What's Old is New (Fake-Wood-Grain Edition)

The Atari 2600 is back -- flashback -- with a vengance, as Wired recently reported.

The $30 [Atari 2600] Flashback is preloaded with 40 games - classics like Pitfall, Centipede, and Missile Command, and fresh, fan-created ones. The best part? Unlike other reissues, nothing here is emulated. "I re-created the original schematics on a single chip," says developer Curt Vendel, who founded the Atari History Museum. The unit's design is modder-friendly, too, opening a whole new world of 8-bit possibilities.

Modding makes the re-birth of this cultural bellwether even cooler, as it means you could conceivably have Pac Man stopping off at Ms. Pac Man's for a quickie, or Pitfall Harry climbing up a tree for a beer. Some of the games I'm hoping are featured: Spider Man, Volleyball and Battle Zone. Wal-Mart and other retailers will have the console ready to ship on October 4.

Read what Atari has to say about the new 2600 here. Get the original games and console cheap for another couple weeks on eBay -- until the inevitable nostalgic-demand accelerator kicks in -- here.