When The400 Mini was first announced, reactions could be divided into roughly two distinct camps: the “OMG finally the Atari 8-bit is getting the recognition it deserves” crew, and the “WTF is an Atari 400” brigade. Those of you who know me well will already know which camp I fall into.

For the sake of the latter group, the Atari 400 (and, by extension, the entire Atari 8-bit line) is well worth exploring, because although in the long term it lost out to platforms such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in terms of popularity, it was a pioneer in the home computing space and, in fact, the birthplace of a variety of widely beloved games.

The400 Mini is a great place to start exploring exactly where Atari home computers fit into the grand history of home computers and video games. There are a couple of things that, at launch, could do with a bit of tweaking — but there are also a few things you can do with it that you might not expect. So today we’re going to talk about all of those things!