TheFox

Not every failed project is a scam. Of course crowd funding adds an extra wrinkle, but people should realize when they are investing in a long shot. Anyone remember the NUON? It was a DVD/game system promising casual family friendly gaming back in 2001. I bought one, so it did at least come out but it didn't get much further than the Amiico. The NUON also launched in a recession and they only got about 7 games out before imploding (it was a really nice DVD player though). So yeah, sometimes things just fail. And for the people that threw their money into this somehow not knowing it was high risk and are walking away empty handed... Uh, I guess it's a life lesson so you'll be older and wiser when someone offers to let you into a property investment deal that sounds too good to be true.

I thought this and the new Atari VCS were interesting, but I honestly don't see where the market for them would be. The major consoles have so much indie and retro games, these don't really do anything you can't get on the Switch or Playstation. And these retro consoles aren't cheap enough to be a compelling option. I think the Atari VCS benefited from just how unambitious it was; that is to say it was just a cheap PC with standard controllers so it didn't require any unique games. The Amico would have needed games designed or modified specifically for its weird controllers. I don't know if the people behind the Amico were acting in good faith (sometimes projects just fail, it doesn't necessarily mean they intended it to be a scam), but I wish it would have made it to market.

@Specter_of-the_OLED I think Panzer Dragoon and Star Fox 64 (which came later) are pretty comparable, but the Star Fox on SNES has you pretty much flying in a straight line without the twists and turns of the later games. If we count that, then we also have to count Space Harrier, which goes way back.

I only heard about the ZX-Spectrum until about five years ago (I'm American). Without any nostalgia to fall back on, every time I see a spectrum game, I feel violently ill. Those clashing colors are an assault on the eyes.

I know this is Nintendo Life so everything has to be a (insert Nintendo IP) clone. But wouldn't it be more fair to say this was a Panzer Dragoon inspired game rather than a Star Fox clone?

I remember my friend and I rented this game when it first came out. It seemed mind blowing at the time. Fortunately, we had an invincibility code because the game was HARD! Considering it was a one or two day rental, we would not have seen much of it in the time we had.

If I bought this re-release, I'd feel obligated to grow my mullet back. I did that about five years ago as a joke. I don't care what the cool hipsters say, I thought it looked cool.

So they're physical download codes?

@Funneefox Oh no! There's people out there that don't share all your opinions! How will you cope?

Why the need to bring in a Twitter flame war? Yes, Tennapel has opinions, and I don't agree with all of them. Kind of like just about anyone else across various entertainment industries. It's kind of ridiculous how Twitter ***** a brick every time his name comes up.

I still have three Atari systems (7800, Lynx & Jaguar) and I wanted to want this thing. I could easily afford it so it was just a matter of finding ANY justification for it. But with a Switch and PS, I've already got the indie games covered, I have multiple ways of streaming to my TV, and I don't have any burning desire to play PC games (with modest hardware requirements). I'm not one of the people foaming at the mouth "THE VCS IS WORTHLESS!"* but for me and probably most people, it would be totally redundant.

• I really don't get the tidal wave of psychotic hatred I've seen on YouTube aimed at this device. They were acting like Atari was going to break into their house and steal their video game collections.

I can't read Sega's mind... a truly terrifying thought! But I get the idea that this was made more for people who like to collect novelty gizmos more than as a legitimate way to play games.

I guess it's to be expected that Nintendo Life would make this about competing with a Nintendo handheld, but I think this was more intended as an alternative to the netbooks that were popular back then. I remember a lot of people using netbooks for gaming back then and while they were small by laptop standards, they were still bulky compared to handhelds. But even looking at it that way, this would have been an uphill battle. With a netbook, you could play any PC game their modest performance could handle. This Panasonic would presumably have to build up its own separate game library to compete.

I think it will be a success in the sense of it filling a niche and being able to turn a profit. That said, I don't see it being a huge success. A lot of people that hang out on NL or similar sites are into this sort of thing, so there's a lot of us but we're still the minority compared to all the people who are content to play free-to-play trash on their phones.

@retro_player_22 They certainly made some big blunders, although the deal with Nintendo would have been hard to really see the impact until after the fact. Another thing that makes Atari's seemingly baffling decisions make a little more sense is that from the Tramiel take over in 1984 until about 1992, they were trying to focus on personal computers, and consoles sort of ended up on the back burner. And that strategy kind of worked until suddenly cheaper IBM clones running Windows 3.x essentially crushed Atari, Commodore, and almost Apple in the early 90's.

I really don't want more hardware piling up, but I would like to try it out. The price seems kind of steep, but I'd like to see what the joysticks feel like. Good arcade joysticks are expensive, so depending on the quality, maybe this is a fair price. I would have rather had the two joysticks separate though.

@Asaki It's about time. I'm not saying the 7800 library is a goldmine, but there's definitely some good stuff hidden in there that no one knows about because the NES ruled at the time and the 2600 gets all the retro attention now. It's nice to see Ninja Golf made the list. I love that game! But for the love of all things holy, why is Desert Falcon the 2600 version?! It's unplayable! The 7800 version was actually decent.