Nintendo isn’t generally known as The Ups and Downs Company, but it should be, because when you think about it, its entire career has been built on ups and downs. After the undeniable down that were the Wii U and the disappointing launch of the New 3DS, though, it seems that we’re finally on the way to another up with the release of “Pokémon GO”, which raised Nintendo’s stocks by an astounding $7.5 billion despite the fact that Nintendo didn’t even make that game. But if you think that was just a one-off success, Nintendo seems determined to prove you wrong, as they just announced yet another product that’s undoubtedly going to bring them buttloads of cash when it launches later this year – a mini-NES console.
The console, known officially as the “NES Classic Edition”, looks exactly like an NES – Nintendo’s first cartridge-based system which made the childhood of oh so many people across the world and pretty much managed to single-handedly rescue the videogame market in the US. The most noticeable difference is that this console, unlike its bulky predecessor, will fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Naturally, that also means that it won’t support cartridges of any kind (as a matter of fact, the tray – known officially as the Chamber Lid – can’t open at all), so to make it up for that it comes pre-loaded with 30 classic NES games, including all three “Super Mario Bros.” titles, “Castlevania”, “Final Fantasy”, “Donkey Kong” and “Donkey Kong Jr.”, “Galaga”, “Mega Man 2”, “Metroid” and more. Sadly, Nintendo has confirmed that the system will not receive any more games post-launch, since it can’t connect to the Internet, but the 30 games included are diverse enough to satisfy most players’ nostalgia.
The console will connect to the TV through an HDMI cable, thus providing you with the clearest possible image for these games. In addition, the NES-style controllers can also be plugged into Wiimotes, and so if you’ve got a Wii or a Wii U you can play classic Virtual Console games with the original controller. In other words, as long as you own a Wii or a Wii U then you’ll be able to use the NES controller to play any classic NES game available online, even beyond the 30 which are included with the system. Honestly, I think it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to connect these controllers to a PC for emulation purposes (the Wiimote can already connect to a laptop through Bluetooth anyway, so I’m guessing it won’t take too much coding to incorporate the NES attachment as well).
Now, keep in mind that selling a smaller version of a classic console with pre-loaded games is nothing new under the sun – in fact, Sega did just that two years ago. The biggest difference is that this version was done by a third-party company (as Sega quit the console business after the failure of the Dreamcast), while the mini-NES was designed and will be manufactured by Nintendo themselves, as a first-party system. It’ll cost $60 (with additional controllers costing $10) and will be out in North America on November 11th, with no word yet on a European release. My guess is that it’s going to come out in certain big regions where manufacturers are willing to stock them (such as the UK and Germany), but not in others (like Eastern Europe). That’s typically how things go with hardware like that, but in any case, we’ll know more when November approaches.