Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
IGN
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games - IGN
Pokémon developer Game Freak has reportedly suffered a significant hack resulting in the leak of stolen data that includes codenames for 10th generation Pokémon games and even the Nintendo Switch 2.
Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, check out the previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.
Metroid-like games and their roguelike off-shoots are everywhere today. Not a week goes by without an indie game announcement promising “metroidvania” gameplay elements – and even Nintendo returned to making new Metroid titles after a near six year hiatus following Metroid: Other M in 2010. And that’s me being generous and counting Metroid Prime: Federation Force as a Metroid game…
But it wasn’t always so. After a Metroid renaissance in the early 2000s with Fusion, Prime, and Zero Mission (what a run!) exploring the series in both 2D and 3D, there was a clear shift away from these classic side-view explorative shooters. Konami stuck it out longer with the “vania” part of the equation and cranked out several quality 2D Castlevanias. But despite the critical success of many of these games, I think it’s fair to say that the genre was diminishing.
So it was with much excitement that I read on IGN back then that designer Donald Mustard and the ChAIR Entertainment team were planning to make a game based on Orson Scott Card’s dystopian novel, Empire. The two had previously collaborated on the underrated Advent Rising, and early coverage on IGN in 2006 – including whispers that it was going to be a bit of a love letter to Metroid – sounded promising.
When Metroidvanias Roamed the Earth
“The 2D Metroid and Zelda games were some of my favorite games of all time and to me represented the pinnacle of 2D game design, specifically when it comes to making a non-linear ‘onion layer’ world where exploration and discovery is the core design pillar,” Donald Mustard, former CCO, Epic Games and Co-Founder of ChAIR told me last week.
"…mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it." - Donald Mustard
“Our team felt like the genre had been largely abandoned for over a decade, since the advent of 3D gaming, and we really missed playing them. We thought maybe other people missed them as well, or that even a whole new generation of gamers could discover them. I know it’s weird to consider now, but it was also a time when non-physical – aka digital – distribution was ‘just’ becoming viable and games were no longer limited to being put in a box on a store shelf at a cost of $60 or more. It felt like the possibility of what a game ‘had’ to be was ripe for disruption, and it was the perfect moment to try and do something unique. But mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it.”
Selecting a genre other than first-person shooter or RPG already meant swimming against the current, but releasing Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive in 2009 made it an even bigger wager. At the time, console gamers vocally defended their preference to buy physical media over digital downloads.
Living in a Material World
Selling a game like Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive was a big deal back then. While Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store, and console digital stores game sales now dwarf the amount of physical games sold in the US, Statista estimates that in 2009, 80-90% of all game purchases were physical.
I’ve pulled this slide from our 2012 Gamer Segmentation Study (from the dusty corners of my hard drive) for another look at console gamers’ buying habits back in the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Even in 2012, the majority of console gamers didn't just prefer to buy physical games, they relied on retail purchases for most of them, too.
While it cut down on the publisher’s gamble with a non-franchise, niche game potentially gathering dust on store shelves, a digital-only release also risked alienating its potential core fanbase. Luckily, Shadow Complex made a great first showing. The polygonal, 2.5D presentation avoided the game looking like a relic of a bygone era. For ChAIR, going with polygons over sprites was all part of wanting to push the classic 2D Metroidvania formula as far as they could – and that included advanced lighting and effects.
Shadow Complex is at its core a side-scrolling action-adventure that’s heavy on exploration and platforming, but there are moments where it swings the camera around for third-person action sequences and lets players fire into the background. In a bit of serendipity, perhaps, that approach found its way into the very series that inspired Shadow Complex. The Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M similarly mixed 2D sequences with third-person perspective interaction – to its detriment, I’d argue in that case, as it was also tied to a clumsy control scheme.
Colonel Mustard, in the Lab, With the Foam Gun
One my favorite things about every new Zelda, Mario, or Metroid game is to discover what new powers the designers came up with. Being able to unlock, say, a magical vacuum cleaner, and then figuring out how to use it to solve puzzles is the sort of hook that has me coming back for more time and time again. I just 100-percented Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this week – and while it didn’t quite live up to the peak combat and dungeon design of the best Zelda games past, it takes and runs with the "multi-use tool" concept in impressive ways. Whether it’s grabbing a water-based enemy to put out flames or building stairways out of beds, getting creative with objects that unlock exploration is half the fun in action-adventure games. Which brings me back to one example of why Shadow Complex stuck with me for so long: the Foam Gun.
Turns out, Mustard is also on Team Foam Gun: “I love the Foam Gun too! One of the things that most Metroid games have is a freeze mechanic you can use to freeze enemies in place. You can then use the frozen enemy as a platform to land on or jump off. We loved that mechanic and wanted to extend on the idea – what if you could use a ‘quick hardening Foam’ to ‘freeze’ an enemy or an object but then could stack Foam to build structures or walls or platforms, and then go further and add combinatorial effects like ‘what happens if I shoot foam onto something and then throw a grenade into it?’ We wanted to allow for more emergent and unexpected forms of gameplay. The more we prototyped and played with it, the more exciting it became, and the more we leaned into it as a core mechanic. That kind of philosophy and design heavily influences everything I’ve made since then.”
The Foam Gun wasn’t just fun to use. It also became an integral way to sequence-break Shadow Complex. At a runtime between five and 13 hours, according to HowLongtoBeat, the ability to create yourself your own platforms provided those who knew where to look a way to blaze through the game even faster. There is a moment in Metroid Fusion where the game sort of breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge when a player creatively “breaks” the game and gets to an area in record time. It’s a fascinating bit of meta commentary because it reminds players that for as smart and crafty as they think they are, the designers were actually one step ahead after all. They didn’t just figure out the same trick, they may have designed it in the first place.
“I love emergent gameplay, and rewarding players for trying to push the edges of what the game world or a game system can be. As we discovered crazy sequence-breaking opportunities, we decided to lean into them as opposed to ‘fixing them’ as much as possible,” Mustard told me when asked about the Foam Gun shortcuts. “We were very lucky to have Ken Lobb at Microsoft Games give us some incredible advice. It was great working with him. He was part of Nintendo when the original Metroid games were being made and shared some techniques they used to deliberately allow people to find ways to sequence break very very early into the game. It’s a design lesson I’ll never forget. Cough. Fortnite Rocket Riding. Cough. Cough.”
When Shadow Complex released in August of 2009, the reception was unanimously favorable. Not only did players love the game, it brought back fond memories of an increasingly underserved genre.
Naturally, ChAIR started work on a sequel. Mustard: “Finishing the game almost felt like ‘okay now we actually know how to make a game like this’ so now we can be much more ambitious with the next one. Our goal can be to really move the genre forward!”
Mobile Blade Killed the Console Star
While not much is known about the actual project, designers at ChAIR and its parent company, Epic Games, acknowledge that they were working on a Shadow Complex sequel. As late as September 2011, Cliff Bleszinski (then Epic Games design director) commented that Shadow Complex 2 was “largely designed” and that Epic needed to find a partner to help finish the game and publish it. But sometimes, better – or perhaps, bigger – is the enemy of the good – and a pioneering mobile game hit led ChAIR into a new direction.
“We immediately began working on a sequel. Like with Shadow Complex, we designed the entire game map on paper first, then quickly stood it up in a very rough but completely playable form. We got pretty far into preproduction, and in my opinion, it probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made,” Mustard shared. “But… in late July of 2010 we had a very unique opportunity to partner with Apple to make the very first game ever using Unreal Engine on mobile devices. We decided to pause development on SC2 to investigate that opportunity and 4 1/2 months later released Infinity Blade on iOS.”
"Shadow Complex 2 probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made" - Donald Mustard
Infinity Blade blew up – in part because it showed core gamers that mobile games could be for them – and was quickly followed by a sequel. The two games grossed over $30 million at a time when established publishers and developers alike were still trying to figure out a “there” for them on Apple’s expanding mobile gaming marketplace. Infinity Blade III was unveiled in late 2013 and launched at the same time, complete with an Imagine Dragons song tie-in. It rocketed to #1 in the App Store within hours. But there was an even bigger distraction on the horizon that made a return to the world of Shadow Complex very unlikely.
Mustard says that creating Shadow Complex was one of the great joys of his life. The team’s goal was to see if they could make something that would live up to the games that inspired it – and then expand upon them and help bring something new to the genre.
“The right timing to return to Shadow Complex just never presented itself as we soon became very busy with what became Fortnite,” said Mustard.
I've Seen the Future and it Will Be
As for the future, Mustard left Epic in 2023 to join the Russo Brothers, the directors of Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, at multimedia studio AGBO. “I am very satisfied with the work I’ve done in games over the past 20+ years and for now I feel like I have done everything I wanted to do -- with one possible exception,” he told me.
The good news for fans of metroidvanias – including Mustard who calls out this year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Animal Well as new favorites (I agree!) – is that the genre is now clearly here to stay. Gone are the days of having to pick between the two flavors “sci-fi” and “gothic” bounty hunter or having to wonder if Metroid: Dread would ever see the light of day. We now have granddaddy Castlevania crossing back into the very roguelike spin-off it inspired in the first place, Dead Cells. We have forgotten Atari 2600 shooter Yars’ Revenge serving as the inspiration for a 2D metroidvania reboot in Yars Rising. And we even have the absolutely delightful shmuptroidvania Minishoot’ Adventures that basically crosses The Legend of Zelda with Galaga. If you want to play a metroidvania, you no longer have to dig in the past. I know, ironic – because that’s what this very column is about.
But I’m greedy, so I asked Donald Mustard if he would come back to work on a game like Shadow Complex – or if he was ready to deputize someone else out there who could carry on the legacy and continue the series.
“The opportunity to become a partner at AGBO with Joe and Anthony Russo and the absolutely incredible team that has assembled there is a dream come true for me. We are creating some truly incredible stories that will allow us to push storytelling further across different mediums. I can’t wait for people to experience some of these things,” he said.
“But that ‘possible exception’ I mentioned? If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.”
"If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.” - Donald Mustard
Where Can You Play it Now
Shadow Complex wasn’t entirely forgotten after ChAIR turned to Infinity Blade. The developer brought back a Remaster of Shadow Complex for an encore outing in 2015 for PC, with a console release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One the following year.
If there is a silver lining in the story of a potential game series cut short, it’s that Shadow Complex is easy to track down – and it still holds up well in both editions. The Remaster is available for $15 on the Epic Games Store and Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox Stores. Annoyingly, the original Xbox 360 game sells for the same price. If you want to splurge, there’s even a small physical release of 7,500 PS4 copies of the Remastered version, courtesy of Limited Run, which unfortunuately now commands upwards of $100 on eBay. The remaster is definitely the version to play – and I highly recommend going back to it if you’re a fan of metroidvanias in general.
Peer Schneider heads up Game Help & Tools across IGN, Map Genie, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and VG247 and would love to fill a pool with metroidvanias and go swimming in it.
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The next Stern Pinball machine will be based on the John Wick movie franchise, including music, movie clips, and likenesses of all major characters – most importantly that of Keanu Reeves, who graces the art and presumably many clips of assassinations. This is not Keanu’s first pinball appearance – he’s already been the star of the 1995 machine from Williams, Johnny Mnemonic, and Reeves was a cast member that appeared in Williams’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was also a game in 1993.
John Wick seems to be primarily themed around assassinations appropriately, and that’s where things get weird. Causing trouble for you is an AI-controlled opponent. Here’s how Stern says this all will work:
To raise the stakes, John Wick pinball introduces Stern’s all-new dynamic AI combat system, an innovation that brings the frenetic combat of the legendary films to the game. The Stern team has created a primitive video game AI system to control the enemy lights on the playfield, setting the John Wick pinball games apart from prior pinball machines, where all lights were controlled by player actions, timers, and random number generations. In this new AI combat system, enemy icons are responsive to player behavior and will illuminate dynamically around the playfield to challenge the player. The enemies move tactically with this dynamic software to counter player objectives, creating a unique challenge in each game session. The system also features a new action video player that dynamically reflects player action – as you defeat three enemies, you'll see video clips of John Wick doing the same in the films!
It sounds like a bit of randomization is involved, and that’s on point with pinball’s unpredictability. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out.
John Wick series mainstay Ian McShane will reprise his character Winston in a way in the game, lending his voice to callouts which you can get a taste of in the first trailer here.
A closer look at the various exclusive features of the Premium and Limited Edition versions can be found in the slideshow below. So far we spot a motorized car toy, a drop target leading into the Red Circle Club Area, a ramp diverter (center), an upkicker, and a weapon case toy that hides a subway shot, among other custom toys and features that the Pro Version will leave out. The Limited Edition comes with all sorts of extra non-playfield goodies.
Notably, all three versions have unique artwork, but the Premium Version’s artwork is described as Neon Noir and really is killer, with a very retro futurism vibe. The lit up neon plastics featured throughout the playfield seem to complement it nicely.
Stern Pinball recently hosted a John Wick pinball preview event that IGN attended. Here's what IGN's Host and Producer Benjamin Watts thought of it:
First Impressions of John Wick Pinball:
When I first stepped up to the John Wick pinball cabinet, I immediately had the feeling that the world of assassin's crafted for the films, makes for the perfect theme for pinball machine. The skills that make the Baba Yaga such an effective killer such as precision and control, lend themselves very well to setting highscores on this one-of-a-kind game. To judge the cabinet on aesthetics alone, it is simple the prettiest machine I've ever played on. The lighting system brings the theming to life with the glow of the stylized New York City streets, while the sound and visuals place you firmly in the universe and get your heart pumping like only the best action movie franchises can. The flippers were perfectly responsive and the addition of what Stern is calling the "dynamic AI combat system", keeps the energy of each game high and continually exciting. --Benjamin Watts
Stern's John Wick Pinball machine is out now. The MSRP for the Pro Edition is $6,999, with the Premium Edition coming in at $9,699 and the Limited Edition at $12,999. You can buy them here – except for the LE, it’s already sold out! And if you need a series refresher, here’s where you can stream the John Wick movies right now.
Samuel Claiborn is IGN's managing editor and a fixes/breaks ancient arcade and pinball machines in his garage. TCELES B HSUP to follow him @Samuel_IGN on Twitter.
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If you're of a certain age, that is to say "old," then your first video game experience was likely on an Atari 2600 console. The wood-grain accented plastic box, with its mechanical switches and single-button joystick controller, represented both the runaway popularity of the home video game experience and its near-fatal collapse.
I am one of those people of that certain age, an old man whose earliest gaming memories were forged on an Atari 2600. While the first console my parents bought was a ColecoVision, we eventually got Atari's box as well, and I spent hours in front of a 13" black and white CRT playing games with baffling graphics and often unclear goals. And man oh man did I love it.
Well friends, Atari is back! Again! This time with the Atari 2600+, a shockingly faithful recreation of that now 46-year old gaming system that you can actually hook up to your modern TV.
Video Computer System
The 2600+ packaging is quite nice, actually. Inside the box you'll find the console, a quick-start guide, a joystick, a 10-in-1 game, HDMI cable, and USB to USB-C power cable. There's no adapter inside the box: you'll need to supply your own. Crucially, and weirdly, you need to use a USB wall adapter. I thought I'd be slick by just swapping out my Nintendo Switch power cable, since it's also USB-C, but that didn't work. Neither did the power supply for my Steam Deck… same story with my Macbook USB-C charger. I don't think I've ever encountered a piece of tech that didn't just accept any USB-C connection I offered, but that was the case with the Atari 2600+. It's not a big deal – who doesn't have half a dozen or more USB chargers at this point – it's just surprising.
Well friends, Atari is back! Again!
The console itself is probably 20-30% smaller than the original device, but it's incredibly faithful otherwise. All the switches on the face of the console feel exactly like they did on the original. I always loved the springiness of the "Game Select" and "Game Reset" switches, and the power and "TV Type" switches both have the exact same satisfying clunk of the old console.
In addition to the USB-C power and HDMI ports on the back, there are also difficulty switches for both left and right player, as well as a 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio selector. The aspect ratio switch is self-explanatory, the difficulty switch is less so. You see, back in the day, you could make games more difficult for one or both players by changing the position of a mechanical switch. The fact those switches remain is something I really love about the Atari 2600+. They could have done all this stuff in a menu, but instead decided to keep it pure. Respect.
The "TV Type" switch is also something I love. Back in the day, if you owned an Atari 2600, there was a good chance you had a black and white TV. Even in the 1980s, B&W TVs were still around and were a budget choice for many people. When my parents upgraded to what was then a massive-seeming 19" color set, the 13" B&W was moved into my brother's and my room and became our gaming TV. Switching the TV Type to B&W changed the color palette of whatever game you were playing to a friendly greyscale, and I'm happy to say it still works as originally intended. Well, mostly. Some games, like Coleco's Donkey Kong, don't switch, but the majority of the ones I tried worked fine.
Atari's decision to keep the 2600+ as close to the original as possible is kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I am a sucker for attention to detail, and I just can't get over how everything feels exactly like I remember. On the other hand… I don't really like having to get up and reset the game with a switch on the console every time I die, or when I want to cycle through the available games on something like Combat.
The joystick cable is woefully short, which I also have a love-hate relationship with. It would be awesome to sit across my room, on my couch, and play these old games. But at the same time, being forced to sit directly in front of the TV is a much more genuine experience to the original. We didn't sit in chairs, or on the couch, when we played old consoles back in the day. We sat on the floor directly in front of the TV until someone told us we were going to burn our eyes out, and dagnabbit we liked it.
Atari's decision to keep the 2600+ as close to the original as possible is a double-edged sword.
Dust Off Those Old Carts
The biggest draw of the Atari 2600+ is it allows you to play the original cartridges from the 2600 and the 7800 on your modern TV (sorry, 5200 enjoyers). Unlike the Atari VCS (which I did not like much), there are no games living inside the memory of the system. It's entirely cartridge-based, which makes it closer to something like the Hyperkin RetroN 5. It includes a 10-in-1 cartridge in the box, with 10 original 2600 games.
You select which game you want to play by setting the dip switches on the cart itself and be still my heart. Dip-switches? This is the most-retro computing feature I've ever professionally reviewed. The settings are printed on the cart, so you don't have to worry about losing the box and having to guess your way through.
Of the included games, my favorite is, and maybe always will be, Yars Revenge. It's one of the best Atari 2600 games, right up there with Vanguard. The other games include Adventure, Missile Command, and Combat, which was a pack-in with the original console.
Of the included games, my favorite is, and maybe always will be, Yars Revenge.
Original cartridges also work just like you'd expect them to. Pop them into the top of the 2600+, turn it on, and start playing. It's not instant-on, which I don't like. You have to sit through a few seconds of a splash screen with the Atari logo and a screen telling you the game is loading. That's weird to me, because Atari 2600 game files were limited to 4 kilobytes (with exceptions I won't get into). Four kilobytes is almost impossible to fathom in modern computing terms, so I find it slightly irritating that it takes more than zero-seconds between me hitting power and the game starting up.
Small annoyances aside, I was able to hot-swap games without issue, although some of the older, original carts didn't handle it well. That's likely due to 40 years of wear and tear and corrosion more than the 2600+. I had no problem popping out the included cart, changing the dip-switches, and popping it back in again. Is hot-swapping a feature? Well, I don't know for sure, there's very little documentation out there, so proceed at your own risk.
While it is pretty awesome to be able to throw in an original Atari cartridge and have it work almost exactly like it did back in the day, the Atari 2600+ is an emulation machine, and doesn't use an FPGA like the Analogue Pocket. It uses the open-source Stella emulator, which you can view in its entirety on GitHub. I like that they went with a known-entity rather than try and reinvent the wheel, but I would have preferred the fully identical hardware an FPGA solution would have afforded.
I would have preferred an FPGA solution.
So what does the Atari 2600+'s emulation software mean for you, the owner of some 2600 carts you bought at a flea market? Probably very little. But because it's software emulation rather than hardware, some games won't work. The number of non-working games is pretty small, and you can find the list buried on the Atari 2600+ website. I didn't have any trouble with any of the games I have, but if you're really hoping to play that copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the 2600… well, maybe they're doing you a favor.
40+ Year-Old Game Design
The biggest problem with any system designed around the Atari 2600 is a large majority of the games available for that console just aren't much fun to play anymore. There are a few exceptions, like the previously mentioned Yars Revenge and the "how did they even do this?" Pitfall II. Adventure is one of the most historically significant games of the era, but its completely obtuse gameplay and single-pixel protagonist make it hard to appreciate as anything more than a relic.
That's the biggest weakness of all the game systems from back in the day. The games just don't hold up well. It's hard to understand now, but a huge draw of the early home "arcade" systems was the novelty of being able to directly control the picture on your television. TV had always been completely passive, and now you could push a little stick and press a shiny red button and the images on the screen, primitive though they were, were entirely under your control. It's impossible to ever replicate this novelty, which means many of the 2600 games have to live on the merits of their gameplay alone, and sadly, many of those games just suck ass.
None of this is the fault of the Atari 2600+, however. The good news is, those few games that actually are fun are pretty inexpensive, so you can easily build out a library of the all-time best of the best for the Atari 2600, and Atari 7800 carts are also easy to source and relatively cheap online.
