It's also considerably easier to make, with less wasted plastic and more space for cooling that new embedded AMD Ryzen chip. The VCS will also have a simpler light setup that uses Atari's signature "Fuji" logo for alerts rather than a separate set of four lights.

There is a drawback to this redesign, though. The creators have removed the rear SD card slot, calling it "redundant" when you can plug in a thumb drive or external hard drive. That's not going to please gamers who wanted to quickly transfer data, but the Atari VCS group is betting that you won't mind when most other consoles don't offer the feature.

The VCS is due to arrive in late 2019. It's easy to be cynical about talks of a finished design given the system's history -- it has gone through numerous delays, revisions and even name changes, and it wouldn't be surprising if there was another complication or two before then. However, this may really be an illustration of the dangers of both announcing early and relying on crowdfunding. Projects like this are effectively designed in public, and that means seeing many of the revisions that would normally remain behind closed doors.