And what made it worse was that it was discontinued pretty fast. And just so we’re clear, there is no way I’m going to pay hundreds of dollars for 30 games I can easily just emulate even if the product is coming on is close to the original. The system could not be found in stock anywhere, and those who had managed to get their hands on one themselves were selling it for hundreds of dollars as opposed to it’s recommended retail price of $60. If you were one of those people that wanted to get an NES Classic after it launched, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s just that Nintendo decided to understock the system everywhere, creating artificial scarcity and leading me not to be able to obtain the system. You may be asking, was it bad? Well, no, it really wasn’t - it seemed just like a quality product that I expected from the reviews.
I originally really wanted one for Christmas after it came out in 2016, I figured it was going to be my top item for that year. But unlike those, this came from the original company, opposed to being unlicensed or outsourced by the company to another, and the quality of emulation was pretty much guaranteed to be great. Over the years, there’s been various variations of these for the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis in particular, even some bootleg NES clones. Now, these sort of systems aren’t a new thing. It even came with controllers that very closely resembled the originals. It could not accept the original cartridges, but it had 30 games installed, being essentially the most representative of the classic NES library. This was a dedicated console that looked just like a Nintendo Entertainment System… but smaller. Hence, Nintendo has released various NES games on later hardware, but in 2016, they came out with the NES Classic Edition. And with the nostalgia for the original NES, there definitely is a market of people who want to play it’s games - whether that be older people wanting to revisit childhood classics or younger people who are just interested in the oldies - but unfortunately due to a variety of reasons of their own not everyone has access to a Nintendo Entertainment System. There will probably be a day where I do obtain one, but for a variety of reasons, ranging from the aging hardware, having too many consoles as it is, the cost of the system and it’s games and being able to play it’s best titles on newer hardware I ultimately just have not gotten around to picking up one for myself. I have played various NES games through different re-releases such as those on the 3DS and Wii Virtual Console, but I’ve never owned the original system myself, nor do I have any memory of playing it. I’m not counting stuff like the Virtual Boy or Pokemon Mini (or, really, any of the handhelds here), but just to get to the point, the NES was just not a system I ever added to my collection for one reason or another, even after making considerations. The Nintendo Entertainment System, to this day, is probably the only Nintendo console I do not personally own or have experience with. NOTE: This review is also now available on Blogger.