Nintendo's releasing a mini NES...

well...
that was unNESpected

for real though this is really cool.

 

nostalgia cash in aint even tryin to be creative anymore. tho the real target is clearly people who will post to twitter saying omg im such a nerd or im 27 and i bought a nes what is my life. but since video games are stupid i prob dont know what im talking about

 

The fact of the matter is this is the most Nintendo thing Nintendo could have done so I'm not surprised, I'm not mad, and I'm not disappointed. But I am, as ever, disgusted. I hope that it will eventually dawn on people how terrible Nintendo is for perpetuating this kind of stagnation and lack of creativity.

 

Perpetuating is right, but this is by no means Nintendo's idea. Sega and Atari have already done this.

It's a convenient novelty for what it is imo, and you're technically getting better deals on those games than you would be getting from Virtual Console, but it's honestly just a cheap, official emulation box which can come with all sorts of caveats. How are the controllers going to feel, and how are they going to behave? Is the emulation going to be sloppy? Will the games look decent, or like liquid garbage?

I would strongly advise anyone with an interest in this thing to hold onto a little skepticism. Since this appears to be a product made by Nintendo rather than one licensed out to someone else, maybe it'll turn out better than I expect, but I don't have high hopes :v .

 

Fair enough. But to clarify, this specific instance isn't really what I'm talking about. It's that most of what they sell is worthless rehashes of things they've already done and this epitomizes that concept. So yeah, other people have done it and that's another way Nintendo is bad for not even having the originality to do it first, but that's not really my point. So even though we're kinda on the same side, I prefer to stay as venomous as possible about it.

 

Its a novelty LEGAL emulation box that frankly isn't that expensive. Sure there aren't many games on it (compared to other emulation options), but this isn't illegal...soooo I don't see a problem with this.

 

What I take issue with is the way products like these are all too often lazily put together. I'm 100% behind providing legal ways to play these games but I don't want anyone to experience them with unresponsive control(ler)s & glitchy emulation and be disappointed.

They have to weigh their pricing with market demand and I get that, I just have a bad feeling about the quality of the thing. Again though, since Nintendo appears to be doing this themselves rather than just slapping their name on it, maybe it will defy my expectations.

 

eyyy mild rant, feel free to not read I don't mind.

Well I mean as far as emulation boxes go (and trust me I have experience) they really don't need to do all that much to make it work out. I haven't dealt with unstable emulation since I was in like 6th grade. Granted I haven't done it in years, but for that entire margin of time in between emulation issues when it came to Nintendo stuff especially were few and far between.

The things I could imagine people complaining about would be the amount of games that are available "in the box", the price point, and the controller support/quality.

Going down the list:

• You are never going to have an emulation box that is SOLD (legally) that will ever come even close to the value of "underground" emulation. I've seen people compare this new box to the PSP Go. They said things like "hey this is even smaller and can play ALL NES, SNES, GB, GBA games". Okay that's fantastic. It's illegal. Like it or not pirating is involved. Even if you had a way to rip your own games, ripping the BIOS/other files needed is ridiculously difficult and most users never/can't do this. Nintendo offering .01% of their NES library (random number, don't worry about the details) for a reasonable price is nothing to be butthurt about. I swear people just think they deserve things for free "just because".
  
  
• This brings me to the price point. Most of what I have to say is pretty much in the last line or two up there ^ but in all honesty I don't think this price point is all that unfair. Hell some of the games (if not most) are better than some of the shiet I've played on my PS4 and that is the "golden child" console of this generation.
  
  
• As for build quality. I can't say a thing about build quality because I am not part of the team who is making it. I will say this however, by offering that many games for this price they are already going to be at a loss in terms of people's "time being spent". Look at League of Legends, the fact that LoL is an INSANE time sink, makes pretty much every game out there suffer in one way or another. It's not only the most popular game in existence, it is the biggest money maker. Even those who do not spend a dime on that game (since its F2P) are in one way or another, hurting every other game's "potential revenue". Right now Nintendo is in a phase of "their older stuff (except the 3DS) is better in terms of overall approval and perhaps in popularity, so introducing older stuff is going to hurt their new sales in one way or another. You may not be able to see it or track it, but if they give me a way to LEGALLY play old NES games, my Wii U will remain unplugged because playing with a ripoff NES controller beats playing with a "Fisher Price" tablet, or having to buy a controller because "touch screen controllers R the future".

I feel like people fundamentally have 0 grasp on how badly legal emulation can hurt a company's numbers. Sure the games don't have much of a cost to them since they are already developed (aside form licensing stuff), but they are in limited numbers. You will eventually own all your favorite classic games, and then have no reason to buy any of their new products. That is where Nintendo is right now. Sure the new Zelda looks cool, and I am looking forward to the new pokemon, but their numbers are total garbage (by comparison), and people seem to only want nostalgia.

If this is the nail in the coffin that makes them stop selling new consoles and move onto just making games, I welcome the change. I know it won't be, but still. Legal Nintendo games on my PS5 / Playstation new Portable Vita mk 12 sounds like a fun time.


Edit: Side note: why don't people post in regular sections that actually count? I feel like we missed something with this lol

 

My wife was really excited when we saw the Sega one so I bought it for her.
Half of the games were absolute crap (they weren't horrible, but they were pretty much the arcade mini-games), you couldn't save at all and the "wireless" controllers had about a two foot radius and had to be in direct line with the system. It was fun for...a day.

The NES one looks better and I could use this for drinking with friends so...we'll probably get this.

 

I'm not going to comment on the ramifications to Nintendo since it's not really an angle I was approaching in the first place, but just as an aside I never once said I felt the price point on this thing was unfair! I'd actually prefer it be a little more expensive if it meant a more solid product. And as I said, I'm totally behind playing these legally.

I'm basing my argument mostly on similar products licensed by Sega, Atari, etc. which have proven to be a disappointment. Cheap controllers, inaccurate emulation (bad sound, graphical glitches), and poor picture quality are all common complaints. And if it turns out to be more of the same, I have doubts it will get much use by people who have alternatives like Virtual Console.

I don't want or expect something as robust or accurate as a pirated library running on a PC emulator (I actually think the list Nintendo has put together is a pretty good collection!). But I think it's fair to want a decent product, which a lot of people seem to feel past attempts at these consoles have not been.

 

The way I see it is if they can do smooth emulation on multiple other products (of their own creation), then this should be child's play in terms of stability. I feel like people worry about the "shell" too much. They already know how to do more complex emulation on 3ds/wii u, so I don't see this being an issue. That's just me though.

 

I have a little less faith, but it all depends on what they're willing to put inside it and whether they really put it to good use. Guess time will tell.

 

It's not really about faith. When I say I've dealt with a shit ton of emulators, I mean it. I don't know what other people's experience are with them, but even some crap quality hardware can run emulators for nes, snes, gb, gba without breaking a sweat. The way I see it is they already have the software, its just a matter of porting it and making it work. If people who aren't paid a dime can make emulators run on systems that shouldn't/don't support it, I cannot imagine them failing on the software end. When the hardware is generally not an issue, that leads to this being a fairly solid bet.

I'm more than willing to eat my words, but if this was like a PS2 emulator we were talking about, I would join you on the skeptical kool-aid. That isn't the case though.

 

This is the same company that claims SNES/GBA emulation is a no-go on a 3DS/XL, so I can't help it lol. I love Nintendo games, I mean my avatar probably makes that obvious, I just know these consoles have less-than-stellar track records & suspect this one could turn out the same way. I'd love to eat my words when it comes out though, frankly, hahaha.

 

Well, in order for emulation to be done for those games via R4 (or similar technology) you actually need a specialized chip on that "R4" that has a dedicated processor to boost clock speed to run the games in a stable way. It could have something to do with the software environment on the 3DS itself, but oddly enough it isn't as gba/snes friendly as you may think. It can do gb/nes just fine from what I've seen, but there is some issues going past that from what I've heard.

I've tried, trust me. I have like 3-4 R4's just for testing (or at least back when I did that kind of stuff).

 

I'm totes buying a controller since they work on Wii U apparently. I might get the whole thing if it's neat enough so I can have some causal NES in the other room.

It's certainly not going to be an Analogue NT or Framemeister quality. It's going to be Wii U emulation software (you can tell by the suspend point menu) so it's what you'd get on Wii U visually. It's at least a nice price considering it's $60-$70 here but on Wii U it's $150 for the same games let alone the console itself.

But for people who just want to play NES games, have no access, and want a semi-authentic controller with it, this is probably the best you can do.