Nintendo re-releasing 30 year old console

[TheFeniX]

and will probably make millions off nostalgia.

After years spent letting the software-based Virtual Console largely rot on its vine, Nintendo is trying to cash in on its nostalgia-filled back catalog with a new piece of old hardware. The NES Classic Edition, announced today, is a palm-sized, HDMI-equipped re-release of the '80s console that will launch on November 11, preloaded with 30 games for $59.99.

“We wanted to give fans of all ages the opportunity to revisit Nintendo’s original system and rediscover why they fell in love with Nintendo in the first place,” Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime said in a statement. “The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition is ideal for anyone who remembers playing the NES, or who wants to pass on those nostalgic memories to the next generation of gamers.”

Enlarge / The NES Classic Controller will also work via a Wii Remote with the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles.
Nintendo hasn't said much about the underlying hardware powering the re-release, but it doesn't sound like the new system will be exactly the same as the original. For one thing, the announcement makes no mention of the ability to plug in old NES game cartridges, even though pictures show a familiar, cartridge slot dust-cover styled on the system's boxy case. For another, Nintendo says that "each game has multiple suspend points, so you can start where you left off at a later time, no passwords needed," suggesting that some sort of virtualized, emulated version of the underlying games is being used.

The new system also will not support old NES controllers natively. Instead, it has slots that will fit the existing Wii Classic Controller Pro and will also work with a new NES Classic Controller patterned after the original rectangular design (sorry dog-bone fans). One Classic Controller will be included with the system; extra ones will retail for $9.99.

Nintendo is coming late to a trend that has hit many other classic consoles in recent years. Sega licensed its old hardware and software for a number of "Arcade Classic" system-on-a-chip Genesis re-releases, most of which have a slot for classic cartridges and support original controllers as well as built-in games. The Atari Flashback line similarly recreates the Atari 2600 and 7800, with some hackers going so far as to add a cartridge port for their decades-old games. Even the Colecovision and Intellivision got Flashback re-releases.

Further Reading
The Analogue Nt is the best NES that (a lot of) money can buy

If you have $500+ to spend on a 30-year-old console, this is the one to buy.
Nostalgia-minded Nintendo gamers looking for new hardware, on the other hand, have been stuck settling for gray market Famiclone systems, or emulation-based hardware like the Retron 5, which have their issues when it come to compatibility and authenticity. Then there's the Analogue Nt, a high-end, high-def, high-priced NES modification sourced from actual Famicom chips, which we recently reviewed.

Here are the 30 games that will be included on the NES Classic Edition:

Balloon Fight
Bubble Bobble
Castlevania
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Dr. Mario
Excitebike
Final Fantasy
Galaga
Ghosts N' Goblins
Gradius
Ice Climber
Kid Icarus
Kirby’s Adventure
Mario Bros.
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Pac-Man
Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
StarTropics
Super C
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Tecmo Bowl
The Legend of Zelda
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Damn son, StarTropics. Nice. But no Crystalis? No BLASTER MASTER!? No Guardian Legend? No.... what was that game... first person combat like Earthbound. You bounced around back and forward in time... had an Aladdin type theme? Ah man, that is going to drive me CRAZY! Also man, Faxanadu. Why forget Faxanadu?

Pour one out for Guardian Legend and Faxanadu while jamming to sick beats:


I might actually pick one of these up depending on if they plan to expand the library. I've beat many of these games to death, however having this for my son to play in the next 4-5 years would awesome.

[Iroscato]

That's kind of lame - they coukd easily make a version that houses every NES game ever made instead of just 30. But it's still a neat-lookin' little thing I suppose.

[Borgholio]

Several of my coworkers and I noticed with dismay that throwing money at the screen had no effect.

[Zixinus]

Precisely my sentiment Chimaera: you can buy a better Raspherry Pi (which, even with all the accessories, is going to be a cheaper adventure than this) and not only play every NES game ever released but pretty much every game from the 80's and probably halfway into the 90's. SNES, Megadrive, gameboy, these are all emulated well today. Even stuff like Playstaion and N64 is, albeit at the requirement of a more powerful computer.

It's clear that this is a pretty naked cash-in (500$? really?). I guess the only advantage they can bring in to the table is having developer resources for better emulation. They probably will use SD cards or something similar to put games in (why would they bother with old and obsolete cartridge technology?).

[Elheru Aran]

It's clear that this is a pretty naked cash-in (500$? really?). I guess the only advantage they can bring in to the table is having developer resources for better emulation. They probably will use SD cards or something similar to put games in (why would they bother with old and obsolete cartridge technology?).

Fenix fucked up the formatting, the 500 is for a console that was advertised in the article he quoted which is a fancy NES emulator. This one will be $59.99. 60 bucks for 30 old games is maybe a bit of a drag, but it's not terrible. I wouldn't be surprised if it does use SD cards to add extra games.

EDIT: See here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/a ... ade-price/

Specific quote:

The NES Classic Edition, announced today, is a palm-sized, HDMI-equipped re-release of the '80s console that will launch on November 11, preloaded with 30 games for $59.99.

[TheFeniX]

Precisely my sentiment Chimaera: you can buy a better Raspherry Pi (which, even with all the accessories, is going to be a cheaper adventure than this) and not only play every NES game ever released but pretty much every game from the 80's and probably halfway into the 90's. SNES, Megadrive, gameboy, these are all emulated well today. Even stuff like Playstaion and N64 is, albeit at the requirement of a more powerful computer.

Unfortunately, you deal with the legalities of emulation. I owned every SNES cart I emulate, but my sister gave the original and all the carts away because she is evil, so I actually have no way to prove I owned them all.

I also hope my old 360 holds up because I have the SEGA arcade collection and Comix Zone is just a game every kid should play.

It's clear that this is a pretty naked cash-in (500$? really?). I guess the only advantage they can bring in to the table is having developer resources for better emulation. They probably will use SD cards or something similar to put games in (why would they bother with old and obsolete cartridge technology?).

$60. That said, even today (with my GBA, DS, and N64) there is a sense of.... ownership attributed to owning cartridges over CDs, DVD, or BDs. Losing my original gold cartridge Zelda games fucking hurt, much like the day I finally tossed my VooDoo5 5500 in the trash, even though that thing was a paperwight. Not to say everyone is as tied to nerd shit as I am, but there is value in that kind of ownership. Even if you only emulate Zelda rather than blow off and insert your original cart.

Fenix fucked up the formatting, the 500 is for a console that was advertised in the article he quoted which is a fancy NES emulator. This one will be $59.99. 60 bucks for 30 old games is maybe a bit of a drag, but it's not terrible. I wouldn't be surprised if it does use SD cards to add extra games.

I pulled the ad text along with it. I'm usually pretty good at catching those, and deleting them, before I submit, but I can't be 100% awesome all the time.

Also, the comments section does have this:

My money's on this being something like a cut-down 3DS in a box: all the games they've listed are available for the 3DS Virtual Console complete with save state support. They also send you to the eShop page for each game when you click through for more information. The size and power draw of the DS components are also reasonable for a device like this.

So, cash-grab in of itself (if true). However, $60 for 30 games and the hardware to emulate them at HD resolutions (or at least scaled to not be garbage) honestly isn't terrible.

[Joun_Lord]

I wish it had the ability to play original cartridges where I still have a crapton including Final Fantasy and the Gold Zelda cartridge everyone thinks is worth a ton unless you count the value of the joy it brings. I don't have a tv capable of playing a NES (or any tv at all) and trying to get the console AND the cartridges to work is a headache.

But even this just being a pretty emulator I'll probably get it eventually. I'd play through Zelda and Metroid and I;m sure my nieces and nephews would love playing all the old games, they seemed to love last time I hooked up my SNES.

Assuming it can download other games like from the Nintendo store this will probably be a day one buy for me, I'll probably even pre-order it.

If they come out with one of these for the Super Nintendo soon or in like 5 years that will definitely be a instant throw money at the screen moment for me. I appreciate the NES but the Super was my console. I'll even buy a new tv for that rather then borrowing some old CRT from someone like I currently do.

[TheFeniX]

I bought both Zelda and Metroid on GBA (well, actually my DS). Zelda has a few issues, such as not being able to move diagonally, but these are more annoyances. The game was fun to play back through. The lack of crouch and diagonal fire in Metroid is excruciating, among other things. I couldn't be bothered to beat it again. Especially when Zero Mission and Super Metroid are on hand for me.

But yea, an HD-compatible NES and SNES with all (or at least most, even the horrible garbage titles) of the games on-hand. I couldn't dump money into Nintendo's wallet fast enough. Damn, same thing for Genesis, 32X, and CDX. Yea, I can emulate a lot of that, but it would be nice just to have a box plugged into the TV with a wireless controller or two.

They had an arcade box like this at some billards store I went to years back. It was just an arcade box with two (USB) joysticks built into the case and a computer with like 800 arcade titles to choose from. Like that, except without the TV built in and all my old console favorites. It even had an old arcade cue-ball (like for Marble madness) in the middle with two buttons to move the mouse and select the games, but (at least from what the salesman told me) would work for certain games, like Marble Madness.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, arcade-style games with either knockoffs or licensed copies of original games have been around for a while. They were semi-big in the mid-00's, you could pick one up at any Walgreens My parents had one, actually. You could play stuff like Galaxian, Pac-Man and what not on it. It's a surprisingly convenient model-- just plug into the appropriate port on your TV, make sure your batteries are fine, and you're off to the races. I'm not surprised Nintendo noticed that particular model and decided to adopt something similar. It does fit their whole attitude of casual gaming, rolling with what they know, easily accessible (who can't come up with sixty bucks for a gift for their kids' birthday that they can enjoy too?) kind of thing.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. My wife might actually be interested in this purely for the Zelda games if we didn't have equivalent utility from a disc that came with my GameCube back in 200-something. It's a real pity it doesn't have the ability to accept cartridges, though I'm sure they couldn't make it palm-sized in that case.

Is this a mobile device or does it plug into TVs like a 'real' game console? I wasn't clear on that from the article.

[TheFeniX]

It has an HDMI output, so TV.

[Joun_Lord]

It's a real pity it doesn't have the ability to accept cartridges, though I'm sure they couldn't make it palm-sized in that case.

Just hardware alone they probably could. Emulator system like the Retrode and Retro-bit RDP are both fairly palm sized. But they also look nothing like the NES. Having the mini-Nintendo run cartridges from it slot would either require the system to be redisgned in some way like the entire top opening or for some ungainly easily lost adapter. The cartridge slot looks maybe big enough to accept Gameboy sized cartridges.

I only wonder if the cartridge slot is even functional at all? Maybe used to stick in portable game cartridges like the GB or GBA or maybe a slot of SD cards. Though from the picture it looks molded closed.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/08/r ... artridges/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 3913X88876

[Solauren]

Oh, NES controllers that look like they are USB plug ins...

[LadyTevar]

Castlevania? SuperMario Bros 1-3? Two Zeldas, and a Final Fantasy? Might be worth it, especially if the FF is the expanded version they released a while back

[Dragon Angel]

I was hoping this would really have a genuine 2A03(/07), APU, PPU, etc. perhaps attached to a microcontroller that supports the save states. It would've been neat to play with actual hardware, but a good emulator is still nice.

Even stuff like Playstaion and N64 is, albeit at the requirement of a more powerful computer.

Unfortunately, speaking with people in emulation, N64 emulation is still rather ... shoddy. It's apparently good enough to run Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, et. al. but in their words, it's almost like the people who spearheaded it pretty much abandoned it after their favorite games were supported.

Even Gamecube and Wii games are better emulated than N64 via Dolphin. That's kind of sad lol.

[Grumman]

I wouldn't be surprised if it does use SD cards to add extra games.

Apparently it won't. The thirty games it comes with are the only games it will have.

[Themightytom]

I really hope they fix the nonsense dialogue in Castlevania II when they re-release it.

[wautd]

Neat. I might get one for nostalgae reasons.

I hope they do something similar with the SNES

[General Zod]

I really hope they fix the nonsense dialogue in Castlevania II when they re-release it.

I wouldn't get your hopes up.

[Crazedwraith]

Sega Are following suit

With 80 games. Much more betterer

[Zixinus]

The article also states that the emulation software the company uses is not quite up to the task.

[Zixinus]

Someone has beaten Nintendo to the punch and made a nintendo console already, complete with scaled-down controller and semi-functional cartridges.

The cartridges don't contain files, as they are on the Pi, but they will make the game load.