Comments on: Atari Plug ‘n Play Keychains

By: USB Retro Neon Atari Lights: Alien And Joystick : Nerd Approved - Gadgets and Gizmos

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:01:01 +0000

[...] Particularly if that person happens to be old enough to have cut his teeth on gaming with the old Atari 2600 and Space [...]

By: Jacob

Jacob — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:53:55 +0000

According to one of the Flashback 2 engineers, they would have been able to make a good profit even if they had used the Flashback 2 chipset (which is an Atari on a chip), but chose to skimp. Result: it’s a very good miniature of the original joystick, but not a good game.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:18:34 +0000

Thanks for the tip – I had no idea that they were such poor facsimiles. You would think that old Atari games would be easy enough to reproduce.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:43:52 +0000

Actually, they make better keychains than games; the cable, while not retractable, is detachable. On the other hand, the joystick is poorly constructed (though I found a fix, see link above) and the games are poorly implemented – the units are actually Nintendo-compatible, and they’re using poor ports of Atari games. You’d think an NES would be able to one-up the 2600 in most respects, but it’s all about the software, and the software in this case is not as much fun as the originals. Definitely not approved by this nerd for much beyond use as keyfobs. =)