Retro Games Fan? Atari’s $180 Gamestation Go Is Up for Preorder

The venerable online game firm Atari is offering preorders for a brand new console it previewed earlier this year: the Gamestation Go, which will likely be launched in October for $180 (plus $8 transport).

On its web site, Atari reveals off a colourful transportable system with a 7-inch display screen and a number of methods to regulate video games, together with trackpads, a trackball and even a numeric keypad. Atari says the console will come bundled with 200 built-in video games, together with Pac-Man, Centipede, Asteroids and Balls of Steel. It contains Wi-Fi connectivity, USB-C ports and a battery lifetime of about 4 to five hours, in keeping with the positioning.

The website additionally touts “SmartGlow” expertise that lights up the part of the controller for use, relying on the sport.

This is not the primary time Atari has packaged its retro library of video games to make them accessible to new audiences. In the previous few years, Atari has launched throwback variations of its Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 consoles. But the Gamestation is the primary Atari cellular console with these video games bundled in. 

The console has an HDMI port to connect with bigger screens.

Swimming towards the stream

Atari’s colourful console is a far cry from Nintendo’s new Switch 2 or upcoming PC-gaming portables akin to the brand new ROG Xbox Ally, methods meant to play the newest AAA video games. With its retro library, Atari is bucking the pattern.

“The major Western game publishers are fixated on making higher-end hardware and putting most of their chips on genre trend chasing. As a result, they don’t have clear identities,” stated Chris Plante, the co-founder of the video games website Polygon and host of the video video games podcast Post Games.

“Atari is retro gaming,” Plante stated. “Every decision they make feeds into that. Their studios specialize in remasters. Their hardware’s design echoes their discofied retrofuturistic aesthetic. And they’re quietly amassing a war chest of beloved retro IP, many of which didn’t even come from Atari.”

In addition to Atari classics from a number of console eras, video games from Jaleco and PIKO International, akin to Bases Loaded and Bad Street Brawler, are touted on the Gamestation Go internet web page.

Plante stated that Atari’s transportable system seems to be driving the recognition of a rising retro gaming scene. In distinction, fashionable recreation firms with little curiosity within the throwback gaming chase an more and more segmented pool of gamers.  

“Atari has a long road ahead of them,” he stated. “But these little bets may one day pay big.”