My Arcade’s Atari Gamestation Go is a handheld with over 200 retro titles
It’s the latest in a two decade-long line of Atari-licensed products.
With the Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch and a myriad of emulation and PC handhelds out there, the portable gaming market has come a long way thirty years ago, when the Game Boy fended off competitors like the Sega Game Gear to dominate the scene.
Atari was one of those who attempted to usurp the Game Boy with the Lynx in 1990, so you might be surprised to see its name pop up again with the new Gamestation Go console.
To be clear, though, it’s an Atari-licensed product. The Atari Gamestation Go is a handheld console produced by My Arcade, a company that specialises in making retro-styled consoles for old school games. It’s also made multiple Atari-licensed consoles before, including the Atari 50 Pocket Player Pro, a smaller handheld made for Atari’s 50th anniversary.
The Atari Gamestation Go is My Arcade’s second Atari-licensed handheld.
The Gamestation Go includes over 200 games, including classics like Adventure, Pac-Man, Asteroids and Centipede. Some heavy-hitters like Pitfall, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong are excluded though, presumably on the grounds of licensing.
The titles span multiple Atari platforms, including the 2600, 5200, 7800, as well as the arcade versions of certain titles. However, while it may not have secured games from IPs still held by big publishers, My Arcade did manage to include some non-Atari ones from companies like Jaleco and Piko. Titles from the Atari: Recharged series can also be found.
As for the hardware, the Gamestation Go features a 7-inch display (My Arcade didn’t specify the resolution or display tech), and a battery that will purportedly last 4-5 hours. On controls, it features a rather unique layout; aside from the d-pad and face buttons, it features paddles, a track-ball and a keypad. It might be a bit confusing, but a feature to help you get around this is SmartGlow, which lights up the controls needed for a specific game.
The left side of the Gamestation Go features a rather strange d-pad, though it does also have a track ball.
The right side makes it even weirder with a full keypad (though it does remind me of the old ColecoVision and Intellivision controllers).
Though the Gamestation Go might look like it’s coming out of nowhere, it’s certainly not the first of these off-shoot Atari devices. For the past 20 or so years, Atari has actually had a fairly interesting history in licensing its brand and its library of classic games for various companies to make consoles out of.
These include the Jakks Pacific Atari TV plug-and-play, which consisted only of a single controller (styled after the Atari 2600’s) that you would plug into the TV, and the Atari Flashback series, which currently has over ten different consoles mostly resembling the 2600.
My Arcade aren’t necessarily the first to deal with Atari-licensed handhelds, either; earlier ones include the Atari Flashback Portable and the Super Pocket Atari Edition, though My Arcade are the first to produce handhelds in a more modern form factor.
Pricing and Availability
Unfortunately, if you’re interested to dig through Atari’s library on a retro console, the Atari Gamestation Go might be out of reach, as there’s no news on local availability. We do know that it will cost US$179.99, though and will be available North America staring October.