While doing our regular, “holy crap how did we spend so much money again” run at Costco today, I spied this near the veggie area, for a whopping $25, an Atari Flashback 2+
which immediately made its way into our cart. At home, I showed the boys and it was an immediate hit. We played the tank game for about an hour, asteroids, centipede, battlezone…lunar lander! We only scratched the surface, the full list of games is on the wikipedia article.
People have even hacked them to take the old cartridges, but the neat part is the hardware inside – so simple. When you turn it on, the menu comes up immediately and the games start instantly.
The most gratifying part was that we didn’t need some fancy dancy computer or flash video game. Just two simple joysticks and blocky tanks aiming for each other in a small square.