I locked in my pre-order for THEA1200, a re-imagining of an old Amiga computer circa 199x, with HDMI out and USB in. I have just enough nostalgia for the Amiga’s many amazing games that the sub-$200 price tag was irresistable. Now I just gotta wait seven months for the mother-flubbin’ thing to come out.
In the meantime, I am spoiled for choice when it comes to retro gaming. Between the constant re-masters and re-releases, the collections and museum pieces, the scummy drip-feed services like Nintendo Switch Online, the endless parade of small developers looking to capture a specific moment in time, and the cool crime of software emulation, retro gamers are eating pretty good these days.
Along the side of the track is Atari, enjoying something of a resurgance. After a clown car of different owners all but squeezed the zombie brand dry, Atari now finds itself under new and competent management that actually wants to do right by the once-prestigious name. A couple years ago they dropped Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection, a beautiful exhibit of the company’s offerings from video game pre-history all the way to the ill-fated Jaguar. This collection was enough for me to explore my Atari roots and nod sagely about all that could have been.
Atari’s current strategy is tied up in their new Atari Plus line of consoles. Currently there are three to choose from: the 2600+, the 7800+, and the brand new yellow Pac-Man edition of the 2600+. As far as I can tell, these machines are all the same thing: a box that plays 2600 and 7800 games, backed by this new scrappy version of Atari that seems intent on supporting them with new cartridges.
And look — Atari fans? Content creators? Homebrew hackers? They’re all having a grand old time. I think it’s amazing that Atari has managed to carve a profitable little niche out of the backs of dedicated hobbyists. They certainly hey have the right price point. The 7800+ dipped below $100 for Black Friday, which wasn’t enough to get me to pull the trigger, but it was enough to get me to bite my knuckle and make whiny puppy noises.
So what’s stopping me? Well, it’s the same thing that always stops me from buying a new console: the 7800 library doesn’t have enough beef. Video game historians and Wikipedia editors will tell you the console was in competion with the NES, but that isn’t strictly true. In terms of raw power and ability, the 7800 was probably on par with that first wave of NES games — Donkey Kong Jr. and Ice Climber and Excitebike and what-have-you. But by the time Super Mario Bros. hit the field, it was pretty much game over. Instead of trying to pull ahead with the 7800, Atari instead re-re-re-launched the 2600, which fizzled out of existence around 1990. That left the 7800 with a pretty slim library of mostly space shooters and arcade ports.
Look, all I’m saying is, when you watch these “Top Ten Atari 7800 Games” videos on YouTube, and these guys are all picking ports of Galaga and Asteroids… it’s because there’s not much else to play. Nobody puts Galaga on their top ten list for the NES, and it’s not because Galaga is no fun. It’s just, who with a straight face would tell you Galaga has the juice when Bionic Commando and Kirby’s Adventure are right there?
Thankfully for Atari, this is a solvable problem. They seem to already have the nostalgia players locked in, and the 7800 has a really robust homebrew scene. Right now that scene is mostly dedicated to sewing up arcade ports, and is built on an audience willing to plunk down $30 for a new version of Tiger Heli. There’s enough creativity in the room to keep a classy retro machine chugging along.
But can they get people like me to buy it? NES kids who want more from their retro games than score attacks and arcade ports?
Hey, here’s a question.
How did the NES pull so far ahead of the 7800, back in the late ’80s? I mean, marketing and business strategy aside. The answer is, of course, that the NES cheated. They started putting special chips into their game cartridges, enabling them to do things the console alone couldn’t. I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know what “memory mapping” even is, but even my tiny caveman brain can spot the gulf between Balloon Fight and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.
In an alternate universe where Atari had the management chops to duke it out, was the 7800 capable of the same tricks? Could a new generation of carts have hit the shelves in 1989 that made the launch titles look quaint by comparison? Could they have enticed developers like Capcom and Square with the right toolbox?
The answer to this seems to be “No, but yes, and also kinda maybe,” and involves looking into game called Rikki & Vikki, which by all accounts is super fun but also unplayable on anything but an original 7800.
So, let’s say it’s plausible. Hopefully, homebrewers are working on it. I like to imagine a backroom somewhere at the Atari Age forums where some hard-hitting grognards are fleshing out the parameters of what the 7800 might have been, had it leveled up and got to the 1993 finish line. At least one of those YouTubers I mentioned seems to think Atari is going to license Rikki & Vikki for their 2026 line-up.
Assuming any of this is true, maybe my voice is welcome at the table. Maybe Atari wants to know how to sell the next iteration of their plus line to an NES kid.
I figured I’d help them out with this friendly numbered list. And don’t worry, Atari. We’ll start out with something easy.
#1 – Rikki & Vikki
I mean, it goes without saying, right? The game looks super cute, and it proves the 7800 has the chops to hang. If this won’t run on the 7800+, the rest of this list is a lost cause.
Oh, hey, while googling up a screenshot of Rikki & Vikki to show off how super cute it looks, I discovered the game’s avaialble on Steam. Hold on, I’ll be right back.
Three hours and $9.99 later…
Yeah, this game is monstrously fun, and does something very interesting that I may have to unpack in another blog post. It’s a platform-y puzzle-y Fire & Ice kind of experience, and it’s exactly the sort of direction the 7800+ library could go if Atari wants to branch out from shoot-em-ups.
#2 – SwordQuest: The Complete Saga
One of the big draws to the Atari 50 collection was SwordQuest: AirWorld. I chronicled the whole insane backstory of SwordQuest in a Let’s Play series for Youtube, and it’s the perfect example of the shenanigans that sank Atari as a company in the early ’80s.
SwordQuest: AirWorld playlist on YouTube
The short version of this suggestion is, the three unsolvable SwordQuest games on the 2600 could be dolled up a bit, given a chain of solvable logic, and then packaged with a 7800 version of AirWorld to create an exquisite and unique puzzle book. Frame it as the definitive SwordQuest experience, add in some little cutscenes to sell the story, and let the player pick between the male and female characters from the original pack-in comic.
If you want to go real crazy with it, build in a cryptic ARG to keep the forum kiddies talking and pulling threads.
#3 – Yoomp!
Sticking with stuff that’s already on Atari 50, I got pretty insanely addicted to Yoomp!, a weird bouncy ball tunnel game for the Atari 800 computer. This is another homebrew project developed decades after the fact, and there’s no reason it couldn’t look and play great on the 7800.
This is the kind of game that would really sing with a level editor. The 7800+ has some mechanism to receive firmware updates, I wonder if players could share custom maps or other data back and forth.
#4 – Secret Quest
One of the games from those sad days in the late ’80s after Atari wheeled the 2600 back out was Secret Quest, Atari’s answer to The Legend of Zelda. And, you know what, it’s a valiant effort. Someone really pulled out all the stops for this little game, and it’s one of the more compelling pieces of history in Atari 50. You run around Zelda-style rooms whacking aliens with a laser sword, input detonation codes, and… that’s about it. That’s where the 2600 gave up the ghost. But there’s a lot of potential here for the 7800 to pick up the slack. A sci-fi themed exploration fill-out-the-map kind of game could be just the ticket, presuming 7800 carts can handle battery backup.
#5 – Something platform-y
The elephant in the room is, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, platform games ruled the roost on basically every home console. And yet, he only official platformer in the 7800 line is Scrapyard Dog. And, uh, let’s just be charitable and say it’s maybe not the best foot one could put forward.
There is so much design space to explore here. Something that looks like Mega Man or Castlevania would give a lot of NES kids reasons to turn their heads. If you want to market an 8-bit home console, you’re gonna have to tackle this mountain eventually.
#6 – Something Tetris-y
The other slam dunk genre the NES did really well was falling block puzzle games. Tetris and Dr. Mario are the poster boys, but there were others. There is an insanely expensive Klax release for the 7800 floating around out, and it might behoove Atari to grab hold of it. Or, hey, just get in touch with The Tetris Company and see if they’re down to clown.
#7 – Something faux-modern
Another avenue of inspiration Atari might turn to is the incredible UFO 50 collection. UFO 50 is a massive library of 8- and 16-bit style games packaged together in an absurdly cheap bundle. The backstory is, the developers pretended they had a software company right around the time of the 7800’s heyday, and imagined what its library would look like. What’s really cool about this collection is they got to explore a lot of different styles and genres of games, many of which hadn’t even been invented by 1990. The collection has deckbuilders, tower defense games, an idle resource collection deal, and lots of other zany stuff.
Atari could use the 30 years of video game development to imagine these genres in a new way. How about a top-down isometric Tony Hawk Pro Skater? A Balatro-style gambling score attack? A bullet heaven? A farming sim?
#8 – A classic RPG
If you really want to bring your 8-bit console into the future, you have to have great RPGs. I’ve always thought of RPGs as the sort of backbone of any video game library. The RPGs are why you buy the system, and then the sports and action and puzzle games are what you buy because the system is already in your house.
In our alternate universe, where the 7800 didn’t fail and actually grabbed a foothold against the NES, what would its RPGs have looked like? I think it’s pretty likely they would have spun out of the famous computer RPGs that came before, like Wizardry or Ultima. A good old-fashioned build-a-party-and-dungeon-hack would feel right at home on the 7800. And it makes the next suggestion pretty obvious.
#9 – An answer to Dragon Quest
We don’t have to re-invent the wheel here. We know what computer RPGs look like when they’re boiled down to their core essence and made playable on a four-button controller. They look like Dragon Quest. What does the 7800 version of Dragon Quest look like? I don’t know, but I hope some clever 7800 developer out there is working on a good answer for us.
#10 – A license that missed out on the 8-bit era
Think of all the cartoons, movies, and comic books in the past 30 years that would been perfect as an 8-bit game, but only missed the boat because of the relentless march of time. If you can swing it, try to nab a property that’s currently red-hot, like Freiren or Bluey. If not, there’s decades of old but not forgotten material that’s due for a re-imagining. Nostalgia is already the core of Atari’s re-branding. Double down on that, and deliver a quality experience for Samurai Jack or Kim Possible or John Dillermand. Wait, maybe not that last one.
The mega flex here would be to release a successful E.T. game. But… maybe we’re not there yet. Those wounds are still scabbed over.
Just, whatever you do, Atari, don’t just take some internet personality and then reskin one of your existing games with their likeness.
W-wait, you… you didn’t already…
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