The unfortunate thing about this release of the SNES classic is that seeing what they did with the NES Classic means that I’m going to have to stand around a Big Box store some morning waiting for it to open so I can make sure I get one to make the Squidette happy.
It seems pretty obvious from the production cycle of the NES Classic that Nintendo isn’t making these things as a real product, but in an attempt to pique the interest of people and then steer them to the real new Nintendo systems: can’t buy a NES Classic? Well, we still have tens of thousands of WiiUs we’re trying to get off the shelves, and you can download all of these games on there! Remember how much you loved Link to the Past, but now you till can’t play it? Well, all the cool kids seem to like Breath of the Wild: buy a Switch!
Hmmm… this IS interesting development, moreso than the official commercial release of EarthBound Beginnings, on account of the rumored legal troubles surrounding Argonaut Software and their patented SFX chip. This was presumably why no SFX games received a Virtual Console release, and why whenever Yoshi’s Island is referenced Nintendo opts to lift footage from the inferior GBA version that doesn’t use third party gubbins.
There’s a whole fiasco surrounding Nintendo’s poor treament of Argonaut, like refusal of payment and repurposed stolen code used for Star Fox 64. It’s really fascinating, and if I remember correctly it was speculated that the SFX chip patent was going to expire this year, too.
Hopefully they’re telling the truth when they say that they’re producing many more of these than they did for the NES version. Last year I was able to get an order in during the 5 minutes that BestBuy.ca had stock, but I’d rather not have to deal with that again.
This is definitely a niche, side thing for them. They’ve already said that these SNES minis won’t be produced after 2017. Predicting demand is hard, so hopefully they have enough supply this time. When they announced the NES last year, I thought they’d sell millions of them, but that’s easy to say. It’s tougher when you’re the guy actually signing off on the production.