GameBand Smartwatch Brings Retro Atari Gaming And Amazon Alexa To Your Wrist

Well, we now know what Atari and its partners have been working on behind the scenes thanks to a new Kickstarter campaign promoting the smartwatch. The GameBand is being billed as the world’s first gaming smartwatch, and comes bundled with 20 classic Atari games that you can play straight from your wrist. Some of the retrotastic games include Asteroids, Pong, Centipede and Breakout.

Although the GameBand doesn’t run the smartwatch-centric Android Wear operating system, it is running its own optimized version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor with 512MB of RAM, 4GB internal storage, and includes a 400 mAh battery. Connectivity is taken care of via USB-C, Bluetooth 4.2, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. More importantly, the GameBand actually includes a microSD slot that allows you to add up to 256GB of additional storage. There is also built-in Amazon Alexa support for voice control.

However, we have to wonder how enjoyable gaming will be on the smartwatch’s tiny 1.63-inch 320x320 AMOLED display. As for those games, you will be able to load them on to the GameBand using PixelFurnace software. By connecting the GameBand with a USB-C cable, you can also use the PixelFurnace software to play full versions of the game on any computer.

“PixelFurnance is basically like an iTunes for Games, that you can take with you and plug in anywhere. For anyone that pledges for a MicroSD card coming from us, we will preload PixelFurnace on the MicroSD and we will include one year free backup on our secure servers,” writes the company.

The GameBand is currently on Kickstarter now for as low as $149 for Early Bird backers.