The Atari mini console The400 Mini has been announced by Retro Games, a miniaturised version of the classic 1979 home console. The console is coming out on 28th March 2024
The400 Mini – why did Plaion settle on that rather odd branding? – features 25 retro games, a HDMI output and comes with one joystick, but supports more USB controllers via the five USB ports. The USB ports also allow you to load your own games with the console compatible with all Atari 400, Atari 800, Atari XL/XE and Atari 5200 games.
The 25 bundled games include:
- Berzerk
- Boulder Dash
- Capture the Flag
- Lee
- Millipede
- Miner 2049er
- Missile Command
- M.U.L.E
- Star Raiders II
- Yoomp!
Visit Retro Games for more details.
The original story follows.
Another mini console has seemingly appeared on the ESRB rating database, with the Atari ‘The400 Mini’ tagging onto the long tail of the mini console craze with a collection of Atari 400 games to delight the older gaming souls out there.
Being distributed by Embracer Group’s Plaion brand (formerly known as Koch Media), and coming in with an ‘E’ for everyone rating, the product is described as follows:
“This is a collection of classic Atari 400 games across a variety of genres (e.g., sports, platformers, action-adventure, space shooters). Some games contain moderate or pixilated depictions of violence: small figures shooting projectiles at robots; fighters exploring platforms while punching/kicking ninja enemies; space shooters depicting laser fire and explosions.”
This sounds like pretty much all video games to me. I’ve lost count of the number of games where I’ve explored platforms and kicked ninjas, made explosions and lasers happen in space, and shot projectiles at robots. I love shooting robots and kicking ninjas. These days it tends to be in ultra high resolutions and I don’t have to sit six inches from the TV screen for it to fill my vision, but the gist is the same.
The Atari 400 (and the higher specced Atari 800 that it outsold by 2-to-1) was released all the way back in 1979, with the 400 referring to the 4 KB of RAM included. Both came with four joystick ports for multiplayer, but these were rarely filled out by games, with the rare exceptions being MULE and Super Breakout, which actually supported eight players.
Looking at Atari Mania, the top ten player-rated games for the Atari 400 include:
- MULE
- Rescue on Fractalus!
- The Seven Cities of Gold
- Dropzone
- The Eidolon
- International Karate
- Pitfall II – Lost Caverns
- Bruce Lee
- Boulder Dash
- Montezuma’s Revenge
We’re also pretty likely to see Star Raiders 2, Frogger, Space Invaders, Robotron: 2084, Missile Command and other iconic games of the era.
Source: ESRB
