The NES Classic Outsold the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch In June (theverge.com)

After returning to stores in June after a brief stint of sales back in 2016, the NES Classic is topping U.S. sales charts. Market research firm NPD reports that the NES Classic was June's highest unit-selling hardware platform in the U.S., beating the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. "The NES Classic managed to outsell these consoles despite only being on sale for a few days in late June," reports The Verge. From the report: While the NES Classic is priced at $59 compared to more expensive current-generation consoles, it's clearly still in demand 35 years after the original Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in 1983. The NES Classic comes loaded with 30 games including classics like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Pac-Man. While you can't insert vintage NES cartridges into it, the console supports game saves and connects to TVs via a HDMI cable. Nintendo hasn't revealed whether it now plans to introduce more miniature retro consoles.

Comments

It helps that it's $60 bucks

[rsilvergun]

and that it's been the video game equivalent of unobtainium for over a year now.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[El Cubano]

Something was clearly different this time around. When it first went on sale in 2016, it was actually impossible to get one anywhere. Even Amazon had problems with their site, as I recall.

This time I expected to again miss out. I woke up and had breakfast the day it went on sale back in June and then I decided to check out a few retailers just to see if there was a possibility to grab one. I managed to snag one (at the MSRP, not some absurd scalping rate) from BestBuy via their website.

Most of the games I remember fondly. But Final Fantasy and Zelda are to me even better than I remember and better than just about anything else I've even looked at in the last 20 years.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[hcs_$reboot]

I woke up and had breakfast

Details missing: did you pee before or after the breakfast?

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Something was clearly different this time around. When it first went on sale in 2016, it was actually impossible to get one anywhere. Even Amazon had problems with their site, as I recall."

It's called starting the inventory this time around with over 10x the total consoles they sold during all of 2016. Amazing how having realistic supply to expected demand can be a game changer.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[aardvarkjoe]

Details missing: did you pee before or after the breakfast?

Joke's on you, the answer is "during".

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Pft, joke's on you : the answer is "pee was breakfast".

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Pft, joke's on you : the answer is "pee was breakfast".

Wait, you mean to tell me that WASN'T apple juice??!??!!

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[MBGMorden]

Heck this time around I walked into the local Gamestop 3 days after it was released and bought one. It was the last one they had, but still, it was on the shelf a few days later.

Overall, I was happy. I want one for myself not to sell, but I didn't want one enough to pay more than normal MSRP.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[tepples]

What makes the NES Classic Edition not "pathetic" is that it comes with authentic copies of notable* games. This distinguishes it from emulators on a Raspberry Pi 3 that do not. Either they don't come with games at all because they can't score any licenses, or they come with non-notable freeware like Thwaite and Nova the Squirrel and Gruniozerca 2.

* I use "notable" in Wikipedia's sense: significant coverage in three or more independent reliable sources.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[jason777]

It has been discovered nintendo used the .nes format, and very likely sources their roms from the already pirated versions.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[jellomizer]

That and the others systems have been out for a while now.
If anyone who is now considering getting an Xbox one, ps4 or a switch. Probably had their old system die on them, or their kid has reached an age the parents deemed OK for them to play video games.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

> Something was clearly different this time around. When it first went on sale in 2016, it was actually impossible to get one anywhere. Even Amazon had problems with their site, as I recall.

Not necessarily "impossible". I was kinda ambivalent towards the whole idea and never tried to get a NES Mini, nor did I even keep an eye on any of the backlog and inventory level horror stories. In my case, it's only when I read that Nintendo had stopped production that I got curious about it.

I just casually walked into an EB Games store at the local strip mall shortly after that announcement, inquired about it, and lo and behold, they had one just sitting there. Brand new, unopened, going for MSRP.

I've been trying to pull off the same stunt for the SNES Mini. I must be trying too hard this time around however, because I still haven't managed to snag one (even though the clerk at the same store tells me they still receive them weekly).

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[OrangeTide]

It has been discovered nintendo used the .nes format, and very likely sources their roms from the already pirated versions.

Sure, seems very likely that they did. But it's important to note that it is not illegal to download something you already own the copyright to.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[torkus]

Huh...I guess I missed the announcement.

Probably because I stopped watching or caring about the NES or SNES after I built a retropie box...which was a revisit of the original Xbox I modded back in the day and still have. And by 'built' I mean 6 screws and copying some files to a SD card. It amazes me that people ever lined up for this when there have been viable, and frankly better, alternatives for a decade and more.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[torkus]

You realize it's hared to buy a pre-built retropie WITHOUT being loaded with games than with??

I've even seen adds on FB for them. Yup, it's not legal but it's also trivial to do.

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[tepples]

I don't use Facebook. Does it have a way to report an ad on grounds "Hey, did Nintendo approve the inclusion of X, Y, and Z games?"

Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks

[jason777]

I know its just funny. Hackers created the first nes emulator and invented the ines format. We pirate roms and use the emulator. Nintendo later pirates the emulator format, possibly the emulator, and possibly used ripped roms rather than rip them from scratch.

60 Dollar Novelty Item

[StevenSheeves]

Everything outsells the dead Xbox. That is not news.

But a 60 dollar item outselling something that costs 300 dollars like the PS4? Yawn.

Let us know when the NES Classic sells 80 million worldwide like the PS4.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[daimando9101]

I think you might have jinxed it. XP

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead Xbox? it has pretty amazing sales numbers actually, it just doesn't have PS4/switch sales numbers. basically it outselling most consoles from other generations bar a couple of the stupidly high selling ones. Regardless a limited availability device is always going to outsell in a month.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, let me know when they release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for PC or PS4.

I'd gladly pay $60 for that game, but I won't pay $360 for the game + a console that I'll only ever use for one game.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just "a 60 dollar item", but a bunch of 30 year old games cobbled together beat the PS4.

But I know, for kids it's cool to look unfazed.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[KiloByte]

The difference is the quality of games. No one who knows any better wants Xbox or PS4. You still have new good games but they come nearly exclusively from indie companies or outright individuals, who can't put their software on that PS4. Instead, they can do so on any open system. And I actually tested a $24 Pine64 with a $2.20 (!) joypad + USB extension cable (so it reaches the couch) on sister's TV so her kids can take a look at old good games. Then you have that HDMI output on an actual PC...

So yeah, NES is worth more. But even that $60 is a ripoff -- they're selling a crappy box with an abysmally poor emulator. I already have good emulators, and I own old cartridges, so I don't give an airborne intercourse about anyone telling me I have to buy that exact set of bits again. Obviously, there's only so much you can play the same game (at least without new content like Doom wads, or well-generated worlds like some roguelikes), so I haven't used a NES emulator in quite a while, but I could and can do so.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

It was in fourth place in a 3 way race!

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Junta]

Of course the skillset you have would probably cost someone not having that skillset to spend $100 to pay someone long enough to turn a Pine64 into a retro gaming machine...

It's something that is very easy to take for granted.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in about 6th or 7th place for all time best selling home consoles. it doesn't matter if it is in last place if it is selling well and making a lot of money. at 40 million consoles and still a couple of years left of life in will end up between 50 and 60 million which is bloody astounding for a console that came second last this gen (Wii U joke is dead last).

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Stormwatch]

let me know when they release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for PC

Man, if only you could emulate it... oh wait.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[tepples]

Skyrim is already available for PC and PlayStation 3. It runs playably even on Intel graphics all the way back to Ivy Bridge.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[tepples]

But how do you dump an authentic copy of BotW from the Game Disc to your PC for use in Cemu? The official docs say you need a Wii U anyway.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[barc0001]

Exactly. Most people who frequent /. tend to forget that setting up an emulator on an SBC like a Pine64 or a Raspberry Pi isn't something most people off the street even know is possible, let alone feel able to do. People are paying $60 for having all of that setup and packaging done by Nintendo in a convenient fashion, so all they need to do is plug and play. I set up a Pi with Retropie a while back and it was a fun little project, but it also took some time to do the first time especially with tweaking it, and if someone was paying me at my outside consulting rate it would definitely have been more than $100.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Stormwatch]

authentic copy

Psst... try The Pirate Bay.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[MBGMorden]

I'd gladly pay $60 for that game, but I won't pay $360 for the game + a console that I'll only ever use for one game.

Wii U. Used they're about $115 for the base system from Gamestop - I grabbed mine for $85 from a pawn shop.

The Switch isn't some huge graphical leap over the Wii U and IMHO a used console plus the price of the game is well worth it for Breath of the Wild.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[MBGMorden]

You're looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.

For every Super Mario Bros. there was a Top Gun or Fester's Quest.

You can't compare ALL the game from current gen to the standout classics of old systems and say they're worse. Its why old things always seem better. In 15 years you'll look back to the current generation and rather than the hundreds of bad or mediocre titles you'll remember a couple dozen standout ones.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[reanjr]

80 million? Yawn...

Wake me up when the PS4 comes anywhere near the 150 million DS Nintendo sold.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[reanjr]

NES hit 62 million in 2004.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[KiloByte]

Use a PC then. Downloading an emulator and inserting that HDMI plug into the computer is a task anyone smarter than a $SPORT spectator can do. If all fails, ask a 10 years old kid for help.

If you managed to connect the real NES to the TV all those years ago, and know basics of operating a PC, you already have that skill set.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

And : what about Pi + HDMI cable + power supply + case + SD card, + a game controller. Drop the case from the list, you may use nothing or a piece of cardboard. This all adds up, even to the NES Mini price (I don't know if a HDMI cable is included with the NES)

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the "race", that thing where being in first place is the only kind of success, which is definitely how business works.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Junta]

That PC is going to be a lot more money than $60...

I'm skipping out on them too, because I'm not particularly sentimental about the cosmetic design, I have a high end HTPC that can do this and if I felt like it the capability of rolling my own with one of those cheap boards.

However, there's a large number of folks for whom it just makes since to plop down $60 and plug it in and forget it.

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

It's on PC, just not legally

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

> Man, if only you could emulate it... oh wait. [cemu.info]

Man, if only emulation was as easy to deal with for the casual user as pressing an on/off button...

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[OrangeTide]

Candy Land has been a popular game since 1949. It still beats fancier games in annual sales.

(I'd argue that it's not even a game, because there is no player decisions. but people treat it as if it were a game)

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

But even that $60 is a ripoff

It's cheaper than buying 30 games on the Wii Virtual Console. And obviously piracy is cheaper and therefor a "better deal", so a home-built console with a PINE64, RPi3, or whatever is going to be a great deal.

But I'd like to warn you that until DMCA is overturned the status of ROM files is that they are illegal to download in the US and similar jurisdictions, even if you own the original cartridge. Much of the fair use and rights to back-up were destroyed in 1998. There is still a bit of a loophole for creating your own backups, but so far they have only been tested in courts for floppies and tapes. A ROM is not volatile and post-DMCA it's not clear that you can back up for personal use anymore.

sources: Nintendo legal (likely biased and potentially misinformation), Stackexchange (laypeople trying to make sense of complex legal code)

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[KiloByte]

That PC is going to be a lot more money than $60...

But it can be moved around, and if you're playing a game you're not using it otherwise. Yeah, doing so on a TV is hardly ever worth the bother to lug it around, except for probably social reasons. But a laptop is made for being moved, and I have yet to see a laptop without a monitor connector: VGA being dead, it's HDMI or mini-HDMI. It's probably just MacBooks that require an adapter from Lightning that, knowing Apple, costs north of $200, but it's often explicitly advertised as capable of doing that. HDMI signal also can be tunnelled over USB-C but not every machine can route it that way (my phone can).

Then, I think that modern telescreens (marketing name "Smart TV") all run Android, and might allow installing extra software even without an external HTPC.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[torkus]

It's braindead easy these days. THere's so many how-tos with pictures, tools, and all. You can build one with zero technical expertise.

Now, I do agree there's still some value in having it done for you. When you're in the sub-$100 range it's not a big deal +/- a few bucks to most people for something cool.

But from Nintendo's side where they have the economies of scale, $60 is a very healthy profit margin and even more so on the retro SNES for $100. I doubt their BOM is more than $20-25

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Anonymous Coward]

authentic copy

Psst... try The Pirate Bay.

Why? Are you allergic to giving a company money in exchange for a good or a service they've produced?

Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item

[rworne]

For Apple, itâ(TM)s HDMI, displayport, USB-C, or some combination of the three.

None of which are $200 and none of which are exotic compared to whatâ(TM)s on a Windows PC.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Stormwatch]

If you really want to, no one is keeping you from buying the game AND getting the torrent.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[Junta]

Laptop that for most people goes to sleep when lid closed, so they have to leave it open (yes this is configurable, but again, speaking to 'plug and go' mindset).

They have to find a set of bluetooth or otherwise wireless controllers or get extension cords for wired controllers.. An xbox controller is around $40 by itself.

And you have to get the roms (of course by plugging your legitimate cartridges into a cartridge dumper, right???). Legally speaking for NES/SNES type games, you need a hard to find and generally speaking expensive cartridge dumper. You aren't legally allowed to download a copy, just because you own a copy (copyright law is not necessarily the sanest thing). PSX and PSX2, sure you can use a normal drive to rip, but anyway...

You have to know what sotfware will work. RetroArch is of course a good go to. You have to either figure out how to add the titles to an external launcher (e.g. steam big picture) or use the builtin browser (which won't extend to non-emulation games).

Once you are familiar, this is a really good setup and liberating way to not repay for the same content over and over again, *if* you care that much about it. However for a lot of people that probably haven't bothered in years but remember or want their kids to experience it now, $60 and they are done isn't a crazy sum.

Re:60 Dollar Novelty Item

[KiloByte]

An xbox controller is around $40 by itself.

What?!? Are you buying them in an iApple iStore?

A basic but well-made controller I have costed me 7.99PLN ($2.20) a few years ago. Fancy-schmancy controllers go for 15-18 ($4-$5). I understand that xbox might take an outrageous price for replacement parts that are made intentionally incompatible, but for PC or an ARM board you can use anything that connects with bog-standard USB.

And you have to get the roms (of course by plugging your legitimate cartridges into a cartridge dumper, right???).

You can find them on any ROM site, with the average person not even knowing the copyright mafia might have something against it. Unlike generic sites like The Pirate Bay, ROM sites never had a propaganda campaign against them. Nintendo is vile and litigious, but doesn't do big public campaigns, and most takedowns of fan remakes tend to give them pretty bad publicity.

$60 and they are done

And where do you connect that console? Most of my friends and relatives don't even have an TV anymore.

Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

An NES emulator+roms are free, will run perfectly on literally any hardware, and are probably the least-morally offensive instance of software piracy you'll ever encounter (if you're hung up about shit like that). If you're desperate for that authentic boxy, hard-edged, hand-pain-inducing NES controller feeling, you can get a 2-pack of authentic-looking usb controllers on amazon for $12.

http://www.fceux.com/web/download.html
https://thepiratebay.org/search/nes+roms/0/3/0

Or you could piss away $70 on a (formerly) trendy lump of plastic and further encourage Nintendo to repackage and sell 30+ year old games in lieu of coming up with good new ones.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[CaseCrash]

Yeah, I don't understand why people are excited about paying $60 for a few games that should be out of copyright in a sane world when you could spend $60 on an android based box that can play every NES and SNES and Sega Genesis and Apple II and Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 etc game ever made. Spend a little more and you can play GameCube and the first few playstations and early xbox.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could piss away $70 on a (formerly) trendy lump of plastic and further encourage Nintendo to repackage and sell 30+ year old games in lieu of coming up with good new ones.

It's called NOT being a filthy communist.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the labour theory of value is the typical explanation given for the purpose of copyright.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[guruevi]

Technically, this NES Classic should be able to do the same. It's an ARM system with a stripped down emulator, there are no authentic NES chips in it nor is it a custom chip. It's basically an ODROID2/Raspberry Pi with the Nintendo flavor of Linux.

What you could do though is if you own this, you now own a license to the ROM for use on other emulators.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

For a bit more I could buy a retropie kit that will play much more than just NES games. And the NES Classic doesn't even have a way to add more games. If Nintendo was smart, they would sell a DVD disk or a flash drive with all of the NES titles...they would of course have to make license agreements with other NES game makers. Sell it for about $25-$30. They would of course also need to put a USB port or microSD card slot on the Nintendo Classic. There are many emulators for PCs, and game consoles, and lots of these folks would probably shell out for the games. Makers of the older game consoles have missed the boat by not making the games available in large collections at reasonable prices. Many folks till like to play the classic games,

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Dude, most people just want plug and play and something that works rather than something thats hacked together and looks nothing like the original. Same reason why nobody uses Linux unless a big company puts a lot of work into it to make it just work.

The new NES is $60. People love it. Why are you complaining?

Re:Obligatory reminder

[dabadab]

I don't understand why people are excited about paying $60 for a few games that should be out of copyright in a sane world when you could spend $60 on an android based box that can play every NES and SNES and Sega Genesis and Apple II and Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 etc game ever made.

Actually they are doing just that: the NES Classic is an ARM box that can play every game up to the first Playstation. See here for the details: snesclassicmods.com. (The NES Classic and the SNES Classic has the same HW and underlying OS they just run a different emulator by default).

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a "Nintendo original/approved" collector/nostalgia item, of course. People pay money for many "silly" (from someone's point of view) things. Why pay for b rand clothes when you can buy an exact (even in quality standards) knock-off?

But you should already know, as a Slashdot reader.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't understand why people are excited about paying $60 for a few games that should be out of copyright in a sane world

Being out of copyright shouldn't prevent Nintendo from releasing the games again on an official platform.
But with legal competitors they would probably had a bit more pressure on themselves to make the emulator at least as accurate as the open source alternatives out there.

Even hobbyists gets flak for releasing an emulator for a 30+ year old system that isn't cycle exact these days.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah, I don't understand why people are excited about paying $60 for ...

Most people aren't techies and unlike you and I wouldn't enjoy actually getting the thing to work (and would probably take a lot longer to do it too).

The $60 allows them to relive the fun of an earlier era with zero fucking around. No finding ROMS or emulators or a suitable computer on which to run them, controllers a case and so on and so forth.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Android boxes are spyware and bootleg NES USB controllers from ebay probably are crap in some way.
Then downloading roms could take ages (even if it takes a quarter second to download the game itself, there's the finding the games, the navigation) or sorting through the crap if you download an archive of 1000 NES games.

Another way would be to hack on the NES mini to add those emulators and games :). I don't know how many megabytes free there are. Won't store PS1 games or even many Neo Geo games. But it's got a NES controller anyway.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

This.

It's a convenience item. 60 bucks vs. tinkering and toying with emulators and roms 'til they work. Yes, that's part of the fun for some, for most it's just an inconvenient ordeal necessary to get to the fun. And if you spend more than 3 hours doing it, and if you have at least a halfway decent job, spending 60 bucks is actually cheaper for you since you could have worked those 3 hours and earned more than those 60 bucks if you don't get any joy out of tinkering with it anyway. Hell, depending on your job and how much you like it, you could get enjoyment out of working instead...

This is, by the way, also the reason people buy games instead of copying them. Copy protection, prosecution and whatever else you could field changes jack shit. Back in the days when I was poor, I copied games. Today, I buy them. Not because it's "the right thing to do" or some bullshit, but simply because I want to play the game and not toy with the game to make it work. Yes, that was fun when I was young (and I owe the skills I picked up back then that allows me to do my job today to copy protection, so... thank you, I guess?), but I don't have the time anymore. I want my stuff to work, preferably without having to jump a bunch of hoops first.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Daralantan]

In addition to being easier/lazier for many, I could see a big benefit for this being that you could also just take it over to other people's places and plug it straight into their TV - bam, old video game time.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, they use an Allwinner CPU. Allwinner CPUs are some of the best-supported ARM CPUs in Linux. So not only should you be able to do this, it's pretty sure that you can do that.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

if you spend more than 3 hours doing it

What are you 'tinkering' with that takes 3 hours? Download the FCEUX binary and a rom pack, run the emulator .exe, spend a few seconds setting up your controller once and for all, and open the .nes file you want to play; Alt-Enter if you want fullscreen. Yes there are other settings you can fiddle with if you want to, but nothing that's required for basic functionality.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

Windows 10 looks like something that's hacked together, most DEs for Linux look far more polished and professional now.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

No finding ROMS or emulators

I mean, there's links right there. This stuff isn't hard to find.

or a suitable computer on which to run them

Absolutely any desktop or laptop made in the last 20 years, any tablet or smartphone, and some graphing calculators.

controllers

Use a keyboard if you don't have a gamepad, or grab one at walmart for $20. The original NES controller was godawful.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

even if it takes a quarter second to download the game itself, there's the finding the games, the navigation

If finding "Super Mario Bros 3.nes" in a folder of literally fifty billion trillion files takes you longer than five seconds you might just be mentally handicapped.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

Your comparison is incomple: 60 bucks for a handful of NES games versus a few hours setting up a device to run thousands of games from multiple consoles.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[reanjr]

Every emulator system I've used has had a menu system that is slow and painful to use.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

You can do the same with a Pi or some other mini-computer. You just have to set up the software once, then you can easily take it anywhere just the same.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

You are also a lot less likely to catch a virus from an official product versus a pirated/cracked version.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

And that setting up once already takes more time than I need to earn 60 bucks.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

...provided you can still get those thousands of games...

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

Mmm... in this case, yes. But if the history of DRM in the more recent past is any indicator, the chance of having unwanted and potentially harmful software on your PC after installing a legit game is higher than from a copy...

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Green Mountain Bot]

And the NES Classic doesn't even have an officially sanctioned way to add more games.

Fixed it for you. But I agree that they should have made a sanctioned way and made money off of it.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

But the result is a machine loaded with a fuckton of games, not a handful.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Hadlock]

Yeah but this, you can buy, plug it in to the minivan's HDMI in port and hand it to your kids. Now your kids get to play the same games you played growing up. No tinkering required.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I've always used ZSNES even though others are said to be "better".
Long ago I used Nesticle too even though it was old and said again to be inaccurate. DOS emulator, so it ran perfectly on Windows 98SE. I tried it under Dosbox and it ran fine! (it has low requirements, runs even on a slow 486). Too bad I couldn't get four joysticks buttons to be recognised under Dosbox (four : A B Start Select). I only had the bare two axis, two button.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but what you just instructed me to do was the result of you having invested some amount of time to learn. I couldn't have told you the name of the "best" emulator to use, or what controller to buy and where to buy it, or where to download my illegal ROMs from. $60 is a perfectly reasonable amount of money for the hardware and software included in this bundle.

What is a raspberry pi? $30? Two decent controllers, another $15-20? So I'm spending $10-20 for the convenience of someone else preloading/configuring the device so that I can plug it into any TV and game within seconds?

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

But tinkering is part of the fun!

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Ryanrule]

Plus, you can mod it if you want and dump the entire library on it.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[serviscope_minor]

right so you get a pi, then fuck around with software, get a case from somewhere and then find a suitable PSU. Then find some controllers. And the ROMs.

I like that kind of fuckery: I have an xarcade dual stick, mame and roms. I like setting it up and I like playing it. But I get it's not for everyone. You should too. 60 bucks saves several hours and 15 years experience and there is nothing wrong with that.

Also your sig: can you not? It serves nothing except deligitimising your point because you're misusing words.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL those files are backed up and archived. We will be fine. You can download the whole pack (every NES game) on many torrent sites.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

Better now?

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK all the emulators in most common use today have a standard file picker like every other windows program. Certainly that's the case for FCEUX.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning how to run a windows .exe file or how to use your TV as a monitor for your PC or how to use TPB is isn't exactly esoteric knowledge. And if you weren't aware that FCEUX is the current dominant NES emulator for windows or linux and has been for years and years, well now you are.

The ones saying you need to build something from scratch with a raspberry pi are just nerding out.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[serviscope_minor]

yep. Agree or disagree, it's a defensible point now.

Re: Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi dumb guy. GNU/Linux is a family of operating systems based around the Linux Kernel. It has the lion's share of server market and phone market. Many people also find it totally wholesome to use as a desktop OS. I understand that many people like the commercial OS's. I'm partial to Mac OS myself. However, most Linux distributions give me fewer headaches than either my Windows or Mac machines.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and we all have that threshold. Like for years and years I ran a mythbuntu box and loved it... right up until (a) it started getting buggy and (b) I noticed that a proliferation of cheap as chips commercial equivalents had come on the market that did more or less the same thing but in a much, much smaller box than my decade old pc. Sure it might have been an easy fix, but it also might have taken days, so fuck it, why bother when I can hand over some token amount and have it become somebody else's problem?

(And yeah, it probably helped that I've become old and jaded about tech where once I was young and excited by it, but whatever).

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

But I DO think of it as rape -- plus torture, mayhem, endangerment, organ theft, medical fraud, and sometimes even vampirism. It's a nasty package.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

That's like saying cable is better than OTA-TV because there's more channels. What good is 1000 games and all of them suck?

Let's not forget that the NES Library does contain a few gems, this is right. But also an incredible amount of really, really shitty games that aged terribly.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[serviscope_minor]

But I DO think of it as rape

If you like, but it doesn't fit any commonly accepted definition of that. If you don't use words to mean what everyone else means by them then you will at best confuse people and at worst put people off from the message you're trying to convey.

plus torture,

sure

mayhem,

u wot

organ theft

I'd avoid that too. Kidnapping someone and stealing their kidney to implant in someone else is what most people have in mind by that. Plus you know I don't think the foreskin qualifies as an organ in the way most people think of it.

medical fraud,

If it's done for medical reasons, then yes. If it's done for other reasons you'll just confuse people.

sometimes even vampirism

Yesh I'd steer clear of that one too.

It's a nasty package.

It can be nasty without being any of the things it patently isn't. If you call it things it isn't people won't listen to you because they won't find you credible. That's the opposite of what you want.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Opportunist]

Ok, now take the average non-Slashdot reader / non-tech. First of all, FCEUX doesn't mean anything to him. If anything, he'd probably start looking for some overnight delivery service or a new government legislation under that term. A "rom pack" sounds to him more like some high-alcoholic sixpack and I don't even want to know what the word "emulator" does in his brain.

Can I be there when you try to teach this person how to make that work? After 3 hours, you might have reached the point where this person is actually capable of understanding how to work the Windows Explorer.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

I've zero doubt that tons of doctors are sadist fucks who get a hard-on out of this. Circumcision fetishism is most definitely a thing. Therefore it's sexual assault. These days people call lots of things rape, but this one is not? Fuck that. So it's rape and torture.

Causing a permanently disfiguring or crippling injury - that's mayhem.

Circumcision can kill, it DOES kill, it's strongly linked to cot death - so it's endangerment.

Foreskins are sold to laboratories, for skin grafts or stem cells - so it's organ theft.

It's done without a real medical reason in 99.999% of all cases, they push an useless procedure as beneficial - so it's medical fraud.

And there's metzitzah b'peh - vampirism.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Peter P Peters]

You can do the same with a Pi or some other mini-computer. You just have to set up the software once, then you can easily take it anywhere just the same.

This post explains why nerds get picked on by the cool kids...

Re:Obligatory reminder

[Stormwatch]

But also an incredible amount of really, really shitty games that aged terribly.

I think Mega Drive and SNES had much better libraries (maybe smaller but more quality stuff). And you can't get any of that on a NES Classic.

Re:Obligatory reminder

[serviscope_minor]

These days people call lots of things rape,

You need to (and I appreciate the irony of this) spend less time listening to idiots on the internet. No, "people" don't.

So it's rape and torture.

Look, bro, it's up to you. This is your fight, not mine. You can't logic people into paying atttention to you. If you give people the impression you're off the wall crazy before you've even got to the meat of your argument people are going to assume (quite logically) that you are indeed off the wall crazy and not listen.

And the nyou utterly fail to get your point across.

Currently, your agrument is "doctors are sadists fetishists therefore its rape". Well, with that you've lost about 99.99% of your audience.

Causing a permanently disfiguring or crippling injury - that's mayhem.

Words mean things. Using words you think sound cool even if they don't mean quite the right thig doesn't make your arguments sound badass, it makes you seem loopy. And that's a perfect way to get people to ignore you.

It's done without a real medical reason in 99.999% of all cases, they push an useless procedure as beneficial - so it's medical fraud

Getting circumcised for religious reasons (a common reason) is ont medical fraud. Like I said, misusing phrases because you think they make it sound worse actually makes YOU sound foolish.

You have a choice. You can either throw al the worst words you can think of at it or you can be listened to and have your argument heard. It's up to you.

I bought one of those.

[Presence Eternal]

They are very dangerous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

New games?

[AHuxley]

Hows the new game dev work going?

Re: New games?

[phantomfive]

Mario Oddessy is a fun game with a relatively simple main quest , but with very difficult side quests available right from the beginning. It sounds stupid but putting a hat on a T-rex was the highlight of my week.

A Classic....

[hcs_$reboot]

...is not really a Classic if it doesn't have Tetris.

Mario Odyessy outsell its

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh Zelda BOTW's an amazing game, but Super Mario Odyssey outsells it, according to Nintendo sales figures.

Personally I want to play Grim Fandango again, I'm waiting for the remastered redo for Switch to come out. I've played SMO, I've played BOTW, I've even played Splatoon and Toads Treasure Tracker, Dig and Dig II.

Your point is you believe Zelda is the only game worthwhile on Switch but the sales figures don't bear that out. You could rent or borrow a Switch, or buy it and resell it + game later. If you really believe that. But for me, its my main console. I have a PS3 still, but Little Big Planet (LBP2) was all I ever played on it. I won't be buying a PS4, PS5 etc.

Re:Mario Odyessy outsell its

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I have zero interest in playing Super Mario Odyssey, so I don't care if it's outselling BotW.
(I like open world games like BotW. I don't like multiplayer "challenge the world to beat your score" games like SMO.)

Renting a console isn't an option in my area of the US, and I'm not willing to take the $300 risk of buying one and trying to resell it. PS4 is my main console, and I plan to buy a PS5 after the first price drop.

Re:Mario Odyessy outsell its

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I have zero interest in playing Super Mario Odyssey, so I don't care if it's outselling BotW.
(I like open world games like BotW. I don't like multiplayer "challenge the world to beat your score" games like SMO.)

Renting a console isn't an option in my area of the US, and I'm not willing to take the $300 risk of buying one and trying to resell it. PS4 is my main console, and I plan to buy a PS5 after the first price drop.

Super Mario Odyssey is a lot like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario 64, big open levels that you can explore and discover little details in it. You should look at Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as well, it has huge open area to go around.

Re:Mario Odyessy outsell its

[Pubstar]

If you just want BOTW, look at used Wii U's. I just checked my local CL, and found someone selling their Wii U with BOTW for $120. Probably could get about the same flipping it when you're done playing.

Re:Mario Odyessy outsell its

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad I tried it and I don't like the mini joysticks. Maybe they're nice when detached to play a 2-player game. I would like if you can play it in handheld mode with bigger joysticks

Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those games were designed so that they would be fun without saving.
If you can save, they turn into very easy casual games.

Maybe that's the point though.

I still would have loved to see how kids today would have reacted to the concept of "Nintendo hard" games. :)
Or their mom turning off the console at night. :D

Re:Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[ledow]

There is nothing fun about having to redo everything you've done before.

Sure, if you could save before every jump and just insta-reload, that ruins the game. But at least staying on the same world, if not even the same level, or half-way map save-points (like almost all the Mario games) is a necessary part to ensure you're aren't playing 1-1 several thousand times to each time you get to the end.

Nintendo hard wasn't even that hard. You want hard, go load up ZX Spectrum games and arcade games. Literally, I think I completed 2, maybe 3 games in my entire childhood on that machine, out of thousands. One of those was Nonterraqueous and involved the largest piece of graph-paper I've ever seen in my life, a brother-and-dad mapping team and a co-ordinated effort over several evenings to even get close. And we only managed to map the direct path to the exit (by chance), there was obviously a lot more to explore.

Old arcade games are ludicrously hard too. They were deliberately so to make you put more money in. I've literally only ever completed one arcade game too, and that's because it cost a pittance by the time I played it and brother-and-I had about 50-continues worth of coins.

It doesn't mean that it was *fun*. It's what we had. If you want to see how "not fun" that stuff is, play Paper Mario with it's 100-level challenges mid-game that you go back to square one if you fail.

Saving doesn't ruin a game. Saving EVERY TWO SECONDS, or not being able to save at all can easily do so. Just make it so that you save only at milestones, so the player can relax and not have to do four impossibly-hard-things in a row to get anywhere, and they're fine.

My brother used to save games all the time, and replay even the most minor battles that were lost. That was silly. Hell, he hated Settlers because when you load back in and two same-level units fight each other, the outcome is random, so you can still lose any fight - no matter how many times you load back in.

Re: Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Git gud.

The problem with modern games is that there's no fail state. You can't lose. You can just retry indefinitely. There is no sense of accomplishment for completing them.

The ability to save any time and frequent checkpoints have ruined modern games. It has removed all challenge. Older games were fun. Knowing you couldn't just keep retrying indefinitely and needed to have real skills.

There's a reason the NES Classic is so popular: it reminds people of the Golden Age of video games, when games were fun and not efforts in spending time to clear or spending money to be allowed to skip the time sinks.

Re:Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[barc0001]

> Old arcade games are ludicrously hard too. They were deliberately so to make you put more money in. I've literally only ever completed one arcade game too, and that's because it cost a pittance by the time I played it and brother-and-I had about 50-continues worth of coins.

Arcade games where continues were allowed aren't really what I think of when someone says old games, as those came several years into the scene. And yes they were designed to extract as much money from you as possible. Gauntlet was the granddaddy of them all and was a very efficient wallet drainer.

The real old arcade games were ludicrously hard, and almost nobody "finished" them because they weren't designed around the idea of an ending at all. They just played the same sequence of maps or levels again and again, gradually ramping up the difficulty until the parameters peaked and then it was merely a test of endurance of the meatbag against the arcade machine. And the meatbag only "finished" the game if they lasted long enough to overflow some counter that the programmer(s) never expected someone to last long enough to do and the game crashed as a result.

Re: Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[ledow]

There's a reason the NES Classic is popular indeed:

https://en-americas-support.ni...

Challenge is fine. Complete the whole game without ever turning the thing off or saving/loading isn't a challenge, any more than than just playing the game.

But the game is a game. To be played. And enjoyed. And though you might have to have a dozen shots at the tricky levels, there's no fun at all if you just stay on that level for ever and ever or (worse) only get one shot after hours of trawling your way back.

Any games designer will tell you - impossibly hard games are crap and boring. Stupidly simple games are crap and boring. It's about the balance.

And the balance - for anyone who's not a gaming sadist - is save points at regular intervals but not at any time you ever feel like touching the button.

NES Classic lets you save whenever you like. That's why it's popular. People playing those old games they could never progress (as a child with all the time in the world) on a system where they can play in chunks (in between work and real life) and try to get past the bit they always got stuck on.

I'm no stranger to difficult games, and literally never "saved" a game for the first 10 years of my gaming life (too much faff with cassettes)... and I wouldn't go back to that. Even if I could suddenly find thousands of hours to do so in between life.

Re: Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing you couldn't just keep retrying indefinitely and needed to have real skills.

Last I checked, dying too many times in Castlevania didn't mean the cartridge stopped you from starting from the beginning. Unless you're talking about old arcade games where there was no win state besides the cabinet freezing due to buffer overflows, every old console/PC game let you start again from the beginning if you ran out of lives. The only skill you had was the perseverance to keep banging your head against a wall until the wall fell down, at which point a new wall appeared.

Of course, most of the people who talk of the challenge imposed by not having checkpoints and save states probably never played Ultima Online or any old MMOs, where it was quite frequent that roving gangs of players would murder you and steal all your stuff, and you had no choice but to start over from zero and pray that you found a friend to protect you from ganks. Modern MMOs have more or less forgotten that part (except for EVE) and serve more as randomly scattered loot containers to find on your way to designated PvP battlefields.

Re: Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Stormwatch]

every old console/PC game let you start again from the beginning if you ran out of lives.

I recall there was a very old PC game that actually deleted characters as they died. Only way to get them back was a fresh reinstall.

And more recently, Undertale did some interesting things around that concept. For example, if you kill a certain character, but try to start a new game... there's another character who still knows what you did. Murderer.

Re: Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Xwing" would kill your pilot, so I just had a copy of the save file and a batch file to copy it back and launch the game.
Maybe there was a way to revive a pilot afterall but I didn't know any other.
Giving the game's difficulty there was "that one mission" that took me many dozens of attempts!

Re:Saving games? That ruins the games though.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I thought of how this must mean the save feature in Zelda games works - it wouldn't if you made a pure read-only system.
Then, it might simply be a suspend feature. Suspend your game then you can power down the console, or if you're a very young kid you don't have to cry and get angry because you're not allowed to finish your game.
Two ways : you might be able to only suspend the whole console, or be able to suspend individual games and change games whenever.

If that's the only option (and I think it is in this case?) then you still can play your suspended game, fail it and go back to the title screen and lose everything, the way it's intended. If the game runs perpetually, you get to keep your high score :).

Tetris is expensive to license

[tepples]

I don't see anything Nintendo could have done about it if The Tetris Company doesn't want Tetris included in large bundles anymore. When Nintendo originally announced Virtual Console for Wii, Tetris was one of the games it called out as too expensive to license (along with GoldenEye, whose rights at the time were split between Activision and Microsoft).

Re:Tetris is expensive to license

[decipher_saint]

Ironically as a result of the Tengen Tetris debacle on the original NES

Re:Tetris is expensive to license

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how Tetris was a Soviet game, and they didn't think much of copyright back then. You could probably distribute a straight old Soviet version of the game, call it "Russian block game" to be safe. Then, will you get sued for a game that predates the copyrights/trademarks and was freely copied back then? You'll probably be sued, but I wonder a bit.

Re:Tetris is expensive to license

[tepples]

You will be sued, and you will lose.

Source: "US District Court: Game Elements In Tetris Clone Infringe Tetris Co.'s Copyright" (June 2012)

Re:Tetris is expensive to license

[tlhIngan]

I don't see anything Nintendo could have done about it if The Tetris Company doesn't want Tetris included in large bundles anymore. When Nintendo originally announced Virtual Console for Wii, Tetris was one of the games it called out as too expensive to license (along with GoldenEye, whose rights at the time were split between Activision and Microsoft).

No, it's not Tetris is expensive to license. It's f'ing impossible to license. The modern rights to Tetris are held by the Tetris Company. But the rights int he 80s were a huge mish-mash of every freaking thing. Some of it dates back to Communism and thus, Tetris was officially owned by the state. And some of it was it was illegally produced without license. And some time later Russia actually got their act together and created ELORG to handle licensing of state-owned stuff. But basically it's a huge mess.

Today, it's super simple.

But now you want to include Tetris, you have to go and figure out who has the copyright on the code itself and see if they're around (and willing to talk to you), see if there's a clear and legitimate license trail between the version you sold back in the 80s and now and plenty more things. It's way easier to produce a new version of tetris today than to figure out all the nasty little details of the 80s version. Heck, there may be an old claim against the 80s version that is still valid, just dormant.

That's a problem with a lot of 80s stuff - the licensing will drive you mad - if you want to include a game, you have to see who published it and who actually owns it now (not easy - most of the 80s companies went bankrupt)

The story of 80's Tetris is quite interesting and there are books (or at least a graphic novel) all about it. I'm sure that's a hairy ball of wax trying to revive an 80's version today.

Re:Tetris is expensive to license

[tepples]

But now you want to include Tetris, you have to go and figure out who has the copyright on the code itself and see if they're around

If Nintendo had the rights, it would include its own version of Tetris, not the version produced by Tengen (now part of WB Games) when the licensing was still a mess. The credit screen for Nintendo's version of Tetris for NES and Tetris & Dr. Mario for Super NES lists only two copyright owners: Nintendo and Elorg. Based on my experiences in the Tetris fan scene from 2006 through roughly 2009, this leaves me with two likely possibilities:

A. The Tetris Company wants too much money per copy.
B. The Tetris Company doesn't want to ship products that don't include the new rules since the 2001 reform that added hold piece, Super Rotation System, infinite spin, and "bag" randomizer to the base game.

Original NES still getting new indie games

[tepples]

The NES Classic Edition isn't getting any new games (officially). It has no (Nintendo approved) update mechanism.

But the original Nintendo Entertainment System is getting plenty of new indie games. If you haven't heard of them, then perhaps the developers of platformers like Twin Dragons and The Curse of Possum Hollow and Lizard need to step up their advertising.

Nintendo can make its own iNES ROMs, TYVM

[tepples]

It has been discovered nintendo used the .nes format

Like the Zip format, the iNES format has no exclusive rights. It's just a 16-byte header that specifies how large the PRG ROM and CHR ROM are and how the rest of the hardware on the Game Pak's PCB is wired.

and very likely sources their roms from the already pirated versions

If Nintendo contracts a company to produce an emulator, and the emulator happens to accept iNES format ROM images as input, Nintendo can make its own ROM images in the correct format by dumping the ROM from Game Paks kept in its library in Redmond, Washington, and prepending a correctly constructed header. I'd be very interested to see evidence otherwise.

Duh. nintento fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo doesn't understand the U.S. market and how nostalgia drives it.

Never underestimate

[OrangeTide]

The disposable income of aging Gen-X gamers.

It also helps with impulse buys in that it's a console that is closer to the price of a game (~$70) instead of $300 of a PS4.