- This just showed up at the office, and to be completely honest,
I kinda forgot we ordered one, and I'm surprised it's even really here. The Atari VCS, for those
of you that don't know, is a system that was
being heavily advertised and independently funded back when classic systems
were first really blowing up. The Nintendo Classic came out, everyone wanted all these old
systems with games on them. And the promise of the Atari VCS was to be kind of that system for the Atari, but also to be a brand
new console slash mini-PC slash all over the place kinda thing that, to be honest, in my own head, I've kinda just dubbed as the Ouya 2, and we'll see how true that actually is. (driving electronic music) All right, so let's go ahead and just open up the main box right now. It looks like we just slide
this out. Is there tape? Oh yeah, there it is. Why are we still stuck? There we go. Okay, that's kinda cool, it has a little asteroid
setup on the front right here. I do like the boxing so far. All right, so this is... I know they did a couple different
designs for it look-wise. This was the kinda special
one for kickstarting, or... What was it on? I think it
was on Indiegogo actually. It has the wood panel front. I also apparently only ordered the one that's the system and
the classic controller, I don't have a modern controller in here. I guess we'll cross that
bridge when we get to it. We've got the VCS right here, we've got a pair of
USB ports on the front, on the back we got two
more, HDMI, ethernet, power, and then the button for power, which is on the back,
which is a little annoying. Oh, fancy. We have a Collector's Edition official certificate of authenticity. So I know I did buy this from them, especially 'cause I helped fund it happening in the first place. I feel like a lot of people
jumped on funding it right away just because a lot of people were like, "Sure? I kinda just wanna
see where this goes." I don't know how many
of us actually expected to get a super cool thing in response. Power cable. The rest of the... No, HDMI, that's HDMI cable. This is the rest of the power cable, as I almost lose the box. And I think that's it in here. So again, this is kind of a mixture of a couple of different things. One of the kind of original
primary advertised purposes is that it is a classic-style system, so it comes pre-installed with a bunch of different
Atari Classic games, and to play those games is obviously using the classic style joystick. Now, keep in mind that if your goal was just to be able to
play these classic games, this system, at least
this particular bundle, ran for almost $400, so there
are cheaper, better ways of probably playing Atari classics. That's one of the uses this guy has. There we go. Come on. Okay, same kind
of boxing deal here. And then we have the little joystick. It's been forever since
I've used an actual Atari, so I'm not sure how close
this is in terms of size. It's definitely a different design, it's been updated to
kinda match this aesthetic they're going for with the VCS. Probably gonna have trouble playing some more recent
games on this thing, but as far as playing
the Atari classics go... That's everything. There is a modern controller, again, that has been made for this as well, but I apparently did not order one, so we'll cross that bridge. Look, I'm gonna be real
honest with you guys, I didn't think this day
was actually gonna happen, and now that it's here, I don't know what my goal is right now. I guess we'll hook it
up and see what happens. (guns shooting chaotically) So, after having hooked up the Atari VCS and messing around with it for awhile, it's pretty much just as weird
as I was kind of expecting. It's almost as though it's trying to really be three different
things all at once. There's the Atari VCS
as a classic console, the Atari VCS as a new console,
and the Atari VCS as a PC. Now, on the classic
console side of things, this is actually, I think, probably the most overall
positive experience that I've had with the system so far. And the main way that
this really comes to be is through the one pre-installed game when you launch the Atari
VCS, the Atari Classics Vault. (logo bleeps) Which is a collection of over
100 different Atari titles, some of which are arcade games, other of which are some classic
Atari 2600 or 5200 games. The whole thing launches
with this fun little intro. The interface for it is
nice, simple, and clean, and has some really
interesting options actually, for things like either
changing some settings, like having scan lines, adjusting difficulty of the game itself, and even being able to read through scans of old school manuals, which
is a really nice touch. There are a couple games that I thought would have been kind of obvious add-ins that aren't currently
included in this list, for instance, "Pitfall!"
is oddly missing out. - Pitfall Harry, surrounded by giant scorpions
and man-eating crocodiles. - I'm sure partly this has to do with just weird rights issues for who owns what rights
to use what, but overall, the list of games that are
included is pretty good. Again, this is what I think was actually one of the more positive aspects of my interaction with the VCS. But it isn't exactly
justifying what the VCS is, because by classic console standards, yeah, it's actually really cool, but it's also $400 when it
comes with the controllers. Given when you look at
other classic systems that have been released before
for, say, $60, $80, $100, $400 is a lot, so what
exactly is going on here that justifies that price? And that's where the new console and PC aspects come to play. Now, for the new console side of things, again, the Atari Vault Classics, whatever, is really just a pre-installed game on it. The VCS itself has its
own full-blown interface before you even get into that, where you make a user profile, you log in, there's a shop for buying games, there's settings you can adjust. And there really isn't a
whole lot here right now. The interface itself is not great. The system does offer being able to use it in a 1080p or 4K mode, and while 4K does certainly make things look a little sharper, it also makes everything run a lot slower, even causing some games to
have noticeable stutter, even if you're just emulating
an old-school Atari classic. Now, part of the promise
with this new console aspect is that, while it does have
these classic Atari games on it, there are other games you can download and play on the system as well, and the library for it right
now is very, very slim. It really is just a collection
of random indie titles, including such new classics
like "A Fart for Melusina." It's definitely a little
all over the place. One of the main ways
that they're promising actually having a lot of games right away is another classic console approach, which is pushing this
thing called Antstream. Now, the thing about Antstream is, it is actually a kind
of interesting service that allows you to play a large number of different classic games, some of which are arcade titles, some of which are classic console games. It's pretty all over the place and has a lot of interesting, cool stuff, including some side things like challenges with the community. It's interesting. But the thing is, this isn't
exclusive to the Atari. You can use this service on a PC, you can use it on a Mac, it's
even on Amazon Fire Stick, so it's not exactly a
unique aspect of the VCS. And to top that off, it's
not exactly a free service. You get free 30 days
when you first sign up just to try it out, but after that, it does have a monthly or
yearly subscription fee. There is some light potential here, but it's this part of the console
that really does remind me of experiences with the Ouya the most. It's just not really this
super well-optimized thing, it doesn't really have a library of interesting things to
play right off the bat. Even the Ouya, for instance,
had "TowerFall" at launch, which was actually a really
good standalone title for it, even though that was the one game. Whereas with the Atari VCS, all
of its biggest strong points are being able to replay Atari classics. The one thing that really does
possibly save all of this, or at least partially justify
the asking price of the VCS, is the PC mode. Now, PC mode is not something that is just an initial built-in part of the system, I mean, the option to launch PC mode is, but it doesn't have any
kind of OS or anything installed for you ready to use. Instead, PC mode allows you to launch your preferred
OS from an external drive, most likely Windows 10 if you wanna be able to use it for gaming, and then from there on use
it like a little mini PC. And we did do a video where we actually kind
of showed the limits of what you could push this
thing to do in this mode. For instance, "Cyberpunk 2077"
with the right adjustments, oh boy. (driving action music, guns shooting) But as far as playing more
kind of indie style titles, older games, things that aren't
necessarily as demanding, even playing "Fortnite"
on very low settings, are things that the VCS can do. Now, from a PC perspective, there are ways of making something better for the same price point, or buying something at
a cheaper price point for the same level of quality. But I think what ends up
being the kind of argument, at least here for the VCS, is the fact that it is a combo package of, you have this classic console, but it can also be used
in this way as a PC. It's a very specific, weird
niche market, but it's there. As far as the physical
design of the system goes, this is another aspect that I
think is actually pretty cool. Some aspects of it do
feel a little bit cheap in terms of the plastic that's
used and so on and so forth, but the visual design of the
VCS is actually really nice, I think it walks a nice balance of something that looks
like a new top box system, but has that feeling of old-school Atari, in particular because I have
the Collector's Edition one, which has that wood panel in the front. Really love the look of that. I did not end up getting
the modern-style controller, so I don't really have any major
thoughts on that right now, but the classic control-stick
style did lend itself to being this very sort of
retro-feeling experience when going through the Vault classics. One thing developers said is that, because the VCS is
effectively just a mini-PC and does embrace these aspects
even in its regular VCS mode, it does pretty much support any kind of third-party controller or major first-party controller
that can be used on a PC. So I have done things like hard hookup an Xbox One controller and played games using it that way, I've used pro controllers from
companies, like from Razor, all worked perfectly fine. All in all, the VCS is more or
less really what I expected. The classic aspects of it were actually better than I had hoped for, and that was a really nice surprise, but on its own, doesn't really justify the overall confused
messaging of the system and that very high asking price. I mean, when I first boasted talking about how the fact that we got
"Cyberpunk" to run on the thing, one guy even asked me, "Oh, that's cool, how much do these things run for?" When I told him almost
$400, it's like, "Oh. I think I'll just save up
for a PS5 all digital." And that's really the reaction I think most people would have here. It's a really neat piece of history, and in a lot of ways I think
if they almost leaned harder into just making a nice
classic edition style system at a lower price point, it would have been something that actually would have engaged a lot more people. But at this very high asking price and the kind of features it's offering, it's definitely a very
weird, specific sell. I'm very curious to see what ends up being the kind of long-term
success of the system, just as far as, will we see price drops, will we see maybe more affordable
options made available? Because again, I think there is a price at which this does end
up being kinda worth it. It's just not what it's
asking for right now. We were just doing a quick B-roll shot of me holding this up,
and I just realized, it's actually numbered
on the back as well. Apparently this particular edition, only 6,000 were made, and I have 5,322. So that's pretty neat-o.
