Nintendo Classic Mini NES (Cashing In On NEStalgia)

The cynic in me, wouldn't be to shocked if we start hearing about VC for Switch very soon.

Good shout, mas. Certainly more likely than a SNES Classic Mini... *wistful sigh*

I reckon it must be something Virtual Console related, but surely Nintendo are more likely to sell a NES Classic Mini at £50 than £50 worth of NES VC games?

Fingers crossed the price points change in the Switch VC. This NintendoLife article raises the possibility that the NES Classic Mini was just a way to get rid of all the spare Wii Remote connectors.

Oh, almost undoubtedly. The controller wires were so short because they were originally designed to attach to Wii remotes.

My thinking Jay was they wanted something out at Christmas for that dolla dolla and now the Switch is out, they want to flog that. Nintendo can now when VC comes to Switch, go hey you like Super Mario Bros. 3, guess what you can play it on Switch.

Remember the NES Classic Mini? Nintendo does - or maybe it remembers the profit, or the bad publicity - and is ramping the old/new machine back into production.

Thoughts? Comments? Near-infinite sadness at the price you paid for it back in the day?

I like the sound of this as I missed out on the NES mini so I'd quite like to own one.

I'm not gonna be picking up a NES or SNES mini any time soon, but I'd like to have the option to buy one in the future when I'm settled down somewhere.

It's nice it is coming back for the summer 2018 but this is Nintendo, it still be hard to get one and same goes doe the SNES Mini. Sure it is now going to be around in to 2018 (if they aren't all sold out as soon as they're available) but that could only be till the end of January for all we know.

I bought one of these, it is small and it's cables are really short.
However, a good portion of the games on it I've either never played or only played a little bit. So I've sorted all the titles by release date and I'm going to go through each and every one over the course of the next few weeks and then do the same for the baby snes I suppose. Games that are brand new to me will naturally end up winning more words than ones I've played a bunch of times in other forms. It's not an indicator of how highly I rate them or anything like that.
This week's games:

ExciteBike: B for Boost
This game has been quite fun so far actually, and I've found myself returning to it several times between rage quitting other games on this list. It's simple enough, go fast while avoiding obstacles. It can get pretty frustrating when going as fast as you can literally go but the ai bikes still pass you or worse they don't and you get thrown off the track for colliding with them. However, the satisfaction that comes from nailing jump after jump with no loss of balance or momentum more than makes up for it. A good little game.

Donkey Kong
This game sounds horrible. But it is donkey kong, jump over some barrels and you're done.

Ice Climber
Even if this was the first game I ever played, indeed if it was the first thing I'd ever seen or heard, I'd still feel a little underwhelmed. It's fun the first few times, but it gets dry awful fast. At the very least it's a good history lesson.

Super Mario Bros
So there's this little guy in my tv, and he wants to save his princess. His name is Mario and I really think he'll catch on. Maybe even get a sequel or two. Seriously though, compared to the games listed above SMB is just miles ahead.
It has music that not only is bearable but catchy and easy to listen to, it's obvious what your supposed to be doing, it allows the player to explore, it has boxes that flash bright yellow, it has so many things. If I was a kid in the 80's and was given this to play, I think I might've died of excitement[1].

Next up will be another batch of games, probably balloon fight and a few others. Hopefully they won't make my ears bleed whatever they turn out to be.

Have I played anyone's favourite NES game yet? Did I offend you greatly??

[1] (2018, GNamer Forums), Jimbob was a kid in the 80's

NintenDUCK wrote:

If I was a kid in the 80's and was given this to play, I think I might've died of excitement.

If you need citation for this, let me know - Was a kid in 80s / Very nearly did die of excitement

I'm interested to see your take on Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden and Final Fantasy. You'll hate the latter, no doubt, as old RPGs are brutally tough.

Jimbob wrote:

If you need citation for this, let me know - Was a kid in 80s / Very nearly did die of excitement

I updated my reply with a bibliography that would make wikipedia weep

I'll probably fly through a number of these games since they're small arcadey games without a huge amount of depth, I'm genuinely excited to try out the proper games. I'll do my best to get through FF, I've never claimed to be "good" at games, I just like them a lot haha

Oh, I think even the most ardent of JRPG fans would struggle with the NES version of FF1. I played it on PSP and they toned down the difficulty dramatically for that version.

How is that playing all the mainline Final Fantasy games going?

It flatlined at FFII thanks to its annoying levelling system finally becoming a problem now that the difficulty has ramped up. I'll go back to it someday.

Not going to FFIII then or you want to beat the before moving on.

I want to give it another go - I'm not desperate to move onto FFIII as I've played it twice before already and I don't think I've given FFII a fair run of things. I'll read up on some tips for levelling and take it from there.

NintenDUCK wrote:

Jimbob wrote:

If you need citation for this, let me know - Was a kid in 80s / Very nearly did die of excitement

I updated my reply with a bibliography that would make wikipedia weep

*nods*

I played more!
This past week I've been working through three more arcadey games, the next big game I think is Metroid. In the meantime:
Balloon Fight
I love this game, and it is easily in my top 10. Every time I play it I just fall in love with the simple fun of it all. Pop some balloons, don't let yours get popped. Balloon trip is a treasure too. A top game.
Mario Bros.
I'll level with you all, I'd never actually seen this game before until I got this system. And at first I only had it on for about 30 seconds before dismissing it. But then I went back to it, if anything deserves a second chance it must be the first game with Mario offically playing the role of Mario, right? Right. I ended up getting really into this game and having a lot of fun with it. My only issue I had is that I accidentally turned the system off instead of suspending the software so I could save my new high score of 70k, so now there is no really proof of that ever happening. It didn't get me down though, and I can see myself coming back to this title quite a lot in the next few weeks.

Donkey Kong Jr.
This is better than the actual donkey kong game in my view, it has more diverse animations, better sound design, and a more fun style of gameplay* I didn't play as much of this game as I did the other two, but that's largely because the other two are way better. If this game has an edge in anything though, it would be in that it is the more challenging title of the three.

This has been a busy week so I didn't play a lot of games, but next week I hope to play more. Including the likes of Ghosts N' Goblins and possibly Kid Icarus.

*It occured to me as I typed this that it really isn't all that different from DK, but climbing vines is more entertaining than climbing ladders.

Balloon Fight is a triumph. I'm usually not a massive of fan of score-attack arcade games as is present in the NES Classic line-up, but I've got a lot of time for Fight and Trip.

I've excited to read your thoughts on G&G.

I honestly can't wait until Balloon fight comes to Nintendo Switch with the upcoming online sub service.

Show me a man who doesn't like balloon fight and I'll show you a very shocked face.
On the G&G note though, I'm not yet past stage one* and I can only assume it gets harder from here. ARRGGGGGHHHH


These guys can suck a lemon, too.

My mini says I've played 51 minutes, but counting the times I forgot to save before turning it off it's certainly been over an hour.