Retiring my Childhood Atari 2600 and Using a Retron 77

 

I decided to retire my beloved Atari 2600 which, after over 40 years of gaming on it, has started having issues with audio and video that are just beyond me to fix. The final straw came when I was cleaning it a couple of weeks ago and accidentally knocked a little bracket off the plastic housing for the left joystick port. It's getting so brittle that working on it and cleaning it is becoming a little risky. I've thought of replacing the RF Modulator, which is its biggest problem, with a different one, but I'm not sure if I want to tackle soldering on it.

 I researched for a while and decided to get a Hyperkin Retron77. This thing is amazing! It plays all of the game cartridges that I own for the 2600, even one called Solaris that won't run in color on my original 2600 but will on the Retron77. I think it is because the cartridge is PAL format while my console is NTSC (It's hard to tell with Atari cartridges).

 

The joystick it came with is a little wonky right out of the box and is not as precise as my original controllers. Now, I did succeed in replacing the guts of my original joysticks a few years ago, so that's partly why they are quite precise, but you'd think Hyperkin could give us a better controller than this. It's cool that it has two fire buttons, but the joystick itself has way too much 'throw' which makes you have to move the stick quite a bit before the thing you're controlling on the screen moves. It's fine with games like Space Invaders, but will get you killed in games like Gravitar.

 

Turns out Hyperkin did make a better joystick than that - it's called the Ranger gamepad. I picked one up a couple of days after getting the Retron77. The joystick aspect of it is one of the best controllers I've ever used. So responsive and solidly built.

 

You can also switch how you hold the gamepad with a little switch on the side. Flipping it will reorientate the thumbstick so that you can operate it with either your left or right hand. You can even flip the power/data cord on the controller to a new position so that it's out of the way if you turn the gamepad around. That's quite the clever feature that most other gamepads don't have. Just make sure that your console is turned off Before you flip the switch though, or it'll mess the system up and you'll get a black screen. If you get that, remove the micro SD card in the back, download a new image of the operating system for it from AtariAge's website, install it with a program such as USbit (you can't just copy and paste the new OS image into the microSD card), and you're good to go.

 

You should do this regardless since the new OS has improvements over the old one such as optional scan lines and slight glow effects that make the graphics look more like they did on old CRT TVs when the Atari 2600 was new, extra game save slots - yes you can save your game progress on this thing which is possibly the very best thing about it!, and being able to set difficulty switch settings once and not have to reset them each time you play.

 

You'll also find that on AtariAge and AtariMania's websites, you can download and install roms of every Atari 2600 game ever made, even some of the prototypes, for free. Installing them on the microSD card is easy as copy and paste into a 'games' folder that you should make on the microSD card when you upgrade the OS. I highly recommend that you get out another microSD card other than the one that comes with the console and make your changes to that, just in case you mess up the one that came with the console. Almost any microSD card will work provided that it is small enough capacity. I tried one of my 1GB sized ones and the console wouldn't read it even though my PC verified that the right files were on it. I guess the console is limited in how big of a card it can read. I bought a 128 MB card for it, which is the size of the one it comes with, and it works perfectly. Even if you install every game rom for the 2600 from AtariMania's website, the games themselves will still only use up 10MB of space. So, with the OS and the games, you'll find that 128 MB is plenty big. Amazing huh?

 

I still use the cartridges that I own and have picked up a couple more of them, with this system, even if I have the roms for them on the microSD card. I enjoy the cartridges' artwork and just the physical aspect of handling them and putting them in the slot. I read that the Retron77 downloads the rom from your cartridge and temporarily saves it while you are playing it anyway, rather than constantly reading from the cartridge.

 

It's worth getting for sure. The only caveat I'd give is that you shouldn't leave little kids, or irresponsible people alone with this console as they could rather easily mess it up, especially the microSD card and slot.

 

It's cool that this same Ranger controller can also act as a paddle controller with the flip of a switch on the side, but the precision on it is only a little better than the original paddles. The original paddles were so wonky to start with and only got worse with age. My original paddles are a real challenge to use today, even after I opened them up and cleaned the contacts inside. The Ranger's scroll wheel at least stops the things you are controlling on the screen from jittering all over the place, even if you still have quite the dead zone and other precision problems with them. Works perfectly with games like Casino and BlackJack at least.