NES Classic

[Exhuminator]

It's entirely possible to wire up a USB port that only draws power and cannot transfer data.

I'm aware of that. But it's entirely possible a communication channel exists there for warranty repair diagnosis. No one knows at this point, just playful speculation.

Even just existing as it does though, for $60 this is a crazy good deal. Provided the scaling and overall IQ is handled properly.

[samsonlonghair]

It's entirely possible to wire up a USB port that only draws power and cannot transfer data.

I'm aware of that. But it's entirely possible a communication channel exists there for warranty repair diagnosis. No one knows at this point, just playful speculation.

Even just existing as it does though, for $60 this is a crazy good deal. Provided the scaling and overall IQ is handled properly.

Fair enough. I'm waiting for ifixit to do a teardown.

[Damm64]

So how long before they crack it down and make a SD card mod or something similar? I say a month, two tops.

[Tanooki]

Speculation all around, but yeah same here love to see it opened up and showed off as I'm curious.

This is either an ARM chip android closed(to the masses) box that has those 30 games on it that can save states conveniently. Or it's a self baked system on a chip type setup of some sort that just has certain games coded onto the chip with the processes needed itself to make them run with another chip for the data saving needed for the save states. I don't see this being a ghetto chinese SOAC that sucks, just seems beneath even Nintendo for that one as they seem to try and pride in making their own stuff and not farming out into the sewer.

It may be closed, but I imagine it's not, at least for them, which means someone will break it down. If it's more like my first idea, from there, you could have someone bypass the setup through a controller port or a USB passthrough in back (since it still needs power to work) so you can inject more titles into the storage on it and whatever necessary hack(s) involved. For all we know it is like this, with an incomplete emulator that works with just certain memory mappers, not that the CPU/PPU cores couldn't do far more, so with hacks you'd see the MMC5 added or whatever else. It's clearly open for being written to as Kirby is on there and the save states.

[Gunstar Green]

Something just crossed my mind -- StarTropics. THE CODE, the printed one in the letter included in the box. What will be the solution on that one? Code in a box? They hack it so you can just have it put in for you? Hmm

They added it to the manual for the Virtual Console release. I imagine similarly it's going to come with a book with brief descriptions for all games that will include it.

[Sarge]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Nestopia a cycle-accurate emulator? It's very solid stuff, and about as close to playing on a real system as you're going to get.

That being said, unless you're dumping your own games, you're not legal. I've actually dumped about half my collection, but I know I'm not legal with all the stuff I've got. I'm not exactly worried about them beating down my door for it, though.

It's certainly a good deal compared to VC, where you're going to drop $5 a pop for games. The problem, of course, is that many folks never hooked their Wii to the Internet, and they don't own a Wii U. This is a very cost-effective way to get some of the best of the NES, and the generation that grew up with one will see this as an impulse buy for either their kids or themselves. Doesn't matter if it only gets used a few times, Nintendo will have made their money on it.

I'm actually thinking I might pick up one of those controllers to use on the Wii, though. Especially if it's well-constructed like the original NES controller was.

[Exhuminator]

I'd say it's more questionable to not pay the original game devs (when possible) for the money made on this or VC games

Most of these games were Nintendo developed and published to begin with. Nintendo is still making money off of them if someone buys this device or through the VC.

Also in general when you buy a game, you are paying the publisher, not the developer. The publisher paid the developer already to develop the game. If there are royalties in place the developer may continue to make money off sales of the game, but that's not as common. And royalties such as that for these games would have expired long ago.

to not provide an alternative to all the clearly overpriced old games that are in demand and not included with this console (personally I would only want to play ~20 of the 30 games too) is also bad business sense.

If this device sells well, that could encourage Nintendo to develop other variations of the NES Classic that include different libraries. It would be bad business sense to include every possible popular Nintendo owned NES game on their first classic console. That limits future profits.

The best thing you can do if you want this device but with other libraries, is to buy this first iteration to encourage further releases with the games you're hoping for. I'm pretty sure we all want SNES Classic / N64 Classic, but we've got to prove the market is viable to Nintendo first.

I'm just weighing this against a PC connected to a good screen, with a USB NES pad or similar. NES emulation is great nowadays

Sure. I love emulation and IMO NES emulation has been great since NESticle. But you have to understand most gamers don't want to mess with emulation for whatever personal reasons.

[Sarge]

Sure. I love emulation and IMO NES emulation has been great since NESticle. But you have to understand most gamers don't want to mess with emulation for whatever personal reasons.

Yeah, primarily folks I know that don't emulate don't want to take the time to figure it all out. For whatever reason, it's pretty complicated to them, and they really just want to sit down and play games.

Me, I love digging into that kind of stuff, and I suspect most in our hobby are the same way. Heck, I remember when I stumbled across VGB-DOS, and how astounded I was that I could emulate Game Boy games on my new college PC. To my obsessive brain, I was willing to jump through hoops to get that stuff working.

(Speaking of which, I remember using an awesome DOS shell called Universal ROMs Launcher. I had that puppy set up to run anything, and even set up auto-extract of ROMs and whatnot. It was awesome stuff. I also remember setting up Scitech Display Doctor so I could get VESA 2.0 support for ZSNES transparencies. Good times, good times.)

[Ghegs]

Indeed, in pretty much every gaming forum this is being discussed on (so all of them), there are people saying that this product is pointless because some emulation solution (on PC, Raspberry Pi, etc) is far more better, has more options, can play all the NES games, is cheaper/free, and so on.

This is all technically true and these people are missing the point completely. To them, I say: You are not the intended audience for the NES Classic. This is for Joe and Mary Average Person who have fond memories of playing the NES in their childhood, want to re-live those times a bit and maybe give their own kid a chance to see what video games were like back then. They don't know what a Raspberry Pi is and they don't care, they wouldn't be interested if you told them. They don't want to mess around with the hardware, configure the software any more than necessary, download roms or any of that. For Joe and Mary this is a pretty damn sweet deal.

[isiolia]

This is all technically true and these people are missing the point completely. To them, I say: You are not the intended audience for the NES Classic. This is for Joe and Mary Average Person who have fond memories of playing the NES in their childhood, want to re-live those times a bit and maybe give their own kid a chance to see what video games were like back then. They don't know what a Raspberry Pi is and they don't care, they wouldn't be interested if you told them. They don't want to mess around with the hardware, configure the software any more than necessary, download roms or any of that. For Joe and Mary this is a pretty damn sweet deal.

Pretty much. I don't even think that much of the can/will aspects of emulation play into it. This is a ready-to-roll device with a nostalgic design and an impulse-buy price. It's (probably) taking Nintendo from having almost nothing for the holidays, to likely having one of the hottest gift items of the season.

If nothing else, there'll be a few months of people talking about this thing, and reminding the internet of the NES's glory days, in time for peak Nintendo nostalgia when the NX drops.


I think if it's particularly successful, we'll wind up seeing IP-focused consoles, kind of like Amiibo. They definitely demonstrated that there's a demand for physical collectibles from them, and if they can make them functional via embedded games, that'd be neat.