The NES Classic Edition is upon us very, very soon (this November 11th in fact), so how will it fare if you decide to bring one home to your living room? I think all of us know by now that Nintendo is a master at selling old stuff many, many years later -- and still reaping a profit from day one. Basically, the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short, has wowed gamers in their living rooms with 8-bit graphic and epic games for many, many years since the 1980s. While the SNES took over the mantle later, the NES continued to be a bestseller, before it was finally phased out.
However, the number of NES games continued to live on in the form of Virtual Console titles and the ilk in the future, even all the way to modern consoles like the Nintendo Wii and Wii U. The NES Classic Edition intends to let you step through a time machine, traveling back to the past while offering old school graphics in a modern setup -- on your spanking new pride and joy, the HDTV in your living room, of course.
The NES Classic Edition will be able to fit into your palm -- thanks to the power of miniaturization, and best of all is, it comes with 30 pre-loaded games to help you get started right out of the box at $60 per purchase. This averages out to $2 per game, and chances are you would have already played those games in the past. In order to update itself to be relevant in the 21st century, the NES Classic Edition will sport a HDMI out port, runs off USB power, and comes with a single controller, where you will have to top up another $10 for an additional controller.
The NES Classic Edition is so small, simply because you do not need to fit in a cartridge or an SD memory card. It turns on in a jiffy, and after you have set it up, you will be able to use the menu that brings back memories of your NES days in terms of visual reproduction. Using the controller, you can play with the display option, while checking out links to download the corresponding manuals on your smartphone for reference while you play.
The controllers do come with a pretty accurate feel as with the old school NES controllers, and even though the buttons feel the same, the D-Pad tends to be a wee bit more stiff, perhaps with enough playing time clocked up, things will be different. The controller’s cord is going to be a huge minus in many people’s books though since it is shorter than three feet -- which is way too short for any gamer worth his or her salt playing in front of a large screen TV. This is where an extender would come in handy though!
You can also opt to “save” games halfway, and this is achieved by hitting the Reset button, and each game has four slots, doing away with the need to scribble down passwords to return to the last point of your game.
In terms of visuals, you can play with the 4:3 mode that made it look as though you are enjoying games on a fat and chunky CRT, but it would be best to enjoy the NES Classic Edition in pixel perfect mode, where it will show graphics the same way the NES would output them, as it arrives in bright and full of 8-bit color.
Who knows? If the NES Classic Edition is a hit, we would not be surprised if Nintendo were to roll out other versions with different libraries down the road.
