Armchair Arcade has a fun post about various 'scene'-related dramas around Atari's retro hardware reissues, in which they explain why Atari's keychain plug 'n play devices are back to the tragic in terms of Atari 2600 emulation.

The post notes: "While this is hardly breaking news, it's been interesting to follow some of the drama around the "Atari 2600 Plug 'N Play Keychain" series from "Basic Fun". The first part of the drama involves the company's falling out with engineer Curt Vendel, most famous for being the lead on the "Atari Flashback" and "Atari Flashback 2.0" products, and launching "Awesome Arcades"."

The piece continues: "The second and more relevant part of the drama involves the simple fact that these products, amazing form factor and low price aside ($15 each), are awful simulations, seemingly ignoring all the progress made over the past few years in TV Game quality (in fact, reverting back to the NES-on-a-chip of the first Flashback, which has been proven unable to properly simulate Atari 2600 games!)." Wow, scene drama all the way to the bank! Talking of which, the Atari Flashback 2 console is pretty cheap now, and may be worth buying for hacking reasons.