I ended up cancelling the order for the Atari 400 Mini. I'd seen a few reviews from people who got units directly from Atari, and though it looked pretty neat, I don't think I would have had as much fun with it as with the other systems. Plus, the joystick it comes with seems to be problematic for some people. The way the joystick is designed isn't the greatest, causing incorrect or unintended inputs for some. There's a video on YouTube that showed how to perform a jerry rigged sort of fix, but that shouldn't be necessary. Plus, the way it has the 'hidden' buttons on the ring around the joystick makes it hard to not accidentally press one of them while using it, especially if you're not careful, and who is careful with an Atari joystick?
Still having fun with the Atari Gamestation Pro though. I tried adding a few SNES games to it, and while adding them was fairly easy, I couldn't get my SNES type controller mapped correctly. Plus, after a few minutes the gameplay and music started lagging. Perhaps it's just the emulation it uses. The built in games work just fine, as do the Atari 2600 and 7800 games I put on the micro sd card.
I've been playing more SNES games lately. Primarily "Final Fantasy IV" (originally FF II in the US), "Final Fantasy VI" (originally FF III in the US) and "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past". The original NES "Final Fantasy" and "Super Mario Bros" too. I performed a clean install of RetroPie and all the games on both my Pi 3B+ and Pi 4. I originally had a bunch of Atari 2600 and 7800 games on them, as well as some N64 games, but they just aren't fun to play without the proper controllers. I could get an adapter so I could use a joystick with the Atari games, but having three other systems that can play them properly, I didn't see the point. I didn't want to have a slew of games on there that I was never going to play, so I started fresh. Plus, RetroPie has been updated a few times since I did the original installs, so it was time.
I bought my first cartridge for my 2600+ too. I had the 10 game cartridge it comes with, plus the four game cartridge that came with the paddle pack I bought, but that's all I had. So, I bought Kaboom! from eBay. It was used, but I got a replacement label for it, so it looks new. I had never played Kaboom! as a kid, but I saw it being reviewed in a YouTube video, and it looked like a lot of fun, and it certainly is! The funny thing is, I didn't realize I already had Kaboom! on the Atari Flashback 12 Gold, but it's still better with an actual cartridge. That whole nostalgia thing.
Over the weekend I ordered my second cartridge, again from eBay. It's Pitfall!, and I've got a replacement label on the way too. Like with Kaboom!, the cartridge label is pretty beat up, but the cartridge itself is fine, so the new label will do the trick. The Flashback 12 has Pitfall! as well, but again, nostalgia. There's just something about having the actual cartridge to put into the machine.
And then there's the Raspberry Pis. Including the aforementioned RPi 4, I've got two RPi 3B+, an RPi Zero W and an RPi Zero 2 W.
