There are better versions of these games.
The VIP package that Atari sent me, along with a selection of cartridges. Credit: Kyle Orland
Since I've never owned an Atari 7800 cartridge, Atari sent me eight titles from their current line of retro cartridges to try out along with the updated hardware. This included a mix of original titles released in the '80s and “homebrew lift” cartridges that the company said now “receive a well-deserved official release from Atari.”
The titles I got to try were definitely a step up from the few dozen Atari 2600 games I've accumulated and come to tolerate over the years. a game like fancy asteroids on the 7800 doesn't quite match the vector graphics of the arcade original, but it comes much closer than the strange, colorful blobs of asteroids in 2600. The same goes for Frenzy on the 7800, which is a big step forward from Berzerk at 2600.
Still, I couldn't help but feel that these arcade ports are best experienced nowadays on one of the many MAME or FPGA-based emulation boxes that can do justice to the original quarter munchers. And most of the more original titles I tried ended up feeling like pale shadows of the NES games I knew and loved.
the new Bentley Bear's Crystal Search (which is included with the 7800+ package) seems like an oversimplified imitation of Adventure IslandFor example. And the rough vehicular combat of fatal race is much less attractive than Atari's own NES port, similar but superior Roadblasters game cabinet. The only exception to this rule that I found was ninja golfan original and crazy mix of decent golf and exciting run and hit combat.
Of course, I'm not really the target audience here. The ideal Atari 7800+ buyer is someone who still has nostalgic memories of the Atari 7800 games they played as a child and who has kept at least some of them (and/or purchased more modern homebrew cartridges) in the decades since.
If those retro gamers want an authentic but simple box that upgrades those cartridges for an HDTV, the Atari 7800+ will do the job and look cute on the mantelpiece while doing it. But any number of emulation solutions will probably do the job just as well and with more features.