I saw these at the grocery store a few weeks ago, of all place. Thought it was really cool, but decided against picking one up. Changed my mind but they were all out next time I went back.
Wish I had gotten one in the first place…apparently they’re gold on EBay right now.
A few weeks ago?
At the grocery store?
I’m guessing Sicks Ate saw something like this, a 3rd party console that plays old cartridges (there are a dozen different ones, and many of them, not the linked one, are made to resemble an original S/NES).
Hmmmmm…missed the part about it not being available a few weeks ago.
Ah swear it looked like an NES though. Not like the one linked…anyway, disregard me.
ETA and it was preloaded.
Don’t buy one on Ebay. According to youtuber, so you know it’s totally true, boogie2988 Nintendo has stated that they are making more and will be releasing them soon. So you might not be able to get one as a gift for Christmas but soon enough.
Mine was delivered yesterday. It works well, and the games seem to run exactly as I remember them. It’s funny, but it’s the sound that really reminds me of things, more than anything else.
The console itself is super small. It looks right, but it feels really insubstantial, like a toy piggy bank or something. And as people have said, the controller wires are ridiculously short. It almost feels like their idea for this is that it’s a portable, rather than a console that you keep hooked up in your entertainment center all the time.
That’s about exactly how I feel. When I was running around at Target the other day I heard someone playing one (this was before I got mine). I couldn’t believe how much the Mario music brought me right back. I did get some extension cords for the controllers (still haven’t found a second one yet). But I’m really glad I went out and picked up a 15 foot HDMI cord. Having the console on my lap is really nice since I end up resetting it every few minutes to start over.
As much as the save/suspend feature feels like cheating, it’s really nice not to have to spend an hour playing just to get back to the really hard spot that you were stuck at yesterday.
Next to the controllers this is the second thing I am excited about.
Doesn’t the Wii Virtual Console support most of these classic games? I’m curious if anyone has compared what is available on that vs this.
AT the risk of sounding like a thread-shitter, I really don’t understand what the excitement is all about. Several years about I bought a Wii and for $5 each I was able to play most every game that I loved playing back in the late 80’s. There were fewer than 12 of them, BTW. That Wii is sitting in a box somewhere and has SMB 1&3, Zelda 1 and FF1 loaded on it. No short cords, because its controllers are wireless. I’d gladly sell it for less than $60.
I’d love to know the answer to this, because having games not available on the Wii is the only way this thing makes any sense.
$70 vs $400 doesn’t make sense to you?
There’s more to this than that. I’ve had a lot of people say things like ‘duh, just get a Wii’ or ‘there’s a ton of emulators online’ or ‘I can play those games on my phone’. WRT all the emulators or playing on your phone, you lose the controller. As far as having a Wii, well, I don’t have one and why go out and buy one to play with for a few weeks and shove into a corner, which I knew full well was going to happen with this thing, when I could spend $70 for a few weeks of entertainment. As of right now, I’ve played, and beaten, SMB 1 and 3, got frustrated with 2, played a few rounds of Mike Tyson and Excitebike and screwed around for a minute or two on all the other games just to see if I remembered them. I probably spent 40 or 50 hours playing it, but unless I give SMB2 another shot, that’s probably it. Maybe it’ll get another hour or so, but the novelty’s worn off. But I absolutely knew that going in.
There’s also the nostalgia factor. This thing is identical to a Nintendo, but it’s about the size (well, kinda) of a cell phone. I can put it away with all the other stuff I don’t use, but it’ll actually look kind of nice on a bookshelf and when people ask about it, many of them will be in for a surprise when they find out it’s an actual, working NES.
If you’re willing to part with the Wii for $60, you might want to put it on ebay, that seems to be about what they’re going for these days.
Directly comparing this thing to other options for getting the games kind of misses the point. It’s good for two groups of people: Nintendo nostalgia people (like me), and less-techy people who want a simple thing.
For me it’s great, but it’s almost more like a big amiibo or something; the games themselves are practically secondary. But I’m an outlier - heck, I have a coffee table that looks like a big NES 
Fair enough. It just seems to me that any of the “Nintendo nostalgia people” would have acquired a Wii sometime over the last decade or so.
But that’s what I’m trying to say. I have a Wii U and a 3DS with some of these games already. For me the primary purpose of this thing isn’t to play games I otherwise wouldn’t have access to.
A raspberry pi with an emulator is a much better option.
Either way, Nintendo seems to have done what they did with the Wii and intentionally not made enough during the holiday season to increase demand.
The biggest selling point for me was the controllers. Yeah the cord is stupidly small but I’ll work around that. And I’m really looking forward FF1. That wasn’t my style of game back in the day but now RPGs are my favorite type so I’m looking forward to some 8-bitty goodness.
Yeah, they pull this fuckery all the time. I expect now-a-days. In a couple of months when the stores are stocked again I’ll end up getting one.
They’re bringing out a Super NES Classic in September:
They’re finally releasing Star Fox 2 with the SNES Classic Edition!