u/VinylMan07

Yes, this *thing* (first photo) is not a cheap clone. Well… it is cheap, but not a clone.

For loads of reasons, including a law that prevented imports from other countries, things could only be sold in Brazil if they were made there. Because of that, the Atari 2600 would only arrive on Brazilian soil in 1983 — well into the (US) Videogame Crash — when a manufacturer of high end audio equipment called Polyvox acquired the rights from Atari Inc. to start manufacturing the 2600 in-house.

For most of its history here, Polyvox made the 4-switcher ‘Vader’ version (the second photo features my very console, a mid-80’s unit). It looked and worked just like the North American one, with the exception that, after 1984 or so, they started coming with internal power supplies instead of external bricks. And the Atari sold like water on a hot day. Because of the very same market protection law, the 2600’s natural successor, the NES, never got an official release, making the second-generation console thrive all the way up to 1993, when the imports ban was lifted and the SNES was officially released by Nintendo. For some reason, the Atari Jr. also never saw the light of day over here.

In 1991, Polyvox realised that the end of the line was coming for the Atari. The Master System from Sega (manufactured in Brazil by Tec-Toy, I believe) was selling really well, the market was flooded with cheap clones of the NES and Famicom (the ‘Famiclones’) and the SNES was well on the horizon. But they still tried to squeeze the most out of the poor 2600 that they could. Then the 2600s was born.

At first glance, you might confuse it with a normal Vader. But its goal was to be as cheap as possible, replacing the 4 metal switches with a plastic on-off switch on the left and two push-buttons (game select and game reset) on the right. Gone was the Color/Bw switch that older models had.

But the biggest offenders were the hardwired joystick controllers coming out of the front (easy to see on the third photo). Anyone that has ever had or played with an Atari 2600 will know the problem right away: Atari controllers were not exactly known for being reliable beasts and… if one of them broke… congratulations, you just fucked up your entire console!

Anyway, have you guys ever heard of this weird hybrid, end-of-the-line, cheap as can be console? Does anybody have one?

I’m quite new to retrogaming, but not to retro stuff in general. I’ve been collecting vintage stereo equipment (record players, cassette decks and such) for 15 years now, and really fancy old watches and cars. One thing very common in these hobbies is the absolute disgust we have with modding/tuning original stuff, even though it makes said thing better, because it kills the original experience. Now, coming to retro gaming consoles (the community here is amazing, by the way), I see a lot of people modding previously all-original consoles (like RGB-modding a Super Nintendo or A/V modding an Atari VCS or top loader NES) to get better video quality out of them. That really doesn’t make sense to me. The reason why I got myself an Atari and a SNES (both unmodded) was to get the real thing, the original experience of gaming in the late 70’s and early 90’s. So I put up with their flaws and quirks because that’s how they’re supposed to look like. If I wanted crystal clear gaming from these consoles, I could simply download their ROMs and emulate them on my PC.

So why does the Retro Gaming community, as nice as you guys are, seem to be mostly fine with removing original components, drilling holes in the case and everything, when other communities seem to hate that so much? Sorry if I’m sounding ignorant, I am coming from places in which that kind of behaviour is frowned upon.

The Weird, Brazilian Only Atari “2600s”

Can someone explain, to a Retrogaming Newbie, why is modding vintage consoles so widespread?