I’ve held off a few weeks before reviewing. This is very much the same as what you would expect from their other retro products which I also have. The 64 Mini and Maxi, and the 500 Mini. I had an Atari 800 XL and I would have preferred that style of case but this one is actually growing on me. The build quality is good and the provided joystick is excellent. I had concerns about accidentally pressing the additional buttons as mentioned in other reviews but honestly it hasn’t been an issue at all for me. I only had success playing 800/XL games from the USB. 2600 games were hit and miss. 7800 wouldn’t even show up the files and 5200, though showing, would not run and go straight to the notepad. There may be workarounds or the community may provide fixes. I’ve more or less got this just for collection. Playing from USB is not perfect at the moment but that could change with updates or patches. For me, it’s just about adding to my collection and being on display . It’s not my go to console but the controller is great and responsive and I have had fun with the games that I have played. Mr. Do and Bruce Lee were my games of the time but I’ve played them too much and not much of a challenge as they once were. The only game I have never completed and still find difficult is Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum, maybe one day I will do it.
A really good tilt at an Atari 8bit Mini. Nearly perfect too, it would have been 5 stars if it had worked a bit better with the bulk of 5200 ROMs and if they offered a USB paddle option but apart from that it is great. The joystick is first rate, often a weakness on retro remakes.
I still have an Atari 800 with a diskdrive and occasionally connect it to the 32″ Tv, this is a great piece of kit the screen quality is far better, the games load in seconds and its the same games as I bought in the mid 80’s. highly recommended to anyone who loved Atari computers in the 1980’s.
I have original Atari 8 and 16bit hardware but this is perfect for plug and play use in the 20’s. The pick up and play nature of the system is generally good but the control system and interface is a bit clunky and could be better. Most mini systems are pretty intuitive but the 400 mini is less so and takes a bit of work plus some of the games you are able to download yourself and add through SD card take a bit of tweaking to run- adding basic on some games helps, putting it into 130XE mode also. In fairness these issues are also present on Retro Games highly successful and otherwise wonderful A500 Amiga mini too.
The 8bit Atari systems are somewhat undervalued in the UK apart from a dedicated hardcore following -this new machine throws a wonderful light onto a computer line that revolutionised gaming – the original system appeared in 1979 and was way way ahead of its time- it took the Commodore 64 to appear in 1982 before a system of comparable power was on the market.
I’m going to 5 star it but feel that the beginner may need to watch a few YouTube tutorials to get the most out of it.
Given the quality of the games and the Atari 8bit line in general I think that it’s well worth the effort.
With my first home computer being the Atari 800XL when I was 10 years old, this brings back all those amazing memories (less the loading times from tape – which is good lol). The games it comes with are okay but out of the 25, I only played about 10 of them back in the day. The unit looks amazingly like the original 400 but obviously smaller, and nothing works on there (just for show).
The joystick is just like the original which I never got on with, but that’s fine I just plug in a regular Xbox 360 controller and works great!! So for anyone wanting to relive their child hood memories with this wee beastie, you can’t go wrong!!
I had an Atari 400 and 800xl back in the 80s and loved them both so pre ordered the 400mini months ago. I’ve never bought a device from Retro Games before so no previous experience. I watched a short promotional video which convinced me to pull the trigger but to be honest my expectations were very low. I expected a cheap toy with limited functionality. Well I got that wrong. First off, build quality is excellent. The 400 is tiny, it fits in the palm of my hand. I laughed out loud when I opened the box, it’s so small but the detail is excellent. There are 4 USB ports on the front for controller or keyboards, the packaged joystick is excellent quality. The games play flawlessly. The joystick contains additional buttons for added functionality such as navigating menus, configurations etc. Crucially, you can load a virtual keyboard. I plugged a physical USB keyboard and it worked perfectly. Power is via USB C which is my preference. USB on the back can host a formatted drive for loading any owned Roms. Overall had a blast with the device, a nostalgia fuelled trip back in time!
Just like their previous products this is a terrific little device that works flawlessly. I never had a 400 when I was younger (had a C64) so this was especially exciting for me, getting to play games that I’ve not played before. Encounter and Star Raiders 2 have proved to be especially addictive!
All the games have 4 save states so you can continue where you left off or maintain a high score from game to game. You can add scanlines if that’s your thing and also go a for a ‘pixel perfect’ 1:1 aspect ratio too. Playing additional ‘downloaded’ games is a doddle – just whack them on a FAT32 formatted USB drive and plug in the back and away you go.
Have to admit I’m not a fan of the Atari joystick though. Never have been as I find them too stiff and accurately controlling some games can be difficult as a result. The circular ring around the stick also incorporates 4 more buttons around the compass points which can be accidentally pressed in the heat of battle. Very annoying! Thankfully you can use any USB gamepad or controller, so I suggest you try one if you have the same issue as me.
All in all, an amazing little device that will give me years of pleasure, despite the less than stellar joystick.
Under the hood, it seems to be something like a raspberry pi Or a 5 V powered nano computer with 25 built-in Atari cartridges. The price is reasonable at a penny under 100, considering that it is five Atari consoles in one , the entire range.
Oh, one thing to note don’t be like me and spend five minutes scratching your head over why you can’t set up the initial set up because it doesn’t seem to obey the joystick directions that you push the stick iin. I thought the joystick was broken, But what the little startup booklet doesn’t Obvious is that the Atari joystick remake is an improvement on the original because The dotted line around the joystick with the up down left right markers are buttons!
D’oh!
It is powered by a British ARM processor With 128 Mb of storage memory more than enough for plenty of cartridges.
The 30 second rewind function is genius Along with the ability to save your games.
The Minoi400 I would say is not even a microcomputer In fact, it is a nano computer, No larger than a paperback and later than an iPhone 14.
Upon opening the box, it may surprise you to find how dinky and cute it is. In fact, inside the case, they had to add four small weights to give it a little bit of heft.
In order to play other cartridges aside from the 25 that are built in you will need to put them on a fat 32 format thumb drive.
One thing you might want to do is remap a control or two in case you accidentally press one of the buttons that resets the game I did this several times with star Raiders two until I realised I was pressing the right direction button on the joystick By accident.
Emulation is flawless.
Buy with confidence.
This little unit will replace all of your Atari consoles and you can sell all of the others because this one is ALL of them.
This thing doesn’t even run warm it’s barely lukewarm. its processor has a passive heat sink.
I noticed no problems, no glitches no slowdowns nothing.
I am thinking very hard of something, but I don’t like about it, but I can’t think of anything.
Nothing is ever perfect but this is pretty close hence the four stars.
I’m not giving it five because there must be something about it that I’ve missed out is a quirk or a niggle but I struggle to think of one.
I never owned one or heard of the model back in the day. The games seem to play well only Bruce Lee (Lee)the emulation sounds seem wrong. I don’t like the joystick. The fire button you need to give a full press (unlike the original Atari). The buttons are on the joystick such as the top and side icons. 2 are at the back and I’m constantly pressing those buttons. You can change the button setup but I’ve not been able to make it permanent. It’s early days so hopefully you’ll be able to save the joystick buttons in a future update.
As per usual a top quality detailed unit which looks Great and very well packaged.
I never had the Atari 400 as a kid but because i bought their other outstanding models, C64 Mini, A500 Mini. the full sized TheC64 and TheVic20 so it was a no brainer for me really.
I’m not disappointed by a long shot.
There are some great games i have never played built in and i have yet to try any of the thousands of games it will also play from the Atari 400, 800, XL,XE and Atari 5200 so looking forward to that. Everything is controlled via the joystick which also seems pretty solid and nice to use so overall if you owned an Atari 400 back in the day this is a must for you, If like me your a collector as well then this unit will not disappoint.
I sold it around 2010 with a bunch of associated hardware and manuals. It was the last but one 1980s micro that I had held onto, because it was one of the very few that was built to a spec rather than down to a price. For it’s day, the hardware was astonishing – sprites, yes, but each line of the display could come from anywhere in the memory and scrolling it was simply a matter of changing a register. This meant that games could move serious numbers of pixels around on the screen smoothly and quickly.
I have missed having it but a) it took up a lot of space and b) I also got rid of the old analogue TV.
So the second I saw a review of this, I ordered one. It calls itself half-size – it’s smaller than that. Perhaps it’s around half the size of the 65XE which had an optional keyboard.
The 720p display on the HD TV is great, with the option of making it worse if you really want it to look like a CRT analogue TV. As with the original, sound comes via the TV and there is no audio jack or Bluetooth so if you want to use a computer monitor, it either needs speakers or you want an HDMI audio splitter.
Twenty five games are included – Airball, Asteroids, Basketball, Battle zone, Berzerk, Boulder Dash, Bristles, Capture the Flag, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Elektraglide, Encounter!, Flip and Flop, Henry’s House, Hover Bovver, Lee (AKA ‘we couldn’t get the licence to keep the original “Bruce Lee” name), M.U.L.E., Millipede, Miner 2049er, Missile Command, O’Riley’s Mine, Star Raiders II, The Seven Cities of Gold, Wavy Navy and Yoomp!
If you had one, you’ll know that includes some absolute classics.. and some that weren’t. There are also some screaming omissions: the original Star Raiders, Pacman, Pole Position.. and that’s just from Atari.
Fortunately, a USB port at the back lets you plug in a USB stick with other games/utilities on in a variety of standard (for Atari archiving and emulation) formats. Remembering that cartridges had up to 8k of memory (16k for ones using fancy tricks) and the standard Atari disc drives held around 80k bytes – less than the size of the logos here – you can fit a LOT of things on a single stick. Sadly the flap on top that looks like the original cartridge cover is a non working fake, because it would have been so neat to be able to plug the USB stick in there.
Also included is a USB joystick styled to look like the original (and terrible) Atari ones. They have some extra buttons because all the keys on the console are as fake as the cartridge cover lid. These can be mapped to any single key or you can plug in a USB keyboard. Similarly you can use (most) USB controllers etc.
So for me, it’s absolutely five stars. It costs less than I sold the real hardware for but is vastly easier to use and store.
For you… it depends. The Atari 8-bit micros were fascinating and there’s a lot of stuff out there that will run on this. Inside it is a ten year old Arm processor and graphics chip. You could get a Raspberry Pi and run the same ‘atari800’ emulation software as this one for less… but it wouldn’t be as simple.
UPDATE: it is VERY fussy about which USB sticks it will accept. Even when programs on your computer say the stick is FAT32 format with an MBR – what THE400 demands – it may not work. Formatting via Ubuntu didn’t work, formatting via Windows 10 Explorer didn’t work, formatting via the Windows command line didn’t work. What did was using a Windows program, Partition Wizard, fortunately the free version.
Given it’s so fussy, why they didn’t include a ‘correctly’ formatted stick is beyond me, as is why the Linux it uses is unable to read other formats it doubtless uses itself…
Once you have the right format, it appears as ‘media’ in the carousel. Interestingly, it won’t work with some ATR files that RetroPie does.
UPDATE 2: I have agonised about it, but it’s been returned. While running atari800 on a Pi isn’t quite as simple as it could be, thanks to having to track down the ROM files yourself, put them in the right place etc, it does mean that when something doesn’t work, you can almost always fix it.
Here, I got no response at all from the maker’s support email address over the USB stick issue. I still have no clue whatsoever why, say, Pole Position won’t run on this, despite being able to run exactly the same files on the same emulator on the Pi, and there are no log files or anything else I can examine to see why, or emulation settings to tweak beyond the very few that this offers.
I’ve held off a few weeks before reviewing. This is very much the same as what you would expect from their other retro products which I also have. The 64 Mini and Maxi, and the 500 Mini. I had an Atari 800 XL and I would have preferred that style of case but this one is actually growing on me. The build quality is good and the provided joystick is excellent. I had concerns about accidentally pressing the additional buttons as mentioned in other reviews but honestly it hasn’t been an issue at all for me. I only had success playing 800/XL games from the USB. 2600 games were hit and miss. 7800 wouldn’t even show up the files and 5200, though showing, would not run and go straight to the notepad. There may be workarounds or the community may provide fixes. I’ve more or less got this just for collection. Playing from USB is not perfect at the moment but that could change with updates or patches. For me, it’s just about adding to my collection and being on display . It’s not my go to console but the controller is great and responsive and I have had fun with the games that I have played. Mr. Do and Bruce Lee were my games of the time but I’ve played them too much and not much of a challenge as they once were. The only game I have never completed and still find difficult is Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum, maybe one day I will do it.
A really good tilt at an Atari 8bit Mini. Nearly perfect too, it would have been 5 stars if it had worked a bit better with the bulk of 5200 ROMs and if they offered a USB paddle option but apart from that it is great. The joystick is first rate, often a weakness on retro remakes.
I still have an Atari 800 with a diskdrive and occasionally connect it to the 32″ Tv, this is a great piece of kit the screen quality is far better, the games load in seconds and its the same games as I bought in the mid 80’s. highly recommended to anyone who loved Atari computers in the 1980’s.
The 8bit Atari systems are somewhat undervalued in the UK apart from a dedicated hardcore following -this new machine throws a wonderful light onto a computer line that revolutionised gaming – the original system appeared in 1979 and was way way ahead of its time- it took the Commodore 64 to appear in 1982 before a system of comparable power was on the market.
I’m going to 5 star it but feel that the beginner may need to watch a few YouTube tutorials to get the most out of it.
Given the quality of the games and the Atari 8bit line in general I think that it’s well worth the effort.
With my first home computer being the Atari 800XL when I was 10 years old, this brings back all those amazing memories (less the loading times from tape – which is good lol). The games it comes with are okay but out of the 25, I only played about 10 of them back in the day. The unit looks amazingly like the original 400 but obviously smaller, and nothing works on there (just for show).
The joystick is just like the original which I never got on with, but that’s fine I just plug in a regular Xbox 360 controller and works great!! So for anyone wanting to relive their child hood memories with this wee beastie, you can’t go wrong!!
Just like their previous products this is a terrific little device that works flawlessly. I never had a 400 when I was younger (had a C64) so this was especially exciting for me, getting to play games that I’ve not played before. Encounter and Star Raiders 2 have proved to be especially addictive!
All the games have 4 save states so you can continue where you left off or maintain a high score from game to game. You can add scanlines if that’s your thing and also go a for a ‘pixel perfect’ 1:1 aspect ratio too. Playing additional ‘downloaded’ games is a doddle – just whack them on a FAT32 formatted USB drive and plug in the back and away you go.
Have to admit I’m not a fan of the Atari joystick though. Never have been as I find them too stiff and accurately controlling some games can be difficult as a result. The circular ring around the stick also incorporates 4 more buttons around the compass points which can be accidentally pressed in the heat of battle. Very annoying! Thankfully you can use any USB gamepad or controller, so I suggest you try one if you have the same issue as me.
All in all, an amazing little device that will give me years of pleasure, despite the less than stellar joystick.
Oh, one thing to note don’t be like me and spend five minutes scratching your head over why you can’t set up the initial set up because it doesn’t seem to obey the joystick directions that you push the stick iin. I thought the joystick was broken, But what the little startup booklet doesn’t Obvious is that the Atari joystick remake is an improvement on the original because The dotted line around the joystick with the up down left right markers are buttons!
D’oh!
It is powered by a British ARM processor With 128 Mb of storage memory more than enough for plenty of cartridges.
The 30 second rewind function is genius Along with the ability to save your games.
The Minoi400 I would say is not even a microcomputer In fact, it is a nano computer, No larger than a paperback and later than an iPhone 14.
Upon opening the box, it may surprise you to find how dinky and cute it is. In fact, inside the case, they had to add four small weights to give it a little bit of heft.
In order to play other cartridges aside from the 25 that are built in you will need to put them on a fat 32 format thumb drive.
One thing you might want to do is remap a control or two in case you accidentally press one of the buttons that resets the game I did this several times with star Raiders two until I realised I was pressing the right direction button on the joystick By accident.
Emulation is flawless.
Buy with confidence.
This little unit will replace all of your Atari consoles and you can sell all of the others because this one is ALL of them.
This thing doesn’t even run warm it’s barely lukewarm. its processor has a passive heat sink.
I noticed no problems, no glitches no slowdowns nothing.
I am thinking very hard of something, but I don’t like about it, but I can’t think of anything.
Nothing is ever perfect but this is pretty close hence the four stars.
I’m not giving it five because there must be something about it that I’ve missed out is a quirk or a niggle but I struggle to think of one.
I never had the Atari 400 as a kid but because i bought their other outstanding models, C64 Mini, A500 Mini. the full sized TheC64 and TheVic20 so it was a no brainer for me really.
I’m not disappointed by a long shot.
There are some great games i have never played built in and i have yet to try any of the thousands of games it will also play from the Atari 400, 800, XL,XE and Atari 5200 so looking forward to that. Everything is controlled via the joystick which also seems pretty solid and nice to use so overall if you owned an Atari 400 back in the day this is a must for you, If like me your a collector as well then this unit will not disappoint.
I have missed having it but a) it took up a lot of space and b) I also got rid of the old analogue TV.
So the second I saw a review of this, I ordered one. It calls itself half-size – it’s smaller than that. Perhaps it’s around half the size of the 65XE which had an optional keyboard.
The 720p display on the HD TV is great, with the option of making it worse if you really want it to look like a CRT analogue TV. As with the original, sound comes via the TV and there is no audio jack or Bluetooth so if you want to use a computer monitor, it either needs speakers or you want an HDMI audio splitter.
Twenty five games are included – Airball, Asteroids, Basketball, Battle zone, Berzerk, Boulder Dash, Bristles, Capture the Flag, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Elektraglide, Encounter!, Flip and Flop, Henry’s House, Hover Bovver, Lee (AKA ‘we couldn’t get the licence to keep the original “Bruce Lee” name), M.U.L.E., Millipede, Miner 2049er, Missile Command, O’Riley’s Mine, Star Raiders II, The Seven Cities of Gold, Wavy Navy and Yoomp!
If you had one, you’ll know that includes some absolute classics.. and some that weren’t. There are also some screaming omissions: the original Star Raiders, Pacman, Pole Position.. and that’s just from Atari.
Fortunately, a USB port at the back lets you plug in a USB stick with other games/utilities on in a variety of standard (for Atari archiving and emulation) formats. Remembering that cartridges had up to 8k of memory (16k for ones using fancy tricks) and the standard Atari disc drives held around 80k bytes – less than the size of the logos here – you can fit a LOT of things on a single stick. Sadly the flap on top that looks like the original cartridge cover is a non working fake, because it would have been so neat to be able to plug the USB stick in there.
Also included is a USB joystick styled to look like the original (and terrible) Atari ones. They have some extra buttons because all the keys on the console are as fake as the cartridge cover lid. These can be mapped to any single key or you can plug in a USB keyboard. Similarly you can use (most) USB controllers etc.
So for me, it’s absolutely five stars. It costs less than I sold the real hardware for but is vastly easier to use and store.
For you… it depends. The Atari 8-bit micros were fascinating and there’s a lot of stuff out there that will run on this. Inside it is a ten year old Arm processor and graphics chip. You could get a Raspberry Pi and run the same ‘atari800’ emulation software as this one for less… but it wouldn’t be as simple.
UPDATE: it is VERY fussy about which USB sticks it will accept. Even when programs on your computer say the stick is FAT32 format with an MBR – what THE400 demands – it may not work. Formatting via Ubuntu didn’t work, formatting via Windows 10 Explorer didn’t work, formatting via the Windows command line didn’t work. What did was using a Windows program, Partition Wizard, fortunately the free version.
Given it’s so fussy, why they didn’t include a ‘correctly’ formatted stick is beyond me, as is why the Linux it uses is unable to read other formats it doubtless uses itself…
Once you have the right format, it appears as ‘media’ in the carousel. Interestingly, it won’t work with some ATR files that RetroPie does.
UPDATE 2: I have agonised about it, but it’s been returned. While running atari800 on a Pi isn’t quite as simple as it could be, thanks to having to track down the ROM files yourself, put them in the right place etc, it does mean that when something doesn’t work, you can almost always fix it.
Here, I got no response at all from the maker’s support email address over the USB stick issue. I still have no clue whatsoever why, say, Pole Position won’t run on this, despite being able to run exactly the same files on the same emulator on the Pi, and there are no log files or anything else I can examine to see why, or emulation settings to tweak beyond the very few that this offers.