Nintendo needs to be clear on whether this product will actually be produced in enough quantities to reach customers, or whether it will be an extremely limited special product like the NES Classic.
I was able to get an NES Classic because I lined up a half hour before a store opened the first day and got in on the initial shipment. I never saw it in stores after.
Unless Nintendo is clear that things are going to be different this time, considering the popularity of the NES Classic, people are going to be lining up over night to try to get this SNES Classic.
> UPDATE (1:53pm): And here’s Nintendo, confirming that the company does plan to ship more SNES Classics, but only this year.
We aren’t providing specific numbers, but we will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition is currently planned to ship from Sept. 29 until the end of calendar year 2017. At this time, we have nothing to announce regarding any possible shipments beyond this year.
Our long-term efforts are focused on delivering great games for the Nintendo Switch system and continuing to build momentum for that platform, as well as serving the more than 63 million owners of Nintendo 3DS family systems. We are offering Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition in special recognition of the fans who show tremendous interest our classic content.
"Nintendo needs to do X or people will line up for hours for a chance to get this product, creating media hype"
I don't think Nintendo needs to clarify anything. They're releasing a product people want, and there may or may not be a limited time to get one. This will sell like crazy.
Anecdotal evidence, but I have no interest in this product because I wasn't able to acquire the NES classic and have no desire to go through that process again.
I think a lot of people are in that boat. I would have happily paid good money for a NES Classic from Nintendo (I hate supporting scalpers) but I am not going to hassle with running all over town or constantly refreshing webpages to see if a video game system is available. If the NES classic had been readily available, I would be excited about this. As it is/was, I'm with you.
edit, to add: and I get the shortage at launch, but to not even manufacture enough units to even come close to meeting demand (which, I know, was unknown at the time) leaves an extra sour taste in my mouth.
It's the combination of seemingly arbitrary shortage combined with scalpers that ruins it for me. When I finally found a switch the staff didn't understand why I didn't want all 3 available units. These are supposed to be fun things - not a gotcha here and there.
>I am not going to hassle with running all over town or constantly refreshing webpages to see if a video game system is available.
Especially when I can get significantly the same experience or an even better one with a Wii running the Homebrew Channel for no cost other than the Wii and an extra Wii-mote. Nintendo's competition here is straight up piracy, and they didn't even want to meet demand here.
Media hype for what though? A product people can't buy? They stopped making the NES Classic before demand was fulfilled. It would make sense if it was just advertising for something like the Virtual Console on the Switch but from what I've heard that doesn't even have the same games
Media hype for Nintendo as a brand—it gets their name in the news during what is right now a lull in Switch game releases, keeping their "momentum" going.
(Defining "momentum": media-industry journalists tend to decide what companies to write about by looking around to see what companies are already in the news for other reasons. Nintendo in the news for the SNES Classic almost undoubtedly translates to more coverage of the Switch.)
They're doing this to the Switch too. Nintendo is requiring GameStop retail locations to display empty Switch cartons as if they represented in-store stock, when there is no such stock to be found.
The problem is that they're competing against "free" (that is ROMs throughout internet). By not providing enough supply to meet demand, they're leaving quite a bit of money (and consumer good will) on the table.
It'll be interesting to see the actual ROM they use.
IIRC, the ROMs floating around on the internet needed some binary patching to run correctly. If Nintendo uses the pirated version that generally exists on the internet like they did for the NES classic, you could argue that they don't own all the copyright to it.
" "During development we received a copy of the mastered Star Fox 2 ROM to play, and it was quite a blast." This ROM would have been the final game, complete with QA tweaks and ready for a release that never happened. Cuthbert is keen to point out that this version is far superior to the numerous leaked prototype ROMs which are currently doing the rounds on the web - the leaking of which has been erroneously attributed to himself. "There are a few ROMs on the net in various conditions," he states. "But the ones I checked out are all old and they don't have the randomizing Rogue-like stuff working or all the encounters in place, so you don't really get the feel of the game we were making." "
If the binary just needs patching to run on a factory-default SNES, then they'll likely do what they've done with all their Virtual Console games: patch the SNES emulator to run the game, rather than patching the game to run on their emulator.
Unlike most emulator-writers, Nintendo aren't trying to be "faithful to what the original hardware did", after all. They get to define the hardware and to define the experience. The "SNES Classic" experience of a game doesn't have to be the same thing as the SNES experience of a game—especially if it's a game nobody ever (legitimately) played on a SNES, and thus a game nobody has nostalgia over seeing reproduced in its original fidelity.
On the other hand, they might just still have the original source code lying around to fix and rebuild. Under the old pre-SCM development paradigm, you might throw all that stuff away when you release a game... but there's no reason to throw it away for an unreleased game.
I'm not much of a gamer but I would buy this for the nostalgic factor alone.
I hope Nintendo actually produces enough to meet demand this time and doesn't cancel it after a few months like they did with the NES Classic. But then again I have a gamer friend who is still looking to buy a Switch and can't even find that in stock... perhaps Nintendo needs some help with their supply chain.
I've been wondering about this myself. I recall when the Wii came out there were shortages for what seemed like years. Now the Switch is difficult to find. Would they sell more if they were more available or does this (potentially artificial) scarcity keep interest up and amplify the hype?
I am VERY surprised they picked Final Fantasy III (VI in reality) instead of Chrono Trigger (while including two Kirby games). The latter is way more popular, at least in the West. The former is the best Final Fantasy, though :-)
I had this thought as well. They've basically got everything I would want to play on this except for Chrono Trigger. On the other hand, I've bought Chrono Trigger on three or four different platforms at this point and not FF3, so maybe there are others like me and Square Enix wanted more money for it?
EDIT: On the Play Store, at least, FF3 has almost twice as many reviews as CT, so maybe this doesn't hold up.
Yeah not a problem for me. CT has a great DS port already. I was just surprised!
FFVI's ports have always had a negative (worse sound quality for GBA, awful art work for iOS/Steam, horrible load times on PSOne). The only negative of the SNES version is the translation and perhaps some bugs. If you don't own a Wii or Wii U (or Switch, if they ever get the VC working on there), this is the only legal way to play the SNES version of FFVI!
Does that load-time still exist if you're playing the downloadable version of the game released on the "PSOne Store", on e.g. a PS3? If yes, would it still exist if you stuck an SSD in the PS3?
Yes. It's not as bad as back in the PSOne with a CD, but compared to the SNES versions, it will feel slow. There's YouTube videos of it. If you've played it on the SNES before it's really annoying.
For what it's worth, I have FFIX on my PS3 digitally and it's still a bit too slow for me (the game pushed the PSOne capabilities a bit too much!).
I've been seeing some interesting evidence lately that Square Enix has been "thinking" about Chrono Trigger.
There are a lot of little references to the game in FFXV: the way items look on the map; the "Dream Egg" you get from the Choco-Mog festival; the way that you leave the final dungeon by "waking up from a dream"; etc.
Also, in the questionnaire Square Enix put out to gauge interest for FFXV DLC, there was a question that went something like "select your favorite Square Enix titles", and Chrono Trigger was the first option on the (short and not-alphabetically-sorted) list.
So, in light of this, a lack of CT on Nintendo consoles (despite other "kept-away" properties like SMRPG and FF6 now being released for Nintendo's use) might translate to "we don't want to sell people the old version of the game and satisfy their demand for it, because we're thinking about announcing a CT remake if-and-when the FF7 remake seems to be successful."
Or, of course, it might just be FFXV's director Hajime Tabata really liking CT, and wanting to making games that are like it, rather than explicitly remaking it.
Either way, I think we're likely to see Square Enix "paying attention to" CT in the future.
It's also short all Disney-owned games (including Lucasarts) despite many of the being fairly well-regarded. Lion King, Aladdin, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Star Wars trilogy.
I'd imagine there's a pretty simple reason for why they've FF3 instead of Chrono Trigger.
FF3 (US), has such a bad rep compared to later localisations of 6 that it really only has any kind of value within this context, I'd imagine it was very cheap to get from Square compared to something like Chrono Trigger.
Kirby being in-house is free, of course. The only reason to not put a Nintendo game on the machine (w/e of All Stars and any games which may have emulation issues) is a fear that it would significantly bring down the overall average quality a lot.
There already is an excellent re-release of Chrono Trigger that is almost as good as playing it the original way: the version for the DS. The version of FF6 released on the GBA is heavily compromised (lower resolution, music and sound not nearly the same). I'm not sure if that's the actual reason, but it's why I'm glad they did it.
The whole supply thing always struck me a very fine balancing act overall, Nintendo were aiming for a limited supply but by underestimating demand it looked crazier than it really was.
If Nintendo released enough Mini-NESs last year to match the demand, by this point right now there would be thousands upon thousands of them lying around doing nothing and being resold for every decreasing prices. Most people surely bought it because the box was cute and/or it was a remarkably easy gift for someone, I can't imagine many of them are getting much use right now.
With an awareness they're no longer on sale and somewhat in-demand, people are going to less likely to get rid of theirs. By not satisfying demand they're managing to avoid long-term damage to the value of NES nostalgia.
Along with that, not only would saturating the market effectively kill the chances of simply rereleasing it for another wave of hype and high sales in a few years, it'd also potentially greatly cripple the market value of the games on the machine. Nintendo have made a killing from re-releasing Super Mario Bros alone over and over, if it's on the virtual store right now I imagine it's gotta be at least $5. That's achieved by treating it like a thing of value, not the kind of thing you find on some cheap "RETRO CLASSICS" type bundle, preventing the NES-mini from feeling disposable helps prevent the games on it from feeling worthless.
So I made a list of 30 SNES games about 8 months ago as an exercise if this did get announced, and posted it here on Hacker News, and I just looked back at that list. 15 of the games I stated are included in these 21 games, and an additional 1 of them I just picked the wrong version (I picked Super Street Fighter 2 instead of Street Fighter 2 Turbo).
I only missed the 2 Kirby games, Star Fox 2, Super Mario RPG, and Contra III.
Here was my list:
* Chrono Trigger * Donkey Kong Country * Donkey Kong Country 2 * Earthbound * F-Zero * Final Fight * Final Fantasy 2 * Final Fantasy 3 * Harvest Moon * Illusion of Gaia * Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past * Mega Man X * Killer Instinct * NBA Jam * Pilotwings * Secret of Mana * Sim City * Star Fox * Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo * Super Castlevania IV * Super Ghouls n' Ghosts * Super Mario Kart * Super Mario World * Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island * Super Metroid * Super Punch-Out!!! * Super R-Type 3 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles in Time * Tetris Attack * Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Except for the DS line. I never had trouble finding any of the non-special editions anywhere. If you want a Zelda or Pokemon one though (that isn't a 2DS, the 2DS that shipped with X/Y preinstalled was incredibly common) you are going to have a bad time.
Especially if the retailer lets you buy one then cancels it on you. I got a discounted regular New 3DS XL instead of a Zelda one because Best Buy let too many pre-orders in.
What really sucks is that the 3DS special editions I loved were JP only, such as the Pikachu ones and the Eevee one. Granted, I didn't totally love the Eevee one. My favorite is that the R/B 20th anniversary editions are only $300 on Amazon. And here's probably the coolest one for an easy $340 [0]. Sucks to be a Pokemon fan.
I'm super excited for the opportunity to see it announced that they're available, only to discover that they're sold out by the time I make it to an online retailer to purchase one.
I look forward to these selling out before I've had a chance to buy them at MSRP, then finding them resold by the dozen on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
I paid like $140 on Amazon for the Nintendo Classic. MSRP is just a made-up number - the true price of anything is where supply and demand reach equilibrium.
What kind of connector does the controller use? It looks like a mini vintage SNES connector? Or are the ports on the front just for show, and the real connectors are on the back or something?
One of the nice things about the NES Classic was that it used the same port as a Nunchuck, meaning you could use it with your old modded Wii. Would be nice if the SNES controller had a similarly useful connector, perhaps for Switch compatibility.
I really want a good to-USB adapter for those things. I love the Wii Classic Pro controller, and now these.... I've tried two different models from Mayflash, but the first stopped working after a couple months and the second liked to trigger wild, phantom stick movement every minute or two, making it unusable. No-one else seems to make such an adapter.
I've had trouble getting it to "remember" the Wiimotes, so I always have to do manual fiddling to get them connected. Meanwhile PS3 controllers are working great over Bluetooth, no such problems and totally painless set-up. But they're more expensive and I kind of want to use them for my PS3 instead, meanwhile I've got a couple Classic Pro controllers that are otherwise unused and can pick up more on the cheap. Aside from not having rumble, which isn't a big deal to me, they're pretty much perfect—except I can't buy a reliable, durable wired adapter for them.
There's a lot of interest I would have if the controllers used the same connectors as the original OEM SNES controllers. I have no need for a Mini as I still have my SNES and nearly every game being re-released here, but I would love to get my hands on some brand new SNES controllers without having to continually refurbish my near 25-year old original ones, or refurbishing used ones.
While technically not OEM SNES, the 8bitdo repros are of extremely high quality and if you get a matching retro receiver, you can use them with the original SNES hardware (and wirelessly): http://www.8bitdo.com/snes30-sfc30/
I just paid the higher prices on Amazon for the Nintendo Classic, no fuss. That's Economics 101: if there's more demand than supply, the price is too low.
> UPDATE (1:53pm): And here’s Nintendo, confirming that the company does plan to ship more SNES Classics, but only this year.
>> We aren’t providing specific numbers, but we will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition.
>>Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition is currently planned to ship from Sept. 29 until the end of calendar year 2017. At this time, we have nothing to announce regarding any possible shipments beyond this year.
>> Our long-term efforts are focused on delivering great games for the Nintendo Switch system and continuing to build momentum for that platform, as well as serving the more than 63 million owners of Nintendo 3DS family systems. We are offering Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition in special recognition of the fans who show tremendous interest our classic content.
Is it bad if I hope the zeitgeist of Shenzhen gets its hands on one of these and clones it part-for-part? It's likely the only way I'll ever be able to own one, given Nintendo's likely production run.
You can always build your own EmuBox, that does the same job and much more. For people who can't do that, I recommend looking into it, there are pre-build options, which require less effort to get running. Or "hire" a friend to build one.
Nintendo will always be the only one who can legally sell a finished product like that.
Sure; the thing I want from Nintendo is mostly 1. build quality and 2. the assurance of the games and emulators being tweaked to run at 100% speed + 100% fidelity, 100% of the time, on the system.
A random collection of parts can be made to run a random collection of games at "decent" fidelity+speed, but you get much better results by cloning the output of a megacorp's QA pipeline.
I'd much rather give Nintendo my money for the work they did designing the system, if they'll let me. But if they won't, their design will still likely be better, such that the best third-party device to get will be the one that most closely rips it off.
There are a bunch of emulation machines from China. Many of them are handhelds. The build quality tends to be low; the specs are weird; the emulation is poor.
So I wouldn't be too hopeful for a decent clone.
If you want Nintendo build quality you can buy a Wii (dirt cheap) and a classic controller and set it up to run homebrew.
1) no fussing about with stuff that most people can't or don't want to do, 2) nice controllers included, no config faffing about, 3) last I checked even the Rpi3 had noticeable slowdowns and/or frame drops on Starfox and Super Mario 2—it's getting close, though, so a hypothetical Rpi4 might get us to 100% acceptable SNES emulation.
I'm excited about this, but I really wish they'd provide a little more effort on these projects... if they spent a little more effort, they could have opened it up, make a retro platform, instead of a quick cash grab.
I'll have to buy two, then hope I can trade it for a Classic since I've missed out on that one. I really wanted the Classic but the Super Nintendo is great anyway as well.
I still have an original SNES with 25-30 games, including classics like Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and Link to the past. If I get an itch to play through one of those, I fire up an emulator. Literally, no reason to switch that old SNES on.
I guess this is for people who don't know how to make a folder on their PC?
Or they want it plugged into their TV and don't want a dedicated PC for that, or to have to move a laptop over by the TV every time. Or for someone to be able to play this while the PC's in use for something else. Or they like the well-made classic-style controllers—SNES knockoff USB controllers are usually garbage, and two new PS3 or PS4 controllers would be more expensive than an entire SNES classic with two included controllers. You could use 360 controllers, but awful dpad (have fun losing at Punch Out) and almost as expensive.
Or they want something people at get-togethers will pick up and play and don't want to run into "oh yeah, you need to make sure your controllers are off when it starts up or they won't connect" or "I just updated it and haven't forced HDMI audio in the config so the sound doesn't work right now, sorry" or any of a dozen other stupid problems that crop up with self-managed emulator boxes.
>>> SNES knockoff USB controllers are usually garbage
Not all are. I have nothing bad to say about the 8bitdo SNES30 replica controller. It feels almost exactly like the real mcoy (and actually feels a bit better IMO due to the slight added weight of the battery/bluetooth components) and functions flawlessly.
A perfect use-case is that you can bring the device for an after work or to a party. Everything is ready to go.
Compare that to that somebody without computer skills is going to connect a computer to a TV/projector, setting the right resolution, fiddling with multiple screen settings, set the right audio output device, attaching controllers, choosing and downloading an emulator, configuring the emulator, finding good roms for it.
I was able to get an NES Classic because I lined up a half hour before a store opened the first day and got in on the initial shipment. I never saw it in stores after.
Unless Nintendo is clear that things are going to be different this time, considering the popularity of the NES Classic, people are going to be lining up over night to try to get this SNES Classic.