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Reincarnating the NES
IGN has a piece on a modern NES clone, the NEX. Well constructed and designed to recapture a gamer's enthusiasm for the 80's gaming juggernaut, they have a rundown on the deck's features and extras. From the article: "Though there have been some rather weak attempts to remake the NES/Famicom prior to the NEX, Messiah really put some work into the production to make the NEX feel deserving of the love its users no doubt feel for the original. The device itself is small, cute, and very reminiscent of its forefathers with a front-loading NES cartridge slot and a top loading Famicom slot. The controller jacks are the same as the original NES, meaning you are welcome to use your original controllers if you still have some. Even the packaging is attractive, and the Generation NEX kit includes a cartridge-shaped manual in a slip case, packed with instructions written and illustrated in action-comic-book style and a mini rarity guide developed by Digital Press."
I think products like this are extremely cool. Unfortunately, I can't really see a use. I love my old NES games, and I have a sizable collection of carts. Problem is, between the NES, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, and so forth, it's impossible to pile them all up around the TV. Not to mention the huge PITA involved in keeping all the old carts readily available for play.
Thus, emulators. Instead of a dozen consoles, I have one Gamecube and one PC, the PC running every emulator you can imagine. I physically OWN the cartridges, yet I prefer playing the games themselves on the PC: improved graphics, better controllers, and best of all, no blowing furiously into carts trying to make them work.
Thus, my collection of physical games sits in myriad boxes for posterity's sake (excepting my gold Zelda cart, which rests lovingly on display) while I actually -play- the games on a PC.
GeekNights!
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I read this article the other day and still wonder how it's possible to release this system without any flak from Nintendo. This is considered legal?
It's not only *considered* legal, it is legal.
The NES was reverse-engineered years ago. And all of their important patents have expired as well. Anyone has free reign to build a famiclone these days, and in fact nearly all of the retro-consoles on the market right now (with some notable exceptions like the Flashback 2 and the C64 joystick thing) are famicoms-on-a-chip running emulated software.
Nintendo doesn't like it but there's not a thing they can do about it. What they do do every once in a while is find a manufacturer that's including game ROMs with their famiclones and bust them for that. Then they word their press release such that it looks like the real issue was "unauthorized consoles" and the headlines end up saying things like "Nintendo busts NES clone manufacturer!" But it's always the ROMs that are the real issue - obviously the copyright on actual content still applies.
If you just sell the hardware, though, anybody is free to do so.