As promised, Nintendo is bringing the NES Classic Edition back from the dead… for a while, at least.
The company says the NES Classic will be available again in North America and Europe starting June 29th, and Nintendo plans to selling the game system through the end of the year.
We’ll see how that goes: the company had a hard time meeting demand for its $60 retro gaming device when it first launched in 2016, which potential customers had a hard time finding stores that had any in stock.
To be fair, it would have been hard for Nintendo to predict just how popular the NES Classic would be. Sure it ships with 30 games pre-installed including classics like Castlevania, Donky Kong, Super Mario Bros, Kirby’s Adventure, and Final Fantasy. But those games are also several decades old and probably have more appeal to nostalgic gamers than newcomers. There’s also no official way to load additional games on the NES Classic (although there is an unofficial way to do it).
In related news, Nintendo also plans to relaunch the Famicom Mini in Japan on June 28th. It’s basically the Japanese equivalent of the NES Classic Edition, except it takes its design cues from the Famicom rather than the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Nintendo also has a new special edition Famicom Mini that will come with 20 manga-inspired games including Dragon Ball Z and Fist of the North Star.
I will try and get one when it hits this summer, but mainly so I can hack it and load more games on it. That way, I can stop playing NES games on my Wii hooked up to a CRT. I’d like to upscale these games, and the NES Classic seems a nice package in which to do that.
I have been wondering which would be cheaper, this, or a Raspberry Pi setup
The pi likely would be cheaper depending on what controller you get/use. The Retropi is kind of annoying only because you have to spend time configuring it, and if you use more than the “easy” emulators/roms, then configuring becomes more intensive. PSX and above takes some more time to master it. On the subreddit for retropi, people often post how they spend more time configuring and optimizing than actually playing a game
And if you don’t have roms already, you have to spend time getting the ones you want. They’re easily available, but you still have to do it.
The Retropie has better emulation for NES games.
I’ll buy one, if I can find it in stock somewhere.
I look forward to it coming out. I hope it sells at the very affordable $60.00.
will it include StarFox 0 ?