CES isn’t much of a gaming show. Every year, however, a few notable products slip through the news deluge. Created in collaboration with My Arcade, Gamestation Go fits the bill. The handheld sports a 7-inch display and comes preloaded with north of 200 titles from various Atari generations.
Of course, simply being a portable game emulator doesn’t amount to much in the era of smartphone games. Those things are a dime a dozen. The official Atari seal of approval — while nice — isn’t what makes the product notable, either. The standout feature is the attention to detail.
As much as the number pad on the side of the screen invokes lukewarm memories of N-Gages past, it’s ultimately a testament to the way the handheld melds together different vintage Atari experiences. The Keypad was, after all, essential to a handful of Atari 2600 games.
Above this are four letter buttons, and a dial, D-pad, and trackball sit to the left of the screen. The L and R buttons sit on the top of the display, serving to control things like the flippers in the Atari-themed Balls of Steel pinball port.
The audience for a stand-alone Atari portable is niche. Emulators have made generations of vintage games nearly universally accessible. But the ability to control the glut of titles with approximations of their specific controllers will no doubt mean a lot to the folks interested in such a product.
A light system built into the handheld will automatically illuminate the controller set associated with the next game up. The handheld also has an HMDI out port on top, so it can be used to control games beamed to a TV, like a Nintendo Switch.
The Atari Gamestation Go is set to arrive in Q3 2025, priced at $149.