Console Review: Article And Video Review

The Atari VCS is the latest home console to come from the legendary Atari, who are the granddaddy of all video game console makers. Of course, the Atari of today isn’t the same company as it was in the 1970s when the original Atari VCS came out, but the new team have created this little box of wonders which does the Atari name proud.

History Lesson

As a brief history lesson, the Atari VCS is a console that released during the pandemic after years of development and was created following a crowd funding campaign. Certainly, a niche product, the machine was originally known as the Atari Box, and had and still has something of an identity crisis.

I’m sure the idea for the console may have originally been to capitalise on the wave of mini retro consoles like the NES, Super Nes, Mega Drive and PlayStation consoles that came in the last five years.

The Atari VCS does deliver on being a great classic console with a ton of old Atari Arcade and 2600 games built in. Arguably many of the games form the late 1970s and early 1980s have aged a lot worse than the 8-bit games of the NES from just a few years later, although there are still some all-time classics like Centipede, Pong and Asteroids which are as timeless as Super Mario Bros and Space Invaders.

But maybe it was the idea of just putting out ‘just another’ retro mini console that lead the team at Atari to set their ambitions higher with the VCS. Because this console actually delivers the ability to play more games on it than any other current console. You can play more Triple A games on the VCS then you can on the PS5, Xbox Series X or Switch, or all combined.

More Games Than The PS5 And Switch Combined

And the reason for this is because Atari set out to make this console very versatile and have access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, which instantly gives players access to the best of the Xbox Games library of Xbox Games Pass. You can also play the full Stadia library on the VCS. And yes, there are other ways to access both of these platforms, but not on a home console.

But that’s not all.

The VCS also can access Ant Stream Arcade which lets you play tons of classic arcade, console and home computer games for free (with limitations) or with unlimited playtime with a subscription.

Now you may note that all of these are streaming services and may have the concern that eventually these may no longer be supported on the VCS. This is a fair concern, and as a digital only platform, this is at the same risk as a all-digital PS5 of one day no longer being able to access game streaming or downloads.

The VCS does have its own App store which allows you to download games which are saved onto the console, and this does mean games will be able to be backed up and played for years to come even if streaming services end.

The machine comes with the Atari VCS Vault built in and give you a ton of classic Arcade and Atari 2600 games, but then you can double this library with the cheap download of the Atari VCS Vault 2 which adds even more 2600, 5200 and Arcade games. After this you can also download lots of other classic console games from the Atari 7800.

There aren’t Atari Jaguar, Atari ST or Atari Lynx games available as yet, but hopefully it won’t be too long until these platforms are added to get the full Atari experience.

But that’s not all either. The App Store allows you to get modern games, and there are a bunch of indie style 2D and 3D games to enjoy.

The highlight of the App Store is perhaps the Atari Recharged series of games like Black Widow, and Breakout which give a modern neon vector look to the games and modern gameplay tweaks.

So yeah, there you have it! There are tons of games you can play on the VCS. But I know what you’re thinking. Despite all the App Store, Atari Vault, Ant Stream, Stadia and Xbox games, this still doesn’t equal the Switch or PS5. You’re right, but that’s because we need to talk about…

PC Mode

Yep, the Atari VCS is literally a PC as well. It doesn’t come with a PC operating system installed, so this is where you’ll have to put in some effort yourself to get the most out of the VCS.

The Atari VCS website give you instructions on how you can install Windows 10 onto a thumb drive and within about 20 minutes I had Windows running on the VCS on my TV.

Now in all fairness, the VCS hardware means you do need to limit your expectations on what PC games you’ll be able to run smoothly on the hardware out of the box, but very quickly I was playing games form my Steam and Epic Games Store libraries on the console, as well as getting emulators for the N64 and PlayStation set up.

It’s worth noting that the VCS is upgradable. It comes with 8GB of Ram (there may also be a 4GB model available) but you can open this thing up and put up to 32GB of Ram inside. You can also add an SSD inside as well to upgrade the 32GB of SSD already included.

Upgrades do take a little effort and truthfully the access to upgrade the machine could have been made easier, but there are lots of videos on YouTube showing how this is done. I’ve not upgraded mine as yet, as I have a good gaming laptop so don’t need to push PC mode at the moment, but I may decide to in the future.

What You Do and Don’t Get In The Box

When you get the console, you can either get just the console or you can get editions that come with controllers. There are two controller types available. These are the Classic Controller which is like an updated Atari 2600 joystick and there is also the Modern controller which is in line with Xbox and Switch Pro controllers in style.

The modern controller is basically like an Xbox One Controller, and so I didn’t get one as you can use Xbox pads with the VCS.

The Classic controller I do have and it’s a joy to use. You won’t be able to use it with tons of modern games, but it is fun to play games form the VCS Vault with a retro style joystick. The joystick has added bells and whistles in that it has LED lights and rumbles which is something no Atari 2600 joystick ever did back in the day.

Most impressively is that the joystick rotates so becomes and effective paddle controller for the likes of Breakout and Pong. The joystick even adds a few additional buttons like a bumper button, and Home, menu and back buttons.

On the downside of things, the console is expensive at $300 USD, and I say that because for that price you will only get the console itself and no controller. If they found a way to include both a Classic and Modern controller in for that price I’d say it was quite reasonable, but there are a couple more downsides in terms of the value proposition.

As described above, this box can do an awful lot and that is fantastic, but to do everything described, you’ll be paying a fair amount beyond the initial $300. The controllers are each $50, and then you may decide for two player games that you either need two Classic or two Modern pads, so to play the full library with two players with the best controller for all games you’ll end up with four controllers.

On top of this if you want to use PC Mode to the fullest, you’ll need a minimum or a thumb or external USB hard drive, and then a keyboard and mouse, and a copy of an operating system. Linux is free of course, and you can use an unregistered version of Windows 10 just fine for free.

Now whilst this may sound like all the costs are starting to rack up, they know this machine is niche and will probably best appeal to gamers who may have a lot of these extras already. As it was, I had an external SSD I wasn’t using form an old laptop, and had spare a keyboard, mouse and Xbox controller, so this didn’t really cost me anything extra.

Certainly, though you may find that if you want to play all the games mentioned that you need to consider getting stadia or Xbox Games Pass, but again, if you already have these this is a great extra way to be able to play them.

In the future I’d love to see Atari get more of their back catalogue on the App Store and see ST, Lynx and Jaguar games included. Not only from their library of games, but from other publishers too. The Evercade has lead the way with a modern retro themed console that has games from all sorts of publishers available on it, and it would be great if Atari would take their lead and get some of the other classic games from lots more publishers on this machine.

Licensing may be a nightmare, but it would be great to see ET and Alien VS Predator released on this!

It would also be great to see more online features, achievements and online play supported, and just more indie games made with the VCS in mind.

Conclusion

For me this is something I would recommend for gamers who like niche and collectible consoles, and who want to have another way to play their favourite Atari games with the added bonus of Xbox and Stadia streaming game access. If you have an office or another room where it may be handy to have this set up, it’s perfect to give you access to a ton of games without having to get a forklift to carry your PS5 with you.

If you’re still on the fence, the option of PC Mode is brilliant as it can mean you can use it for a ton of productivity uses so being able to continue with Word or photoshop on your TV is great too.

This isn’t a console to get instead of a PS5, Switch or Xbox Series X, but say you only have a Switch and want a console to get Xbox exclusives like Halo Infinite on and to be able to access your Steam library on another TV this is well worth picking up.

I’d go as far to say that if Atari can improve the library and some of the features of the console, and most importantly, if they can bring the price down, the Atari VCS could become a sleeper hit and an essential for hardcore gamers.

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