µTari Go: A Handheld That Plays Real Atari 2600 Cartridges
Retro Dodo reports on a hobby project I find delightfully stubborn: a handheld that plays genuine Atari 2600 cartridges, with a real built-in screen and no emulation at all. It is called the µTari Go (micro-Tari) and comes from Nick Bild, who has previously shrunk the Atari 2600 down to a fully working board about three times smaller than the original.
The handheld uses the original 6507 processor with zero FPGA, and it plays on a 4-inch CRT. Everything you need from a home-console session is packed in: built-in controls, speakers, audio amplifiers and a cartridge slot, all inside a 3D-printed case. It is powered through an external 12V jack, so you can run it from a portable power pack and take it out of the house. The files are available on GitHub for anyone who wants to build one, and the news first surfaced via Hackaday.
What I like here is the spirit. Plenty of modern handhelds copy the look of classic hardware with software emulation, but this one keeps the old silicon and the old carts at the center. The writer also points out that ModRetro's Chromatic helped revive interest in Game Boy releases, and wonders whether a handheld like this might nudge people toward making new Atari games too. It is not a polished product, but as a modding project it shows how much fun old hardware still offers.
Source: Retro Dodo
The handheld uses the original 6507 processor with zero FPGA, and it plays on a 4-inch CRT. Everything you need from a home-console session is packed in: built-in controls, speakers, audio amplifiers and a cartridge slot, all inside a 3D-printed case. It is powered through an external 12V jack, so you can run it from a portable power pack and take it out of the house. The files are available on GitHub for anyone who wants to build one, and the news first surfaced via Hackaday.
What I like here is the spirit. Plenty of modern handhelds copy the look of classic hardware with software emulation, but this one keeps the old silicon and the old carts at the center. The writer also points out that ModRetro's Chromatic helped revive interest in Game Boy releases, and wonders whether a handheld like this might nudge people toward making new Atari games too. It is not a polished product, but as a modding project it shows how much fun old hardware still offers.
Source: Retro Dodo
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