (2012)
Atari Flashback 4: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (2012)
Atari Flashback 64: Special Edition (2013)
Atari Flashback 5: Collector's Edition (2014)
Atari Flashback 6 (2015)
Atari Flashback 6 Deluxe (2015)
Atari Flashback 7 (2016)
Atari Flashback 7 Deluxe (2016)
Atari Flashback Portable (2016)
Atari Flashback 8 (2017)
Atari Flashback 8 Deluxe (2017)
Atari Flashback 8 Deluxe: Sam's Club Special Edition (2017)
Atari Flashback 8 Gold (2017)
Atari Flashback 8 Gold Deluxe (2017)
Atari Flashback 8 Gold: Activision Edition (2017)
Atari Flashback Portable (2017)
Atari Flashback 9 (2018)
Atari Flashback 9 "Boom" (2018)
Atari Flashback 9 Gold (2018)
Atari Flashback Portable (2018)
Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 1 - Centipede (2018)
Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 2 - Asteroids (2018)
Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 3 - Pong & Atari Hits (2018)
Activision Flashback Blast! - Pitfall! (2018)
Bandai Namco Flashback Blast! - Pac-Man (2018)
Bandai Namco Flashback Blast! - Pac-Man (Walmart Edition) (2018)
Legends Flashback Blast! - Space Invaders also featuring BurgerTime (2018)
Atari Flashback X (2019)
Atari Flashback X Deluxe Special Edition (2019)
Bandai Namco Arcade Blast! - Pac-Man (2019)
Adventure Flashback Blast! - Tetris, The Lion King, and Aladdin (2019)
Star Flashback Blast! - Star Wars and Space Invaders (2019)
Atari Flashback 50th Anniversary Edition (2022)
Atari Flashback Gold 50th Anniversary Edition (2022)

NOTE: Titles highlighted in yellow are prototypes, hacks, homebrews, and 3rd-party titles.  Titles highlighted in green are new additions.

Atari Flashback (2004)

On September 7th, 2004, Atari announced their intentions to the world on releasing a TV plug-and-play system called the Flashback:

"With a sleek design reminiscent of the classic Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 consoles, the Atari Flashback will feature twenty built-in games culled from both of those classic systems. The previously unreleased Atari 2600 title Saboteur will join classics like Asteroids and Centipede. At $44.95, nearly twice the MSRP of other such classic consoles, the Flashback boasts several unique features. Two separate joystick controllers, replicas of the ones packaged with the 7800 in 1986, allow for two-player contests, and a power supply eliminates the need for batteries."

Looking to cash in on the popularity of retro gaming, Atari turned to a company with no experience in designing commercial products to create this system, and the results were predictably awful.  Atari's announcement was timed to coincide with the holiday shopping season.  Atari promised 20 classic games and 'unique' features like joysticks (?) and a power supply (??).  The Flashback wasn't reminiscent of both the 2600 and 7800, but rather the 7800.  It resembled a tiny (6" x 4") 7800 but with only 2 buttons - power and reset.  There is no TV Type switch and no Difficulty switches, but it does offer composite A/V output.  The joysticks are similar to the original Pro-Line controllers only smaller, with the addition of pause and select buttons.  Although the controllers use the same standard 9-pin D-sub connector, they're not compatible with any other systems that use them due to having a different pinout.  The 20 built-in games are selected by highlighting each of the carts shown in 2 stacks onscreen:

Pushing up or down changes which game is selected, but you can't jump from the beginning of the list to the end, or vice-versa.  Not sure the what the point of doing that is because none of the carts are labeled; simply changing the text would have suffice.  The games included are:

Atari VCS/2600
Adventure***
Air-Sea Battle
Battlezone
Breakout*
Canyon Bomber*
Crystal Castles
Gravitar
Haunted House
Millipede
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype)
Sky Diver
Solaris
Sprint Master
Warlords*
Yars' Revenge
Atari 7800
Asteroids
Centipede
Desert Falcon
Charley Chuck’s Food Fight**
Planet Smashers

* These originally used Paddle controllers.

** Although this is technically the game's full name, it's commonly called Food Fight (same with the original 7800 port).

*** Adventure has a 2nd hidden room, the location of which is revealed the same way the hidden room in the original was, and the room says “The 7800 is reborn. Thanks to: CV. JL. SM. GA. KL. NS. RE. CR. WS. JR.”.

As everyone who bought one soon found out, the 20 classic games were nothing but horrible facsimiles, due to the system being based on a NOAC (NES-on-a-chip) and the games being hastily programmed; apparently the whole system was put together in 10 weeks, and it shows.  Yes, all of the games are basically NES ports, and shockingly bad ones at that - bad enough to all be nearly unplayable!  And yes, people were paid to program NES versions of Atari VCS games, including one that was never released (and the artwork and manual for it was used without permission).  Think about that for a moment.  So what first seemed like a positive for the system (having A/V output) is quickly cancelled out, because none of the games are worth seeing, in any resolution.  Games like Breakout are just criminal.  It's bad enough it includes paddle games and you're forced to use a joystick, but with Breakout, every time you hit the ball, you have no idea what angle it will bounce off at, or at what speed, because it seems to be completely random.  Breakout on my old TracFone is more playable.  With Warlords, there's no offense because everybody moves at the same speed, so it's purely a defensive game (keep batting the ball around, hoping everyone kills each other off first).  And yet, sticking paddle games on Flashback systems is a mistake Atari made with every version... until they actually started including paddle controllers.  Gravitar is completely unplayable; catching flies with chopsticks would be easier.  Battlezone, Crystal Castles, and Sprint Master aren't far behind.  Asteroids plays like Vectrex's Mine Storm in that your ship has no momentum when you stop thrusting.  Desert Falcon has more flickering than the original VCS Pac-Man.  How they can make a simple game like Sky Diver maddeningly difficult to play, I don't know, but the one time I actually got the diver on the landing pad, I got 0 points.  I could make comments about every game here, but none of them will be positive.  The ROMs for all the games can be found HERE.

On top of everything, all the games are riddled with weird glitches, and the picture often jumps or rolls.  Rather than waste my time covering each game in detail and your time reading it, I'll simply say none of them look, play, or sound like the games you remember growing up with.  All the meticulously-crafted tweaking and adjustments the programmers put into the originals to make them great is gone.   Instead, what we're left with are a bunch of games resembling tech school student projects, devoid of any 'magic'.  You won't want to "flashback", you'll want to go back .. in time, to stop yourself from buying it, or to take the 'trashback' to get your 'moneyback'. 

At this point, you might be asking yourself, why would Atari style it like a 7800 - a system that went all but unnoticed during the NES era - and not like the far-more-popular VCS/2600, especially since the majority of the games included were VCS/2600 titles?  The 7800 was briefly released in 1984 and then shelved for 2 years before being re-released.  Compared to the other systems on the market at the time (Nintendo NES, Sega Master System, and the NEC TurboGrafx-16), it was hopelessly outdated.  A Wikipedia page notes the Flashback system was designed by "Atari veteran Curt Vendel" and that it was "unpopular with some purists" (in other words, anybody who knows anything about classic games).  Considering Curtis Vendel was never an Atari employee, I'm not sure how such a claim can be made, but his involvement explains why the system resembles a 7800 (he's what you might call an extreme 7800 fanboy).  Further review shows the Wikipedia page was edited by none other than Martin Goldberg, who happens to be a close friend of Vendel's (and someone who was later involved with the Flashback 2 and 2+), which would explain some of the biased comments (since when are encyclopedias supposed to be biased towards anything or anybody?  It's another reason not to use Wikipedia, folks).  Years later, Goldberg also made this ludicrous claim that "The games on the FB1 were ported code, modified to work on the NOAC."   Ported code.... from what?  Not the VCS or 7800 versions, that's for damn sure.  As for the purist comment, the Internet lit up with negative reviews as soon as the system was available, and after Atari sold out its initial 500k run of systems, it quickly removed all references to it on their website.  You just can't get a more 'pure' indication of how awful the system is than that, when the company that released it did everything it could to distance itself from it (while the person responsible for it continued to be in full denial of its awfulness) :)  To paraphrase the late Randy Savage, this system is nothing but pure garbage.  But if you need more proof, then seeing is believing:

Vendel hilariously tried to justify it by stating,

"Give the Flashback a try, and give it a break, its actually a pretty nice little game console and while its not perfect (nothing but a real Atari is going to be perfect), its a lot of fun if you just play it and not critique it."

This was right after he made his usual list of excuses that he makes for everything he wa's involved with.  Yeah, it's a neat system, as long as you don't complain about it.  This isn't a case where the 7800 is 'reborn' but rather dug up, only to be abused and reburied.  He said it himself - nothing but a REAL Atari is going to be perfect, and that was never more true for the Flashback 2, and every model that followed it (2+, 3, 4, 64, 5, 6, etc).  As you can see after watching my video, I took his advice, and I gave it a break - several, actually, right across the middle.  I urge everyone to do the same with any they come across.

 

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Early mockups, with the box showing an early model similar to the original 'heavy6er' model, and both having the name Atari Flashback2.0.

Atari Flashback2 (2005)

What should have originally been done with the first Flashback system was what's been done with every version since #3 - make it emulator-based.  Flush with some 22 million in sales from the Flashback (i.e. suckering a half-million people to buy it), Atari decided to push ahead with its plans to release another model, the Flashback 2.0 (or Flashback2 as it was eventually released as), and contracted out to the same person to design it as well.  Here is their official announcement, dated April 27th, 2005, which sounds very similar (i.e. more promises):

Atari(R) Flashback 2.0' Announced

- Plug-and-Play Console Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Pong(R) -

NEW YORK, April 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In response to consumer and retailer demands, Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) today announced the summer launch of Atari(R) Flashback 2.0, the follow-up to the holiday 2004 hit, the Atari(R) Flashback Classic Game Console, which shipped more than 550,000 units to retail. Atari Flashback 2.0 will be modeled after the pioneering Atari 2600 console and heralds in the 30th anniversary of Pong(R), the first arcade game created for the home which started the revolution that has today turned into a $10 billion industry.

The Atari Flashback 2.0 will feature Pong as well as 40 other classic games including Asteroids(R), Centipede(R), Millipede(R), Lunar Lander(TM), Breakout(R), Missile Command(R), Combat(TM) as well as retro game and arcade classics that have never before been released for the home console. Atari Flashback 2.0 will feature the same wood grain paneling and look of the Atari 2600, and will capture the feel through two classic joysticks for multi-player competition and vintage controls. "The Atari Flashback series harkens back to the early days of video games where the simplicity of design and the addictive game mechanics connected instantly with audiences of all ages. Even in this day of advanced and more complex gameplay, these legacy games continue to elicit fantastic reactions via the on-screen action, and again, to a wide and broad audience," said Wim Stocks, Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing, Licensing and Distribution. "Now, on the 30th anniversary of Pong -- the grandfather of all video games -- it is fitting that we begin to commemorate this milestone with the launch of Atari Flashback 2.0."

The Atari Flashback 2.0 promises to deliver the same gaming sights, sounds and action as the original Atari 2600. To ensure this authenticity, Atari has engineered the tools and code of the original games for reproduction on modern chip technology.  "Unlike other nostalgia gaming products on the market, the Atari Flashback is the real McCoy and the games included are originals, not third-party ports," said Curt Vendel, president of the Atari Historical Society and contributing producer for Atari Flashback 2.0. "Atari has traveled back in time to recall an era where the experience was paramount to the technological bells and whistles."

Developed by Atari, the Atari Flashback 2.0 will be available early this summer for under $30 at retailers nationwide.

I'm not sure how this new Flashback model "heralds in the 30th anniversary of Pong" when Pong was 1) released in 1972, and 2) never released separately for the VCS, but only as a variation on Video Olympics.  When questioned about it, Goldberg stated it was the home version of Pong that was being referenced, which was "responsible for jumpstarting and creating the console market".  How exactly a product can both create a market AND jumpstart a market that presumably didn't exist, I don't know, but Atari's home Pong system was hardly the first home console (are we forgetting Ralph Baer's Odyssey again?), so it certainly didn't create the console market.  It did however drive up sales for itself and all the systems currently in the market at the time, and helped motivate other competitors to enter the market.  Instead of celebrating the home version of an arcade game, why not, oh I don't know, celebrate the anniversary of the VCS - the system whose coattails this new Flashback system is clearly riding on?  But Goldberg has a history of twisting facts around to fit his narrative.  It's also interesting to note that Vendel is not stated to be the engineer or designer for this (Carlos Lopez was, but was uncredited for it) but rather a contributing producer, because that's really all he really was with any of his projects.

In an effort to make amends for their 'Flashback Folly', the 2nd version now resembled a VCS/2600 system (albeit much smaller) and featured twice as many games, with all of them being the original code (no ports).  The system's buttons are similar to the round, 'candy-like' buttons found on the Atari XEGS system, and not the brushed aluminum toggle switches found on the original VCS.  But it's a step in the right direction.  The 5 buttons are for Power, Select, Reset, and both the Left and Right Difficulty.  A cheap sticker with the Hasbro-style Atari logo is on the control panel.  The bottom features a raised logo molded into the plastic.

The games are now running on a custom chip that attempts to replicate the VCS's custom TIA chip.  According to Curt Vendel's mouthpiece, Martin Goldberg,

"This Flashback 2.0 is running on an actual 2600-on-a-chip.  That's right, no emulation, no ported games.  Care was taken to reproduce the entire 2600 hardware in a single chip format (last attempted towards the end of the 2600jr's lifespan).  Because of that, the ASIC-based reproduction of the 2600's hardware is flawless in it's execution of original 2600 code."

I say "attempted" because it failed to, as I will mention later on.

The controllers resemble the original standard joysticks and are the same size, but in this case, looks can be deceiving.  Remakes usually involve an attempt to correct previous flaws and weak points - not a chance to introduce new ones.  While the switch contacts are an improvement, the stick itself is made to be detached (unscrewed) from the rest of the controller, as if they wanted players to lose or break them.  Not only that, the stick itself is comprised of 2 pieces (it can be separated from the part the screws into the base of the controller) and if you lose either part, you'll need another controller because there's no replacement parts.  Even worse, guess where these sticks typically break?  That's right.  If the top of the stick doesn't detach from either the part that screws in, or the base of the controller, it will (very) likely break off at the base (and you're "screwed").  Since its release in 2005, a great many gamers have reported them breaking at the controller's "Achilles' heel".  This is what happens when non-gamers try to design products for gamers.  However, the controller's flaws aren't the only ones.

The 40 games are selected from a series of menus and sub-menus - all of which are pretty bland.  But Goldberg sung its praises, stating Vendel put a lot of time and effort into designing a "wonderful menu system that gives a great experience".  Let's look at these wonderful menus that took so much time and effort of someone's life to make:

Wow.  That's a lot of copying-and-pasting of images onto a blue screen.  Someone might have spent a whole HOUR putting that together!  Well, I guess we now know who didn't design the menus for the first Flashback...

Damn, that's some pretty unimaginative stuff right there, but then again, compared to the menu on the Flashback2 prototype, I suppose anything would have been an improvement.  The 4 categories are supposed to be similar to those in the original Atari catalogs (Combat Zone, Sports Arena, Classics Corner, Adventure Territory, Skill Gallery).  Instead of a Racing section, there's "Arcade Favorites" - most of which are the new arcade hacks and homebrews.  Maybe that was an intentional nod as to how out-of-touch Atari's Marketing department was at times, back in the VCS's heyday?

As you can see from the list of games below (titles spelled as shown onscreen, with typos, capitalization, and punctuation mistakes), not all the games are original classics as promised ("The games included are originals, not third-party ports."), as you'll notice almost half of them are hacks and homebrews.  Also note Battlezone isn't alphabetized in its category like every other game but instead at the bottom of the list, as though it was added at the last minute:

3D Tic Tac Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber
(homebrew)
Battlezone
Caverns of Mars
(homebrew)
Centipede
Combat
Combat 2
(unreleased prototype)
Dodge 'Em
Fatal Run
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Hangman
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Lunar Lander
(homebrew)
Maze Craze
Millipede
Missile Command
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Pong
(homebrew)
Quadrun
Radar Lock
Return to Haunted House
(hack of Adventure)
River Raid
(Activision title)
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Space Duel
(hack of Asteroids)
Space War
Super Breakout
(hidden bonus game)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Warlords
(hidden bonus game)
Wizard
(unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return
(hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

The whole list is so hit and (mostly) miss.  First off, the hacks should never have been included, especially since the original games are included as well!  Centipede and Millipede are great games, but why do we need both here?  There was quite the screw-up with Millipede, as the unreleased GCC version was featured on the box, and some variations either having the Atari version or the GCC version (LINK).  The ROMs for all the new games can be found HERE, so feel free to check them out for yourself.  And why are 3rd-party games on this?  Activision had already licensed their games out for TV plug-and-play systems by Jakks by now.  At most there's 34 *different* games (36 if you count the 2 bonus hidden games, which most owners probably never saw).  Including games primarily designed for 2-players (Combat Two, Frog Pond, Space War) doesn't make much sense, and neither do questionable entries like Hangman, Human Cannonball (which was a running joke amongst my friends back then), Space War, and Wizard, being there was a limit of only 40 games.  I suppose an argument can be made as to why games like 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe and Video Checkers are included, but I personally don't remember playing them very much (and Video Chess runs so slowly, nobody would waste time playing it these days).  Common sense would have removed the homebrews and hacks, and included more original games like:

Air-Sea Battle
Basketball
Canyon Bomber
Circus Atari
Crystal Castles
Desert Falcon
Gravitar
Night Driver
Sky Diver
Solaris
Sprint Master
Stunt Cycle
Submarine Commander
Super Breakout
Surround
Video Olympics

And yet, one of the VCS's most-popular titles, and its first "killer app" - Space Invaders - is nowhere to be found.  How many revamped versions of Space Invaders have we seen over the years (for nearly every system out there)?  I doubt anyone at Atari even bothered to try and get the rights to include it.  Same for Pac-Man, the biggest-selling VCS game of all time.  As bad as Pac-Man is, I'd still want to see it included; as much as I like games like Star Ship and Slot Racers, I'd be shocked if they were included, because they had a niche following.  The excuse was Atari didn't want to pay to license anyone else's games (and yet Pitfall! and River Raid are included...), plus it would drive up the price to $70, and:

"No way in hell would anything like that fly in a plug and play. A $70 price point for a collection of games that modern gamers wouldn't cast a second glance at? What are you smoking? There's a reason why there's a $30 price point on these, and there's no way any actual game company would see any validity in what you're stating. The value is just not there, you'd get laughed out of the board room trying to present it."

As for the unreleased prototypes, there's a reason such games went unreleased or unfinished - they weren't fun to play.   If I had only 40 titles to choose from, I can think of a LOT more worthwhile games to include that your average consumer likely would be familiar with, and not fillers like Wizard or Human Cannonball.  The homebrews Caverns of Mars and Lunar Lander are just atrocious, and the 5 hacked games aren't much better, with one (Yars' Return) being so bad, it elicited this response from Howard Scott Warshaw, the creator of Yars' Revenge:

"This (Yars' Return) so lacks creativity that (those responsible) could only use the same graphics and color scheme?  Jesus!  This looks pretty absurd.  I do have a design for another Yars, but it is an innovation and has nothing to do with what is being portrayed here."

For years HSW has publicly stated many times that he's always had an idea on how to do a sequel to Yars.  Here's an idea- if you want to do one that badly, and for a product like this, why not ASK the guy who created it?  Instead, it's yet another wasted opportunity.

I don't have a problem with homebrew titles, but considering your average buyer isn't going to recognize any of them, 1 or 2 would have been plenty here.  I just can't understand that out of all the great homebrews out there (and there's plenty), the only known/credible title included was Atari Climber, an updated version of Dennis Debro's Climber 5 game from the year before.  It's actually a port of an Atari 8-bit computer game written by James Rogers that appeared in the August 1987 issue of COMPUTE! magazine (a copy of the game can also be found on Atarimania).  The VCS version was done by Dennis Debro and made available in May 2003; it was previously included on the 2003 Activision Anthology and Remix packages and sold in cartridge form in 2004.

Why not release the new hacks and homebrews online beforehand and let the community of dedicated players still out there test them, offer suggestions for improvements, etc. - take advantage of all that invaluable experience!  Talk about wasting an untapped resource.  Same with the hacks, but IMO hacks have no place on a product like this.  Again, there's plenty of quality hacks out there, but they choose to go with a bunch of unknown/untested ones.  If it contained a lot more games, then fine- sprinkle a few in.  That's not the case here, so again with only 40 titles to choose from, even 1 would have been 1 too many.  When you factor in what games are fun to play, maybe half the games on this list will see repeat play by owners.

The system was designed to be modified by adding a cartridge port (to play the games that should have been included), but should you take advantage of this, be warned that the "flawless" 2600-on-a-chip is anything but, as evident by the information in my article about it.  It seems production problems with the chip resulted in Atari having to release at least 4 different (internal) versions in order to try and fix everything.  Goldberg claimed the compatibility issues were fixed with both the final FB2 version, and later with the FB 2+ (they weren't) and felt all the different versions somehow made them collectible!  Besides, the chip flaws are the manufacturer's fault, not theirs, just as the manual errors are the printer's fault, not theirs.  The fact that nobody did any serious play-testing for this, or that some serious Q/A issues existed in these areas aren't their fault, either.  Apparently, nothing is their fault (just like nobody on the Titanic's crew was deemed responsible...).  Years later Vendel admitted the system is flawed, but felt that's okay because it plays more than the 40 built-in games and that's all Atari cared about... except it's not okay because it doesn't even run 1/4th of those correctly!  And if that was Atari's intention, why on Earth did Atari bother paying for a custom 2600-on-a-chip for 40 games?   The end result is customers again have a system not designed for VCS fans, being sold by a company willing to dump flawed product onto the market.  Unfortunately this would not be the end of it, for the same people responsible for the first 2 Flashbacks had one more variation to dump on us 5 years later.


Here's the "team" responsible for these early Flashback failures.

In 2010 Kroger grocery stories started selling fake Flashback2 systems.  Distributor Tommo was involved with the production and sales of these.  The unit's counterfeit PC board lacked stenciling on the solder pads to identify where to connect a cartridge modification.  There's also apparently more issues with the built-in games, with some or all of them only appearing in black-and-white.  In 2011, Atari filed a $30 million dollar lawsuit against Tommo.

 

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Atari Flashback2+ (2010)

January 2010 - Atari announced pre-orders for the Flashback 2+ for $29.99, and it includes an XL T-shirt.  It was released the following month.  General Mills simultaneously announced a giveaway sweepstakes for the console, along with other Atari related merchandise, in conjunction with its Honey Nut Cheerios cereal.  Apparently only 15,000 were made and the photo on the cereal box was of the previous FB2 model.

The logo on both the control panel sticker and packaging is now the original, but the same Hasbro-style logo is on the bottom of the console as well as onscreen.  The text on the switch panel isn't painted on but instead is a large sticker, which didn't hold up for very long.  The internal hardware is the same as the latest version of the Flashback 2 (so in other words, no improvements or corrections to the compatibility issues were done).  As far as the games, the only difference between this and the Flashback 2 is they dropped 5 games:

Atari Climber (reason given: removed for legal reasons.  Turns out they assumed it was public domain, which it wasn't.)

Caverns of Mars (reason given: removed because apparently there was an off the books side contract with the original APX author.  Which is another way of saying they made the same assumption with this that they made with Atari Climber.)

Pitfall! (reason given: removed to avoid paying licensing fees.  Did they pay for it the first time around?)

River Raid (reason given: removed to avoid paying licensing fees.  Did they pay for it the first time around?)

Wizard (reason given: removed due to lack of play value.  Nice excuse, except it was added back with the next model.)

... and added 5 different games (all sports titles), which now has its own category (with its own cut-and-paste graphics screen):

Double Dunk
RealSports Boxing
RealSports Soccer
Super Baseball
Super Football


A 3rd hidden game, Circus Atari, was added as well:

3D Tic Tac Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Battlezone
Centipede
Circus Atari
(hidden bonus game)
Combat
Combat 2
(unreleased prototype)
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Hangman
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Lunar Lander
(homebrew)
Maze Craze
Millipede
Missile Command
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Pong
(homebrew)
Quadrun
Radar Lock
RealSports Boxing
RealSports Soccer
Return to Haunted House
(hack of Adventure)
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Space Duel
(hack of Asteroids)
Space War
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
(hidden bonus game)
Super Football
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Warlords
(hidden bonus game)
Yars' Return
(hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

Removing Pitfall! and River Raid made sense as, being 3rd-party games, they never belonged on this anyway.  Caverns of Mars was dreadful and Wizard was an unreleased, unfinished 2K prototype (notable only for being designed by Chris Crawford) that never deserved to be included.  Dennis Debro helped stabilize Asteroids Deluxe and Yars' Return, but both were (and still are) awful to begin with (and the latter is fundamentally flawed).  John Champeau was asked (commissioned?) to program new versions of Caverns of Mars and Lunar Lander, but neither were included in the FB2s or FB 2+.

Nothing was done to address the incompatibility issues, and some of the built-in games remained unplayable.  The excuse this time around was they only had 30 days to revise it, and yet.. there was time to change some of the games, update the menus, and revise the packaging and manual.  There's nothing "plus" about this model.  It's simply yet another variation of the same damn thing, and very much yet another "minus".

Given all the mistakes that had been made with these consoles by this point, I was a little surprised more versions would follow, but if there had to be, I hoped Atari either corrected the custom 2600-on-a-chip, or dumped both it and the people responsible for it and went with someone else.  In August of 2005 Vendel once again started hyping up a Flashback 3 with a cartridge port "of sorts"; 17 pages later and he finally offered details of what it was going to be:

800 computer in a 5200 case
function keys/buttons along under the silver strip for pause, select, keypad, etc...
FB2 joystick usage
Front SD card slot acting as D1:
edge connector inside on board to solder an 800 cart connector to for legacy cartridge usage.
Built in SIO2PC connection port for transferring to/from console
footprint for SIO connector to be added
footprint for ps/2 keyboard connector
footprint for vga out
Composite out

Games included would've come on an SD card

Talk about feature creep gone amok (years later he repeated the same mistake with his 7800XM device).  You can imagine what that Hong Kong company had to put with now, right?  No wonder Atari finally decided to go with someone else.  It's clear Vendel didn't want to admit his plans for a Flashback 3 weren't going to go anywhere w/o Atari's approval (same with the Flashback Portable photos that were posted in 2007).  In June 2011 the website Dig That Box posted information about a new Flashback 3, along with some early photos from E3:

 

When the people behind the first few Flashback systems got wind of it, they immediately decried it as a fake ("they're not ours... they're not real, more flaky Asian knockoffs"), but eventually were forced to eat crow after they spoke with Atari and learned Atari licensed another company to make it.  But anti-Asian sentiments were nothing new for either Martin Goldberg or Curt Vendel (in regards to the Atari Keychains that he was involved with - "...these were obviously handed down to some back alley Asia firm..." link).

In the end, China did the Atari plug-n-play "system on a chip" better, and in the early 1990s no less.  As for the $30 price point and their comments about being laughed out of Atari's board room for suggesting a higher price point, it turns out Vendel and Goldberg were the ones being laughed out, and later models would reach price points as high as $80.  And with that, the forgettable Vendel and Goldberg era of these ended, and a new era began. 

 

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Atari Flashback 3 (2011)

In June 2011, Atari finally decided to go with a different approach and contracted another company, AtGames, to develop (and sell) the next Flashback model.  The Flashback 3 featured 60 games and a bonus offer of a limited-edition poster.  It was originally shown with a box that touted support of an SD card for loading games (much like a Harmony cart), but that feature was soon dropped, and the system was released without it.  AtGames have been around since 2001 and they have a reputable and successful track record.  For the Flashback 3, they decided to ditch the expensive and flawed all-in-1 chip approach and turned to an ARM-based processor running an emulator.

The system was redesigned so that the controller ports were now on the front of the system.  The same problems with them (being upside-down and too large for any controller but Flashback joysticks) exist.  The internal pcb is much smaller now:

One noticeable difference with this model is the TV Type switch was removed.  As such, Secret Quest is now unplayable since you aren't able to access the status screen to change active objects or see the re-entry code (to save and continue games).  Nice lack of Q&A testing there, AtGames.  Guess they forgot Secret Quest was on the FB2/2+, which included a TV Type switch (this is a problem AtGames wouldn't correct until the Flashback 7!).  Both the system, joysticks, and packaging now feature the original Atari logo.  The control panel no longer has a cheap sticker with the text; instead, all the text is raised and molded into the plastic, including the logo.  The raised outline around the control panel now has rounded corners at the top.  The joysticks with this model have a looser feel to them (think Atari's original CX10 joysticks, compared to the more-common CX40), but otherwise are the same, flawed controllers from the FB2/2+.  The sub-category menus were dropped for a simple, alphabetized one across 6 pages:

Pressing both Start and Select will bring you to the menu - gee, why didn't the previous models offer a simple solution like that?  Once again, not all the games are originals or ones that "defined a generation" as the box claims, since several unreleased prototypes and one hack are included.  But as you can see, there are only half as many:

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Backgammon
Basketball
Battlezone
Bowling
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Demons To Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Fun With Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Maze Craze
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball
(unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Sky Diver
Space War
Sprint Master
Star Ship
Steeplechase
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Wizard
(unreleased prototype)
Yars' Revenge

Some of the games included or omitted are questionable.  3 different baseball games are included, but only 1 of 3 football games.  EarthWorld and FireWorld are included, but not WaterWorld.  All but 2 RealSports games (Football and Tennis) are included, but one of them (Basketball) was an unreleased prototype.  The manual includes the briefest of descriptions for each game (1 or 2 sentences), and a few title typos have crept in (Ex: Combat Two is spelled accurately onscreen, but as "Combat 2" in the manual).  The poster shows 153 screenshots of different games, with 2 or more of the same game.  One of them (Frog Pond) shows the title screen from an earlier prototype version, which was actually included with the previous FB2/2+, instead of the final version).

The custom emulator also isn't as accurate as Stella or even Z26, and has its share of issues, though none of them are bad enough to render games unplayable.  Some of the sounds are too high (in pitch) or just wrong (such as the Swirl flying in Yars' Revenge), and there seems to be some framerate issues which cause some blurriness (ex: the music in Haunted House, the cursor in Missile Command, or the Yar in Yars' Revenge).  There's also some major issues with Battlezone - particularly with the radar screen having broken graphics (the exact same issue the FB2 and 2+ have!) and with not showing all the enemies accurately or at all.  A small dot also occasionally appears above you.  There's also some slight graphics glitches with Missile Command (the ground isn't completely flat).  The flashing colors that denoted when the VCS was thinking (with games like Maze Craze, Video Checkers, and Video Chess) are gone.  Maze Craze shows a gray bar across the bottom of the screen when thinking, and the screen colors are wrong.  Still, compared to all the issues with the FB2/2+, these aren't that bad, and besides the paddle games (which have been altered to use joysticks), Battlezone is the only other borderline unplayable game.

 

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Atari Flashback 4: Special Edition (2012)

This was commissioned for Bed, Bath & Beyond.  It includes 75 games (15 more), 2 wireless IR joysticks, and a limited-edition poster (1 of 5 different ones - Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Lunar Lander, and Tempest).  The player one joystick includes the console's control panel buttons.  Space Invaders is one of the new games that were added, but it's not the VCS version.  By Taito's request, someone programmed a new version that took advantage of the console's chipset.  However, when it came to other Taito games (Front Line, Jungle Hunt), the original VCS versions were used.

The emulation was reportedly improved a little, but many of the same issues still remained, and the IR controllers lagged or operated very inconsistently (direct line-of-sight is required with the console, otherwise they won't work).

Released in November of 2012, it sold for $40.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Asteroids
Backgammon
Basketball
Battlezone
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat
Two (unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Crystal Castles
Demons To Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Front Line
(Coleco title w/ pirate box art)
Basic Math
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Jungle Hunt
Maze Craze
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
(w/ international box art)
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball
(unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Space Invaders
(arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprint Master
Star Ship
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld

Tempest
(unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords
Wizard
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Yars' Revenge
(w/ international box art)

The new additions are:

Breakout
Crystal Castles
Football
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Jungle Hunt
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports (screenshot on box shows the arcade version, but it's Video Olympics)
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Space Invaders
(arcade-style cocktail table version)
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Tempest
(unreleased prototype)
Warlords

The game Secret Quest was replaced with the game Black Jack.  The
box art for Combat Two has the title as "Combat 2" underneath it.

Someone also found a hidden debug menu.  Hold down START + SELECT and turn the system on.  There's tests for color, ROM, sound, and the controllers.  The firmware version will also be displayed.

 

 

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Atari Flashback 4: 40th Anniversary Special Edition (2012)

This included all the same games as the Special Edition except Millipede.


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Atari Flashback 4: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (2012)

This was released one month after the Special Edition.  This was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Atari's founding (1972).  It included all the same games as the Special Edition except Millipede, but does include a set of replica Atari VCS paddle controllers, all 5 collectible posters, and a copy of the original Atari joystick patent signed by Nolan Bushnell.  Sold for $50.


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Atari Flashback 64: Special Edition (2013)

AtGames developed this as a Walmart exclusive version with only 64 games and wired controllers which included Space Invaders.  It was priced at $30 and released in December 2013.

The back of the box lists all the games along with a photo of the box:

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Asteroids
Backgammon
Basic Math
Basketball
Battlezone
Bowling
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat
Two (unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Demons To Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Front Line
(w/ pirate box art)
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Jungle Hunt
Maze Craze
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
(w/ international box art)
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball
(unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Saboteur (unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
)
Sky Diver
Space Invaders
(arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprint Master
Star Ship
Steeplechase
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld

Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords
Wizard
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Yars' Revenge
(w/ international box art)

Games removed from the Flashback 4 are:

Blackjack
Breakout
Crystal Castles
Football
Millipede
(which version?)
Pong Sports
Return to Haunted House
(hack of Adventure)
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Tempest
(unreleased prototype)

Missile Command exhibits some graphics glitches on the silo (a thin bar runs across the inside), Battlezone still shows an off-center radar scope, and Space Invaders is still the arcade cocktail table version.

 

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Atari Flashback 5: Collector's Edition (2014)

Priced at $39.95 and released in October 2014, it includes the same as the Flashback 4, but it adds 17 more games, increasing the total to 92 games.  The controllers are still infrared.  Also, Battlezone was replaced with Millipede.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids
Astroblast (M Network title)
Backgammon
Basketball
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Chase It! (homebrew)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat
Two (unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Crystal Castles
Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons To Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Escape It! (homebrew)
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond
(unreleased prototype)
Frogs and Flies (M Network title)
Front Line (Coleco title w/ pirate box art)
Basic Math
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
International Soccer (M Network title)
Jungle Hunt
Maze Craze
Millipede

Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command (w/ international box art)
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball
(unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Saboteur
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Sea Battle (M Network  prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Shield Shifter
(homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprint Master
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball (M Network title)
Super Challenge Football (M Network title)
Super Football
Surround
Sword Fight (M Network prototype w/ homebrew box art)
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld

Tempest
(unreleased prototype w/ homebrew box art)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords
Wizard
(unreleased prototype w/ different homebrew box art)
Yars' Revenge
(w/ international box art)

Tempest has the correct box art on the back, but has homebrew box art from the 5200 version on the side!

 

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Atari Flashback 6 (2015)

Released on September 15th, 2015).  Includes 100 games and wireless joysticks and features Atari 2600 HOME and ARCADE Hits: Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout, Tempest, and Warlords.  Priced at $44.99 and available 9/15/15.  There's a disparity between the box art and the games that are included.  Here's what's on the system:

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids
Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Basketball
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Chase It! (homebrew)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two (unreleased prototype)
Crystal Castles
Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Escape It! (homebrew)
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Front Line (Coleco title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
International Soccer (M Network title)
Jungle Hunt
Maze Craze

Millipede
Miniature Golf

Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Sea Battle (M Network unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprintmaster
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball (M Network title)
Super Challenge Football (M Network title)
Super Football
Surround
Sword Fight (M Network unreleased prototype)
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords
Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

The new titles added are in green.  There's now more 3rd-party games from Coleco, M Network, and Tigervision, as well as more prototypes and homebrews, including the return of Atari Climber (do they now have the rights to do so?).  Secret Quest is back but still not fully playable due to the lack of a TV Type switch, and Yars' Return (John Champeau's new version).  There are still issues with the emulation, particularly with games like Solaris.  Also, Indy 500 has been hacked to use joysticks and doesn't support the original Driving Controllers, so what's the point of including it?

AtGames PR guy Bill Loguidice had this comment to make about all the criticism with this and earlier AtGames consoles:

"We know that the collective we on sites like this and elsewhere are not the target market for these. The target market is the big box shelf browser informed by a touch of nostalgia looking for an inexpensive holiday gift. As bad as it is to say, these are priced and shelved like disposable toys." LINK

 

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Atari Flashback 6 Deluxe (2015)

Contains the same games as the standard version, but also includes paddles.  AtGames also sold these separately.

 

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Atari Flashback 7 (2016)

Released on October 1st, 2016.  Includes 101 games - same games as the Flashback 6 with the addition of a new, arcade-style version of Frogger (due to licensing issues with the original's music), much like what was done with Space Invaders with Flashback 6.  2-player only games were removed.  The TV Type switch is now implemented via some convoluted button combination, making Secret Quest fully supported.  Or maybe they should have just dropped Secret Quest permanently.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids
Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Basketball
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Chase It (homebrew)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two (unreleased prototype)
Crystal Castles
Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Escape It (homebrew)
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Front Line (Coleco title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
International Soccer (M Network title)
Jungle Hunt
Maze Craze
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Sea Battle (M Network unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprintmaster
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball (M Network title)
Super Challenge Football (M Network title)
Super Football
Surround
Sword Fight (M Network unreleased prototype)
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords
Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback 7 Deluxe (2016)

Contains the same games as the standard version, but also includes paddles.  AtGames also sold these separately.

 

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Atari Flashback Portable (2016)

Released in November 2016.  At least 2 different boxes were released - one featuring Space Invaders on the screen and one featuring Centipede.  AtGames decided to finally make a portable version, based on the same handheld system they had been using for their Genesis portable:

The button layout supports all the VCS switches, along with the fire button and some new features like pause and menu.  There is an output for a TV, but the cable much be purchased separately.  60 games are included, and 2-player-only games were removed.  Some of the games are paddle games, which don't play particularly well with a joypad, so it was a mistake to include them.  To access a hidden diagnostic menu, hold down the big three buttons (A, R, S) while powering up and you'll get a RAM check, a sound check, and a button check.

Adventure
Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Centipede
Circus Atari
Crystal Castles

Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
Night Driver
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Radar Lock
RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Slot Machine
Solaris
Space Attack (M Network title)
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Stellar Track
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Breakout
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

The system offers SD card support, so you can add your own games, but the emulation doesn't support every "Super Chip".  AtGames PR mouthpiece Bill Loguidice can't offer any specifics other than to say Crystal Castles is a SARA-chip game which was on previous models, so it should support all SARA games, but if it doesn't, oh well because,

"That's just a small subset of what this thing will actually do and my life will go on." LINK

When asked if the problems with Battlezone have been fixed with the latest emulator version, his comment was,

"All I'll say is it's the next generation of what has been used in previous Atari Flashbacks.  The hardware is improved on the handheld and the emulator tweaked, but I have not tested if Battlezone is 100% now. Unfortunately, my early test unit has a broken SD card slot.  Atari sold off Battlezone in their last bankruptcy filing so it won't be on this thing - problem 'solved'.

The Atari Flashback Portable is probably as close to perfect as AtGames has gotten with any of its hardware to date."

Spoken like a true PR person.  It turns out it won't run or has severe issues with some original games as well, such as Berzerk (LIST).  Does that list look like "as close to perfect" to you?

 

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Atari Flashback 8 (2017)

Released in September 2017.  Features 105 games.  Activision games (Pitfall! and River Raid) that were previously on the FB2 are now back, along with H.E.R.O., Kaboom!, and Pressure CookerStrip Off was removed.  The IR controllers were finally dropped and are again wired.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle

Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids

Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Basketball
Black Jack

Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chase It
! (homebrew)
C
ircus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Crystal Castles

Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Escape It!
(homebrew)
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football

Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Front Line (Coleco title)
Fun with Numbers

Golf
Gravitar
H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball

Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
International Soccer (M Network title)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Maze Craze
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Sea Battle (unreleased M Network prototype)

Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine

Slot Racers
Solaris

Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Invaders (
arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War

Sprint Master
Star Ship

Star Strike (M Network title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball
(M Network title)
Super Challenge Football
(M Network title)
Super Football

Surround
Sword Fight
(unreleased M Network prototype)
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge


One person noted some emulation issues with Frostbite (partially-rendered ice floes) and Air-Sea Battle (graphical shift with rows on right side of screen, but not with the targets).  "The odd thing is that this is not just a visual glitch as the collision detection seems to respect the lack of graphic portion, so this totally impacted the game play."

This and other Flashback 8 versions use an Android-based board, which can be modified by adding a USB port to allow more games to be added.  There are holes in the board for a pin header (LINK 1 and LINK 2).

 

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Atari Flashback 8 Deluxe (2017)

Contains the same games as the standard version, but also includes 2 wired paddles in addition to two wireless joysticks.

 

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Atari Flashback 8 Deluxe: Sam's Club Special Edition (2017)

Appears to be exactly the same as the Deluxe edition.

 

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Atari Flashback 8 Gold (2017)

Features 120 games.  Priced at $69.99.  Includes 15 more Activision games, two 2.4ghz wireless controllers, 720p HDMI output, scan line filtering, and a save/pause/"rewind" feature for every game.  The Gold editions have gold trim around the button panel and "40th Anniversary" underneath the name on the front edge.  This is to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the VCS console.  The manual also doubles as a poster, with a picture of the box cover.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle

Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids

Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chase It
! (homebrew)
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Escape It!
(homebrew)
Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football

Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Front Line (Coleco title)
Frostbite
(Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball

Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
International Soccer (M Network title)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom! (Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Sea Battle (unreleased M Network prototype)

Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine

Slot Racers
Solaris

Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Invaders (
arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War

Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball
(M Network title)
Super Challenge Football
(M Network title)
Super Football

Surround
Sword Fight
(unreleased M Network prototype)
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback 8 Gold Deluxe (2017)

Contains the same games as the Gold version, but also includes 2 wired paddles in addition to two wireless joysticks.

 

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Atari Flashback 8 Gold: Activision Edition (2017)

Features 130 games.  Same price as the regular Gold edition, but in a special black box.  Includes 18 additional Activision games and one Absolute game.  Chase It!, Escape It!, Frogger, Front Line, Jungle Hunt, Miss It!, Polaris, Shield Shifter, and Space Invaders were removed - no more compromised arcade versions, and only 1 homebrew and 3 hacks.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Air-Sea Battle

Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Armor Ambush (M Network title)
Asteroids

Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Barnstorming
(Activision title)
Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Boxing (Activision title)
Breakout
Bridge (Activision title)
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Checkers
(Activision title)
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Dolphin (Activision title)
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football
Freeway
(Activision title)
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Grand Prix (Activision title)
Gravitar

H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball

Ice Hockey (Activision title)
Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
International Soccer (M Network title)
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Laser Blast (Activision title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Plaque Attack
(Activision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Private Eye (Activision title)
Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)

River Raid II (Activision title)
Robot Tank (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Sea Battle (unreleased M Network prototype)

Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Skiing
(Activision title)
Sky Diver
Sky
Jinks (Activision title)
Slot
Machine
Slot Racers
Solaris

Space Attack (M Network title)
Space Shuttle (Activision title)
Space War

Spider Fighter (Activision title)
Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Challenge Baseball
(M Network title)
Super Challenge Football
(M Network title)
Super Football

Surround
Sword Fight
(unreleased M Network prototype)
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Tennis (Activision title)
Tomcat - The F-14 Flight Simulator (Absolute title)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback Portable (2017)

2nd version of the portable model.  Features 70 games - 10 more than the previous portable.  Pac-Man is finally included, but it's the latest homebrew version, Pac-Man 2600, by Daniel "Dintar816" (the screenshot for which is shown on the box) and not the original (the box for which is also shown on the box).  The SD card port is still included. 

From AtGames PR guy Bill Loguidice:

"Some early AFP units will have Dennis (Debro's) version of Pac-Man (4K), but a running change will be made to feature Daniel's version (Pac-Man 2600) instead. You can easily tell the difference between the two by the latter having much larger power pellets." LINK

The menu photo for Pac-Man mistakenly shows the box for the original Atari version.

Adventure
Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air Raiders (M Network title)
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Astroblast (M Network title)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Centipede
Chase It! (homebrew)
Circus Atari
Crystal Castles

Dark Cavern (M Network title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dig Dug
Dodge 'Em

Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Frogs And Flies (M Network title)
Fun with Numbers
Galaxian
Golf

Gravitar
Hangman
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
Night Driver
Pac-Man 4K (homebrew) or Pac-Man 2600 (4K homebrew)
Pitfall! (Activision title)
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Slot Machine
Solaris
Space Attack (M Network title)
Stampede (Activision title)
Star Ship
Star Strike (M Network title)
Stellar Track
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Breakout
SwordQuest EarthWorld
SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Xevious (unreleased prototype 8-2-83)
Yars' Return
(hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback 9 (2018)

Features 110 games.  Priced at $40.  Apparently a small run of the composite version was made at the request of retailers.  Two model variants were made (AR3220 and AR3230).  This is running AtGames' custom emulator - the same as used in earlier consoles and handhelds.  A MicroUSB cable is included but the user must provide a USB power adapter.

 

The controllers are again wired.  Note the paddles for this system (and the FB9 Gold) will only work with this system!  They won't work with any previous model from FB3 on up, nor will any paddles from those earlier models work with this model.  But there is a mod to make it compatible with standard paddles.  M Network games were dropped and some Parker Brothers titles were added.  An SD card slot is included - a first for the console models.

There's an issue with a slight audio delay with all games and even the menu, which varies by display, and an update to fix the issue is being planned (as of October 2019).  Here is a visual waveform analysis comparing Pitfall! on the Retron 77 and the Flashback 9 HDMI.  The spike at 3.00 is the pressing of the fire button... after that is the sound of Pitfall Harry jumping:

There's also an issue with all the different variations of the FB9 involving Space Invaders.  When the 2nd player is active, moving the joystick to the left causes the game to exit to the menu.  AtGames is aware of it and is working on a firmware patch.  As a side note, this model can be overclocked via modding (as can the X and X Deluxe models), but not the 9 Gold (you'll 'brick' the system if you try).

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Amidar (Parker Brothers title)
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe (hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon
Basketball
Beamrider (Activision title)
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber

Centipede
Championship Soccer
Chopper Command (Activision title)
C
ircus Atari
Combat
Combat Two (unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter (Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)

Crystal Castles

Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football

Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Gyruss
(Parker Brothers title)
H.E.R.O. (Activision title)
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball
Indy 500
(hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt

Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off the Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall! (Activision title)
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Pooyan (Konami title)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret
Quest
Sky Diver

Slot Machine
Slot Racers

Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space War
Sprint Master

Stampede (Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster
(Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout

Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Track & Field
Tutankham
(Parker Brothers title)
Video Checkers

Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback 9 "Boom" (2018)

Same games as the Flashback 9 except it offers HDMI output and is priced at $50.  This model (AR3050) is referred to as the "Boom" on AtGames' website.  This and the 9 Gold versions are running the Stella emulator (version 3.9.3).  There's also an alternate version that has both English and French on the box.

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Atari Flashback 9 Gold (2018)

Features 120 games.  Fishing Derby and Oink! were removed.  Added are Atari Video Cube and M Network games are back, as are the questionable homebrews from Alan Smith (Chase It, Escape It, Miss It).  How about the games Don't Include It, or Enough of It?

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Amidar (Parker Brothers title)
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe (hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Atari Video Cube
Backgammon
Basketball
Beamrider (Activision title)
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
BurgerTime
(M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber (Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Canyon Bomber

Centipede
Championship Soccer
Chase It!
(homebrew)

Chopper Command (Activision title)
C
ircus Atari
Combat
Combat Two (unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter (Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)

Crystal Castles

Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Escape It!
(homebrew)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Freeway
(Activision title)
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Gyruss
(Parker Brothers title)
H.E.R.O. (Activision title)
Hangman
Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball
Indy 500
(hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt

Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Lock ‘n’ Chase (M Network title)
Maze Craze
Megamania (Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It! (homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off the Wall
Outlaw
Pitfall! (Activision title)
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
(Activision title)
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports (Video Olympics)
Pooyan (Konami title)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret
Quest
Shield Shifter
(homebrew)
Sky Diver

Slot Machine
Slot Racers

Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space Raid (homebrew)
Space War
Sprint Master

Stampede (Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster
(Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Strip Off
(homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout

Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Track & Field
Tutankham
(Parker Brothers title)
Video Checkers

Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback Portable (2018)

3rd version of the portable model.  Features 80 games - 10 more than the previous portable.  Nothing new here, just more reshuffling of previous games.  The menu photo for Pac-Man still mistakenly shows the box for the original Atari version.  The SD card port is still included.  Sold for $50.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Amidar
(Parker Brothers title)
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Basketball
Black Jack
Bowling
Breakout
Centipede
Chase It!
(homebrew)
Circus Atari
Crystal Castles
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dig Dug
Dodge ‘Em
Double Dunk
Escape It
! (homebrew)
Fatal Run
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger
(arcade-style version)
Fun with Numbers
Galaxian
Golf
Gravitar
Gyruss
(Parker Brothers)
H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It!
(homebrew)
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off-the-Wall
Pac-Man 2600
(4K homebrew)
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pooyan
(Konami title)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)
Radar Lock
Realsports Baseball
Realsports Boxing
Realsports Football
Realsports Tennis
Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter (homebrew)
Slot Machine
Solaris
Space Raid
(homebrew)
Sprint Master
Star Ship
Stellar Track
Strip Off (homebrew)
Submarine Commander
Super Breakout
Swordquest Earthworld
Swordquest Fireworld
Swordquest Waterworld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Track & Field
Tutankham
(Parker Brothers title)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Xevious (unreleased prototype 8-2-83)
Yars' Return
(hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars’ Revenge

 

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Flashback Blast! (2018)

In October 2018 AtGames released 6 different HDMI dongle-based consoles.  Priced at $20-$40 each, they include anywhere from 8 to 20 games.  Despite the artwork and screenshots on some of the boxes showing the arcade versions, the games are all the VCS and NES versions (with the exception Space Invaders).  The box contains some 'fine print' stating the screenshots are for "reference only".  One early reviewer was apparently sent a version of the Bandai Namco Flashback Blast! that contained the arcade versions of games, whereas the released versions used the NES versions (see below).  In other words, these Blast! systems are being deceptively marketed.

Considering the small selection of titles on each one, the inclusion of hacks, homebrews, unreleased prototypes, and games that have never been held in high regards repeats the same mistake that's been made with every Flashback system.  And emulation issues continue to afflict these, especially those involving paddles.  Also worth noting is the boxes mention 2-player co-op is possible with a P2 Blast! wireless controller, except AtGames never released it!

Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 1 - Centipede

Includes 20 games, 2 of which are unreleased prototypes, and 1 that is a hack.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Air-Sea Battle
Bowling
Centipede
Desert Falcon
Dodge ‘Em
Fatal Run
Golf
Human Cannonball
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Radar Lock
Save Mary
(unreleased prototype)
Sprint Master
Swordquest: Earthworld
Swordquest: Fireworld
Swordquest: Waterworld
Tempest
(unreleased prototype)
Yars’ Return
(hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars’ Revenge

Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 2 - Asteroids

Includes 20 games. 1 of which is a hack.

Adventure
Adventure II
(hack of Adventure)
Asteroids
Atari Video Cube
Championship Soccer
Crystal Castles
Double Dunk
Gravitar
Haunted House
Maze Craze
Missile Command
Off the Wall
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Tennis
Secret Quest
Sky Diver
Sub Commander
Surround
Video Chess
Video Pinball

Atari Flashback Blast! Vol. 3 - Pong & Atari Hits

This is a Walmart exclusive.  Includes 20 paddle games, if you consider 8 of those are different variations of Video Olympics, so there's really 13 (12, if you consider both Breakout and Super Breakout are included).  The controller is similar to the original VCS/2600 one, but built very cheaply.  They're wireless, except both paddles are connected to each other with a wire.  Performance-wise, the control suffers from severe lag, making the games virtually unplayable.  What's worse is, the Quadrapong variation of Video Olympics is unplayable since you need 4 players.  Same with including Warlords but not excluding the 3 and 4-player variations.  The menu used to select the games is also poorly implemented.

Backgammon
Blackjack
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Circus Atari
Demons to Diamonds
Night Driver
Steeplechase
Street Racer
Stunt Cycle
Super Breakout
Video Olympics: Basketball
Video Olympics: Foozpong
Video Olympics: Handball
Video Olympics: Hockey
Video Olympics: Pong
Video Olympics: Quadrapong
Video Olympics: Super Pong
Video Olympics: Volleyball
Warlords

Activision Flashback Blast! - Pitfall!

Includes 20 games, one of which is an Imagic title.  Considering Pitfall! is clearly advertised on the front of the box, the inclusion of Pitfall II would have made more sense, but this is AtGames we're talking about.

Atlantis (Imagic title)
Beamrider
Chopper Command
Cosmic Commuter
Crackpots
Decathlon
Dragster
Enduro
Fishing Dirby
Freeway
Frostbite
H.E.R.O.
Keystone Kapers
Megamania
Pitfall!
Pressure Cooker
River Raid
Seaquest
Stampede
Starmaster

Bandai Namco Flashback Blast! - Pac-Man

Includes 8 games.  AtGames sent out review copies prior to releasing the system, which used the actual arcade code.  However, the released systems used the NES version (link 1)!  What's more, the boxes for both versions have the same arcade screenshots, and the released version makes no mention of using the NES versions, which is nothing more than a bait-and-switch on customers (video 1 and video 2).  When customers started commenting about it, AtGames responded by saying "“The early review version could not make it to production." and lashed out at people on Twitter (link 2).  AtGames later stated "Eventually the arcade version will be released and replace the home game version." (link 3), which they did with the 2019 release.

Dig Dug (NES)
Galaga
(NES)
Galaxian
(NES)
Mappy
(NES)
Pac-Man (NES)
The Tower of Druaga
(NES)
Sky Kid
(NES)
Xevious
(NES)

Bandai Namco Flashback Blast! - Pac-Man (Walmart Edition)

This is a Walmart exclusive.  The only difference with this model is the inclusion of Pac-Mania instead of The Tower of Druaga.  This edition has the same problem with NES versions being used instead of the arcade versions.

Dig Dug (NES)
Galaga
(NES)
Galaxian
(NES)
Mappy
(NES)
Pac-Man (NES)
Pac-Mania
 (NES)
Sky Kid
(NES)
Xevious
(NES)

Legends  Flashback Blast - Space Invaders also featuring BurgerTime

The 'Legends' title is laughable, considering these are all VCS versions (except Space Invaders) - 5 of which are recent homebrews!  Again, more deceptive marketing.

BurgerTime (M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber
(Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Escape It!
(homebrew)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Jungle Hunt
Lock ‘n’ Chase
(M Network title)
Miss It! (homebrew)
Polaris
(Tigervision title)
Shield Shifter
(homebrew)
Space Raid
(homebrew)
Space Invaders
(arcade-style cocktail table version)
Strip Off!
(homebrew)

 

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Atari Flashback X (2019)

Features 110 games.  Most Activision and M Network titles were dropped and a few Parker Brothers titles were added back in, with Super Cobra being the only new title.  The system has been redesigned to more closely resemble the original VCS, including a 'fake' cartridge port.  Both SD support and wireless controllers were dropped, along with the HDMI cable and paddles, but it is possible to mod it to use an external USB drive.  It's using Stella 3.9.3 and the system offers APL connectivity to AtGames' Legends Ultimate arcade machine.  The same audio lag problems that plague the Flashback 9 models are in the X models as well.  The framerate also lags, due to the CPU chip running too slow (seeing River Raid run on it is a good example).  Although paddle support is improved, the new joysticks are worse, and since the extra buttons on them are required to use the system, you can't use any other joysticks.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Amidar
(Parker Brothers title)

Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Breakout
BurgerTime (M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber (Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football
Frogger (arcade-style version)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Golf
Gravitar
Gyruss
(Parker Brothers title)

H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball

Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Lock 'n' Chase (M Network title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pooyan - Konami title)
Pressure Cooker
(Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Sky Diver
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space Raid (homebrew)
Space War

Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Cobra
(Parker Brothers title)
Super Football

Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Tutankham
(Parker Brothers title)
Video Checkers

Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback X Deluxe Special Edition (2019)

Features 110 games.  Price $80.  Same as the Flashback X with the addition of 10 bonus games (*) - two of which (Marine Wars and Strategy X) are new.  Referred to as the Sam's Club version but can be found on Amazon and Ebay as well.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Amidar
(Parker Brothers title)

Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon*
Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Breakout
BurgerTime (M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber (Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chase It*
(homebrew)
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Escape It* (homebrew)
Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger (arcade-style version)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers*
Golf

Gravitar
Gyruss
(Parker Brothers title)

H.E.R.O.
(Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball

Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Lock 'n' Chase (M Network title)
Marine Wars* (Konami title)
Maze Craze
Megamania (Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Miss It* (homebrew)
Missile
Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pooyan - Konami title)
Pressure Cooker
(Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Shield Shifter
* (homebrew)
Sky Diver
Slot Machine*
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space Raid (homebrew)
Space War

Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Strategy X*
(Konami title)
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Cobra
(Parker Brothers title)
Super Footb
all

Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Tutankham
(Parker Brothers title)
Video Checkers

Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Blast! (2019)

This year AtGames released 3 different HDMI dongle-based Blast! consoles.  Priced at $30 each, they include between 10-12 games.  The Bandai Namco Arcade collection actually use the original arcade versions this time around, instead of last year's fiasco with the NES versions.  The other 2 models include VCS, NES, and Genesis titles, with an arcade title on each.  Pretty much everything on these 2 models has been included on previous Flashback systems over the years, so there's really nothing new with them.  It's just more AtGames rehashing the same games.  If people haven't figured it out by now, it's that AtGames will continue to do this ad nauseam as long as people continue to buy them.

Oh, and will the wireless controller for 2-player games be released this time? 

Bandai Namco Arcade Blast! - Pac-Man (2019)

Includes 10 games.  This time around, the original arcade code is used for the games, instead of the NES versions.

 

Dig Dug
Galaga
Galaxian
Mappy
New Rally-X
Pac-Man
Pac-Mania
Sky Kid
The Tower of Druaga
Xevious

 

Adventure Flashback Blast! - Tetris, The Lion King, and Aladdin (2019)

Includes 10 games - 3 VCS titles, 2 NES titles, 3 Genesis titles, and one arcade title (if you can call it that).  The box has a sticker over the list of games (they used the "Bump 'n' Jump" name instead of their fake one, and they printed BurgerTime as two words):

 

 

Aladdin (Genesis)
BurgerTime (VCS M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber
(Bump 'n' Jump - VCS M Network title)

Donald in Maui Mallard
(Genesis)
Fix-It Felix, Jr.
(arcade)
Lock ‘n’ Chase (VCS M Network title)
Maniac Mansion
(NES)
Tetris
(NES)
The Jungle Book
(Genesis)
The Lion King
(Genesis)

 

Star Flashback Blast! - Star Wars and Space Invaders (2019)

Includes 12 games - 1 arcade, 3 VCS, and 8 NES.

 

Astyanax (NES)
City Connection
(NES)
Front Line
(VCS)
Hoops
(NES)
Jungle Hunt
(VCS)
Pinball Quest
(NES)
Polaris (VCS)
Rod Land
(NES)
Space Invaders
(arcade-style cocktail table version)
Star Wars
(NES)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
(NES)
Totally RAD
(NES)

 

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Atari Flashback 50th Anniversary Edition (2022)

Features 110 games and gold switches.  Price $60.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon

Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Breakout
BurgerTime (M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber (Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Double Dunk
Dragster
(Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Front Line (Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
H.E.R.O. (Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball
Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Lock 'n' Chase (M Network title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong
(Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)
Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Boxing
RealSports Football

RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space Raid (homebrew)
Space War
Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football

Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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Atari Flashback Gold 50th Anniversary Edition (2022)

Features 130 games and gold switches.  Price $80.

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure

Adventure II (hack of Adventure)
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure (unreleased prototype)
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
(hack of Asteroids)
Atari Climber (homebrew)
Backgammon

Barnstorming
(Activision title)
Basketball
Beamrider
(Activision title)
Black Jack

Bowling
Boxing
(Activision title)
Breakout
Bridge
(Activision title)
BurgerTime (M Network title)
Burnin’ Rubber (Bump 'n' Jump - M Network title)
Canyon Bomber
Centipede

Championship Soccer
Chopper Command
(Activision title)
Circus Atari
Combat
Combat Two
(unreleased prototype)
Cosmic Commuter
(Activision title)
Crackpots (Activision title)
Crystal Castles
Decathlon (Activision title)
Demon Attack (Imagic title)
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge 'Em
Dolphin
(Activision title)
Double Dunk
Dragonfire
(Imagic title)
Dragster (Activision title)
Enduro (Activision title)

Fatal Run
Fishing Derby
(Activision title)
Flag Capture
Football
Freeway
(Activision title)
Frog Pond (unreleased prototype)
Frogger (arcade-style version)
Front Line
(Coleco title)
Frostbite (Activision title)
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Grand Prix
(Activision title)
Gravitar
H.E.R.O. (Activision title)
Hangman

Haunted House
Home Run

Human Cannonball
Ice Hockey
(Activision title)
Indy 500 (hacked to use joysticks)
Jungle Hunt
Kaboom!
(Activision title)
Keystone Kapers
(Activision title)
Laser Blast (Activision title)
Lock 'n' Chase (M Network title)
Maze Craze
Megamania
(Activision title)
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
Moonsweeper
(Imagic title)
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Oink!
(Activision title)
Outlaw
Pitfall!
(Activision title)
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (Activision title)
Plaque Attack (Activision title)

Polaris (Tigervision title)
Pong Sports
(Video Olympics)
Pressure Cooker (Activision title)
Private Eye
(Activision title)

Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball

RealSports Basketball (unreleased prototype)
RealSports Boxing
RealSports Football

RealSports Soccer
RealSports Volleyball

Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure)
River Raid (Activision title)
River Raid II (Activision title)
Robot Tank (Activision title)

Saboteur (unreleased prototype)
Save Mary (unreleased prototype)
Seaquest (Activision title)
Secret Quest
Skiing
(Activision title)
Sky Diver
Sky Jinks
(Activision title)
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Solaris
Space Invaders (arcade-style cocktail table version)
Space Raid (homebrew)
Space War
Spider Fighter
(Activision title)

Sprint Master
Stampede
(Activision title)
Star Ship
Starmaster (Activision title)
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer

Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football

Surround
SwordQuest EarthWorld

SwordQuest FireWorld
SwordQuest WaterWorld
Tempest (unreleased prototype)
Tennis
(Activision title)
Video Checkers

Video Chess
Video Pinball
Warlords

Wizard (unreleased prototype)
Yars' Return (hack of Yars' Revenge)
Yars' Revenge

 

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It's a shame that after close to 20 years and nearly 40 attempts to date, Atari can't seem to stop shooting themselves in the foot with these Flashback systems.  They keep calling these Flashbacks, but with all the hacks, homebrews, prototypes, and compromised arcade versions, what exactly am I flashing back to??  All I know is, when the people buying them care more about the games than the people making them, something is fundamentally wrong.  Nintendo had no problem giving people exactly what they wanted with their NES Classic Edition system (released in late 2016).  Strange how those very same retailers didn't demand Nintendo stick to a $30 price point, or include wireless controllers.


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