Page 37 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #40 FREE Edition

features and graphics from their original version. As some games were originally disk-based games, features were likely removed to simplify them to make them plug- and-play, carousel ready. It is easy enough to find complete versions of the games online and load them via USB stick if you are so inclined.
While playing any of the 25 built-in games, you can save your progress at any point in one of the four save slots per game. You can even pause and rewind your gameplay.
While THE400 Mini comes with one THECXSTICK USB joystick packed in, you may want to purchase additional joysticks, when available, to play two, and the rarer, three and four player games, such as M.U.L.E. or Asteroids, available on the Atari 8-bit platform.
THE400 Mini And THECXSTICK USB Joystick
The joystick looks like an iconic Atari CX-40 joystick, but it has two additional buttons on the front face,
The joystick is sensitive and will take some getting used to.
Getaway!
Loaded Via USB Stick
Using
a USB
memory
stick
and the atarimania (https://www. atarimania.com/) website, I was quickly able to load additional games such as Getaway, Caverns
of Mars, Shamus, Blue Max, and many others. It was very easy to add new games even before I had access to a draft copy of THE400 Mini User Manual. I was even able to load the BASIC programming language and the Atari Assembler/ Editor programming language
A few suggestions. First, if available, put your TV into “Game Mode” to remove any extra image processing your TV might be doing to help alleviate any lag. Second, when loading additional games from a USB stick, I had to use the “Game Settings” menu to adjust the “Display Width”, “Display Height”, and “Vertical Offset” to make the game display correctly.
Is the THE400 Mini (and included joystick) worth the list price of $119.99? Well, that depends. The unit itself looks great. For the casual gamer, it is easy to plug
it into a modern, HDMI-Ready
and start playing, though, as I mentioned, the THECXSTICK takes some getting used to. With a little configuration, you may be able to use a different USB game controller that you are more comfortable with.
For the hardcore Atari 8-bit fans, other than for nostalgic purposes, you may want to stick with original hardware or an emulator like Altirra. You certainly don’t want
to use THE400 Mini for modern software development. There are better platforms for that.
THE400 Mini is currently waitlisted on atari.com.
one shoulder button in the same corner as the red fire button, and four additional buttons integrated into what one might call the “boot retention ring”. In fact, there are so many buttons, you must be careful where you place your hands and fingers when playing games. I kept accidentally hitting the TOP button.
and do a little programming with
a USB keyboard, though I would recommend sticking with Altirra (https://www.virtualdub.org/ altirra.html) on a PC for modern development. Note that not all the software I tried to load using a USB stick worked with the unit. I suspect future THE400 Mini firmware updates may fix some of the issues.
MAY 2024 • WWW.OLDSCHOOLGAMER.COM
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