Nintendo's Next Gaming Console Is The NES Classic Edition

[IInuyasha74]

Nintendo announced that it has made an official NES clone called the “NES Classic Edition,” which brings the look of the original product to a smaller design.

Nintendo's Next Gaming Console Is The NES Classic Edition : Read more

 

[RedJaron]

Cool stuff. Wish they would have included the original Contra instead of Super C. I think I prefer Mega Man 3 over 2, but that's a close call.

 

[CRamseyer]

There is enough there for me. You had me at the original Zelda and the three Super Mario Brothers.

 

[BeenThereDude]

This is great, but I will stick with my emulators, the Buffalo Classic SNES Controller, and a nearly complete library of ROMS, that I have had since 1996, LOL.

 

[cknobman]

No kung fu and no dragon warrior. I needed at least one of these to purchase.

 

[captaincharisma]

Although it may be a minor part of the experience, not having physical game cartridges also makes it feel like a different system.

actually not having the physical carts for the original NES is a good thing. anyone who owned an NES knows how bad it was putting a cart in the NES and how many times it didn't work on the first try. eventually i had to put something on top of the loaded cart so it would seat properly so it would work right

 

[bit_user]

Seemed like a desperate move, to me. I'm honestly surprised at the number of positive responses, here.

I also can't understand why the author would prefer the blurry, analog original. I'd be all about emulators with the best upscaling filters.

Anyway, it occurred to me that they mightn't have even had to modify the source code to implement savegames. Perhaps the emulator simply pre-empts the game and saves the entire VM state. That would work for all games, and the original had so little RAM that they wouldn't even be very big.

 

[jkhoward]

This is awesome. I plan on purchasing one and I look forward to a SNES/N64 release!

 

[Math Geek]

love it but not at the price. will wait for them to go on clearance and then nab one for $20

but the game list had me at tecmo bowl!! freaking classic

 

[Merry_Blind]

Not at that price? I think this is a very reasonable price. I was expecting like 100 $ for this.

 

[hardrock152]

Yep I think this seems rather fair. 2 bucks a game for a nostalgia trip seems fair. Especially since it doesn't feel half baked (like the old atari joystick game collection). Making it use a modern port for video, updating the controllers to use their new standard, and making it compatible with their already existing classic controllers all seem like very good moves. I can see this being a huge buy over the christmas season. Makes for a great purchase for adults who want to relive their old games, and if they want to introduce their kids to old school gaming. Hope they keep up the trend and maybe do an SNES or N64 variant for around the same price.

I feel like too many users think it is dumb to pay for these things instead of just using an emulator on pc, but I like the nostalgia of a plug and play system, with a classic controller, and a classic look and feel.

 

[George Phillips]

At only $59, I may actually buy it. It has some classical titles for kids to play what their parents played long time ago!!

 

[perpetual98]

No Tetris?

 

[dstarr3]

I feel like they just had a warehouse full of Wii/U parts to unload, so they made this.

Also, only one Megaman game? WTF?

 

[chicofehr]

Be nice if it would support the old carts for us who have many in storage. Of course it would cost more if it did.

 

[Math Geek]

i like the idea as well and have an intellivison (remember those?) system like this with a bunch of built in games. i got it for $20 and the kids love to play the old games system with it's unique controller.

i will get this but once it is on sale for the $20 it'll hit come january but november is a great time to release it for the holiday season. prefect time to catch the "what do i get for him who has everything" type of person.

 

[McWhiskey]

I wonder if it is hackable. I'd love something like this with a longer game list. I mean their own virtual console has a far longer list. I think it would be awesome to be able to load your own roms into a standalone machine. A solely dedicated OE emulator with official controllers sounds near perfect.

Maybe adding some 1080p (or more) up-scaling/filtering is a bit of a stretch but it would also be pretty nice.

 

[Effex]

I plan on buying this. I am sure that I'll end up sharing a gaming sessions with my little girl.

 

[Math Geek]

metroid was a good one as well. would love to revisit that old gem as well.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Seemed like a desperate move, to me. I'm honestly surprised at the number of positive responses, here.

I also can't understand why the author would prefer the blurry, analog original. I'd be all about emulators with the best upscaling filters.

Anyway, it occurred to me that they mightn't have even had to modify the source code to implement savegames. Perhaps the emulator simply pre-empts the game and saves the entire VM state. That would work for all games, and the original had so little RAM that they wouldn't even be very big.

Nostalgia. To me, if it isn't blocky, I don't like like it as much. It just isn't the same. I like this too, but I do prefer the original.

Although, honestly, I would be more excited to see an SNES or N64 version in the future. I was a 90s kid, so that is what I played mostly when growing up.

Speaking of N64, did anyone ever find a game that used the left-side of the controller? Just curious, I have played several and all of them ended up using the joystick in the middle and the buttons on the right.

 

[Math Geek]

i'm old, i go back to the atari and coleco vision myself. though the NES was very much a better system when it came out. i had em all back then though i did not go past the SNES myself until the Wii came out

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

awwww, its cute. of course, could always gut the shell, and retrofit it with raspberryPI and an emulator or something of that nature. still neat tho.

 

[beoza]

This is cool and I'll be getting 2 of them, one for me and another for my mother as she loves the Super Mario games. Would have been cool if they made the cartridge door open with a SD card reader in the shape of an old cartridge, and then sell SD cards with other games on them for the system. There were hundreds of games for the system, adding an option for more would have been cool. But like I said I'll still get one, and hey I won't have to blow on the cartridge to make it work. I'm old and the NES was my 3rd console; my first being the Sears/Atari Pong Sports IV (it played Pong and nothing but Pong), then the Atari 2600.

 

[bit_user]

I wonder if it is hackable. I'd love something like this with a longer game list. I mean their own virtual console has a far longer list. I think it would be awesome to be able to load your own roms into a standalone machine. A solely dedicated OE emulator with official controllers sounds near perfect.

They should've just made it an Android-based set top box. Then, you could not only run other stuff on it, but you could buy more games in the app store and maybe buy the same software to run on your tablet or phone.

Maybe adding some 1080p (or more) up-scaling/filtering is a bit of a stretch but it would also be pretty nice.

Did anyone say what it has? I'm guessing they went with the blocky/purist approach, but we don't know, do we?

I've been thinking it'd be cool to train a neural net to upscale old games. I think you'd have to hand-edit a ton of examples, though. I doubt it'd work to start with high-res graphics and downsample, since the graphics for these games were carefully-crafted to run at this resolution (and on blurry, 80's era TVs).

To me, if it isn't blocky, I don't like like it as much. It just isn't the same. I like this too, but I do prefer the original.

Did you get a review sample? How was the scaling? And without rewriting those games, any upscaling output is still going to be plenty blocky. What I don't like about analog is that it's blurry - not just blocky.

Although, honestly, I would be more excited to see an SNES or N64 version in the future. I was a 90s kid, so that is what I played mostly when growing up.

Definitely. It would be kinda funny if they just used an existing opensource emulator, running on Android.

Speaking of N64, did anyone ever find a game that used the left-side of the controller? Just curious, I have played several and all of them ended up using the joystick in the middle and the buttons on the right.

I hardly played any, but I seem to remember that Mario 64 used it for camera movement. I was so impressed with the way that game just catapulted us into 3D gaming. Truly visionary, I thought, at the time. Before that, the only 3D games were first-person and rather planar.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Cool stuff. Wish they would have included the original Contra instead of Super C. I think I prefer Mega Man 3 over 2, but that's a close call.

I was thinking where the hell is Probotector? Decided to look it up and saw it was called Contra in some areas of the world.

Edit: Oh my god I just read more about it and they actually changed the characters to robots from humans to satisfy the German law of humans not being killed in computer games. So people playing Contra were playing as dudes killing human enemy and the rest of us were playing at robots killing other robots. That's awesome.