Be Excellent To Each Other

Have you seen this?



It's lovely! It plays 30 NES games and connects to the TV via HDMI. The controller is an official NES controller which can be used with the Wii and Wii U too. No word on whether the games will be 50Hz yet but I'm not bothered about that, it looks brilliant.



These are the games:-

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
Tech Bowl
The Legend of Zelda
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

It's out in November at a mere £49.99 to you sir!

There's so many better ways to play NES games. All of these are on the Wii U virtual console, and a hacked Wii can play them all too.

If you want something this size, a cheap android box can play NES games and a heck of a lot more. And you can spend less than £50 on a decent one.

It's not even going to be especially good emulation. It'll just be the same SOC style design that there are already a load of on the market (including ones that let you use original carts and/roms).

It obviously exists so that Nintendo have something to sell this Christmas.

Obviously the design is kind of neat, but it's not really all that appealing to me.

Give me a mini GBC/GBA and I'm in.

Will probably get one for M-dog.

My Wii is already modded and I've got the Classic SNES controller to go with it... but that's nowhere near as cute and lovely as this is! Look at it! It can fit in your hand! Ahhhh... bless it!

It's so cute. I'd never use it, but it is undoubtably s lovely looking little thing.

I'm the same. I'd buy it, use it for a few hours then leave it to gather dust with my handheld Megadrive, but it's still a lovely looking thing.

China has been churning small consoles with NES games out for years.

To eBay?

No Duck Hunt. Boo.

Aye, and Deal Extreme.

Tricky without CRT screens.

How do light guns work?

The NES gun had a light detector on the front. When you pulled the trigger the screen went black, then put a white square where the duck was, then brought the screen back.

If the gun detected the change in light levels from the white square, you got a hit. You could fake it by pointing it at a torch.

As the tech improved, the whole screen whited out and the gun timed how long it took for the sensor to detect the light. As CRT screens drew dot by dot in a defined pattern (albeit very fast) the gun (or the console, really) could work out where on the screen you were pointing.

LCDs don't draw the screen like that, so you can't play light gun games with them.

I've got one somewhere. It might explode upon contact with electricity, but it's worth the risk.

Many years ago I was at a friend's house distraught over failing an exam. He gave me a beer then fired up the game. I spent about two hours blasting ducks from the sky. Surprisingly therapeutic.

When you pull the trigger, there's a frame that's just a black screen with white targets and theres a light sensor in the gun. if the sensor sees white, then its a hit.

I've got a 14" portable in the loft for occasional retro use but I don't want it cluttering the place up all the time.

You can play Duck Hunt with a hacked Wii.

30 Games is a bit tight, the set of SNES roms I have is 2GB and that includes the same games many times for different countries and even some beta roms

They could have easily put many more games in this.

The SOC solution they are likely using isn't an exact duplicate of NES hardware. They have likely had to do extensive testing and probably game specific tweaks to ensure accuracy. This is likely the reason that Castlevania 1/2 are there, but the notoriously tricky to get working perfectly on anything but original hardware Castlevania 3 is absent.

Also these games are being licensed from the original publishers. Konami/Capcom/Square-Enix will all be getting paid. It's not limited because of the filesize.

Plenty of games can't even really be resold these days, a lot the classic licensed Disney titles from this era would be tricky to sell these days without getting Disney on board, same goes for all the other licensed titles. As far as I can tell, all the included titles here are entirely owned by their respective publishers.

This selection of titles was almost certainly reached because they've done all the paperwork for releasing them on the Wii U eShop, so it's not much more work to do the same for this release.

Edit: I really need to reiterate that if you look at this and think there is something wrong with it that makes it unappealing, you are not the market for it, and there is a similarly priced or cheaper alternative product on the market that is likely far more in line with whatever you're after. Raspberry Pi + Emulator, Android Box + Emulator, a variety of Famiclones with cart slots, handheld Famiclones. Hell you can even get TVs with Android built in these days that would run NES games fine.

It's a novelty product for the Christmas market. It is likely perfectly adequate for that, but don't expect it to be anything more.

Perfect for a young kids bedroom though.

Simple games and no physical media to be left on the floor. I'd imagine the Menu / OSD will be nice and simple too.

Oh, don't be so negative!

Are you…being generous towards Nintendo?

Oh man. Totes getting this "for the kids" for Christmas.

Same!

Wait

These games were created in the time before the Star scandal.

And it's 2016, Year of the Batshit Mental Happenings.

Why would kids be interested in it, though?

They aren't soppy sentimentalists with hearts for the days of blocky graphics and jarring music. Kids iPad games are smooth and pleasing... Obviously most of you are using the kids as an excuse (which is completely cool) but does anyone actually think that kids would be interested in it because mummy and daddy are old and that's what they had?

Because they're little shits and it's all they're getting.

You could apply the same to anything old. TV, films, books. Will Darwin hate The Princess Bride because it wasn't filmed in 4K?

No, because it isn't very good.

I've been hooked on Stardew Valley over the past few weeks and that's old-y style pixel graphics and the kids think it's great. They'll sit and watch me for hours. Unfortunately the incessant questions kinda spoil it but we can't have everything.

And also that.

No, he'll hate it because it's pap.

PAP!

When can we eat?

Why do our clothes smell, mummy?

"Mum, why are you drinking vodka at 3 in the afternoon?"

The want is high with this one....

However, I already have an Android box running all of this stuff but the box does appeal to me as they've kept it almost original it would seem.

Problem is this would likely end up like my Big Trak, stuffed under the stairs after playing with it for about two days.

I dunno, we'll see. Would be nice if they followed it up with a SNES and possibly an N64 though.

You can't, even slightly. You'd have to be a lunatic to argue that the difference in appeal between 80s games and 2010 games is remotely comparable to just increasing the resolution on a film. And I have no idea where you're even trying to go with books.

No, because he's not used to anything that's discernibly different in film quality. A film released last year isn't comparatively different in film quality as the Nintendo classic mini is to a PS4, or an iPad.

I interpreted that as kids won't dislike something just because it's "old".

E.g. my kids bloody love the 60s batman film

I think they're less likely to notice e.g. that the resolution is crap or the graphics don't look right, or whatever.

Admittedly mine are 6 and 4... this may change in 10 years time.

No, but (and being absolutely no expert in kids, obv) Older games are significantly lesser in every department. If it wasn't for those of us who have sentimental attachment to older games, I'd imagine we'd all think they were awful given what we have to compare them to, barring the odd one or two gems.

No, I never said in any way that kids will dislike something just because it is old... But there's, I think, a difference between a classic old story, a classic old film, and a classic old game. Technology in one of these areas has advanced so much that I'm not sure that it is so easily looked over if you've been brought up expecting a certain finesse to graphics, etc. there will always be some exceptions because kids aren't universally full of the same expectations, but I know that some kids find very bad early CGI jarring as they are used to something more believable.

I've noticed my kids like the games with simple control schemes over complex '3D' ones. Graphics do play a part but along as they don't look 'Spekky' levels of shit and have a pleasant enough chip tune playing along I think mine would like them.

Certainly some games have aged better than others. From the list of games for the Nintendo Mini thing, I wouldn't fancy playing the old Zeldas and Castlevanias again. But stuff like Super Mario Bros 3 and Bubble Bobble (if it's as good as the Master System version anyway) would hopefully still entertain kids now.

I imagine that they'd find the games bastard hard.

And that

Lag switch.

I think some NES games are somewhat timeless, Mario 3 definitely holds up really well. A lot of them I think you have to at least have some nostalgia for the era to get into. That's just a guess though, maybe kids would like them.

SNES graphics and design hold up a lot better in my view. PS1 stuff is pretty rough too, but N64 might hold up better.


I'm just accurately describing it's limitations. Obviously if someone doesn't care about those limitations then by all means get this and have fun with it.

If someone does care about those limitations, they should consider one of the alternatives that doesn't have the same limitations.

Not sure why you think that's being "negative".

My work here is done.

It's a good job they're easily pleased...

Sorry mate, I woke up in a grump and my mood has deteriorated since.

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.