ATARI RECKONS ITS FUTURE LIES IN ITS PAST SO, AS WELL AS RELEASING RETRO-INSPIRED GAMES, IT’S GONE ALL-IN WITH A MODERN-DAY RECREATION OF ITS BEST-LOVED CONSOLE. BEN JONES, CREATOR OF THE ATARI 2600+, REFLECTS ON A JOB WELL DONE
When growing up, Ben Jones played on an Atari 2600. “I was born in 1978 so I was six, seven or eight when I enjoyed the console – about halfway through its lifecycle,” he says. He recalls its iconic design and the large number of games (“I remember enjoying Pong and we had River Raid”). But never in his wildest dreams did he ever think he would one day be remaking the machine 46 years after it originally launched.
“I’m really quite taken aback that Atari invited me to be the custodian of what, I would say, was the first mainstream console that had interchangeable cartridges,” he says, the excitement still starkly evident on his face. Indeed, as the commercial director of retro at Plaion (formerly Koch Media), Ben has been involved in every single aspect of the design of what has become the Atari 2600+. “I’m still kind of working on it full time,” he adds. And this, you sense, is only the beginning.
Atari had been considering a modern-day
recreation of the Atari 2600 for some time and its bosses mentioned it when talking to Plaion in April 2022. “We were just having a conversation with them on something separate,” Ben says. But, over the course of a couple of months, discussions advanced. Atari made it clear it wanted Plaion to handle the development, manufacturing and distribution of the end product and, by the summer, Ben was fully hands-on with the dream project.
The main thrust of those talks was how you could take a console which first saw the light of day in 1977 and make it sufficiently attractive. After all, it wouldn’t be the first stab at recreating the Atari 2600 so it would need to be rather special. “We spent a long time talking about everything to do with the aesthetics of the machine and the software,” Ben says. “We also discussed how we’d present it to the public. Everything was really carefully considered.”
They quickly cast aside talk of creating a traditional Mini console – one that was much smaller than the original with builtin games – in favour of a slightly smaller machine capable of playing the original Atari 2600 and 7800 cartridges. They also decided to include recreations of the CX40 joystick controller with the same size and layout, and include so-called “modern quality-of-life” features such as USB power, HDMI output and multiple screen resolutions.
Making a more compact machine, however, did have consequences. Although the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), as it was
