Next Super Pocket Comes Loaded With 34 Activision Classics

The Super Pocket line has quietly become one of the better ideas in cheap retro hardware: a little plug-and-play handheld, priced like an impulse buy, that comes pre-loaded with a themed library and also happens to play Evercade cartridges. The newest one is built around Activision, and it is the most historically loaded of the bunch.

The Activision Super Pocket ships September 28 for £59.99 / $69.99 / €69.99 with 34 games drawn from Activision’s Atari 2600 catalog. That is not a random grab bag. Activision was the first third-party publisher, formed by programmers who walked out of Atari because the company would not put their names on the games they made, and the run of 2600 titles they went on to produce, Pitfall!, River Raid, Kaboom!, and the rest, is foundational stuff. This is where the idea of the game designer as a credited author starts, on a machine with no memory to spare and a joystick with one button.

For seventy dollars, getting that catalog legitimately, in a tidy little device you can hand to someone who has never touched a 2600, is a genuinely good deal. And because it takes Evercade carts, the built-in 34 is a floor rather than a ceiling: the same handheld grows into whatever else the Evercade library offers. I have been sour on a lot of the “retro in a box” market, but this is the version I like, real games, real history, honest price, and no pretense that it is anything fancier than a fun way to keep the old stuff in rotation.