Dominic Brown
Lantern Staff
For many hearing the name Nintendo either brings about an irrational love for the company or a great amount of disappointment and irritability. It feels like the last few years have been an emotional roller coaster for the video game giant. Their last console, the Wii U, was considered a failure. Not many people were interested. A lot of the I.P.s, also known as intellectual properties, that people came to love were not featured on the console and re-releases of past games disappointed many fans. However, building up to their next console’s release, Nintendo decided to release a throwback console the “NES Classic” that emulates original cartridge games from the 90s.
As amazing as this sounded, it was almost doomed from the start. People who are wanting to gain a profit on the limited edition consoles quickly went to stores or set up bots online to purchase all inventory before the general public could have access to it. These individuals would then resell the console for almost four times its original cost, which angered a great many customers, and because of Nintendo’s policy, there would be almost no repercussion to these individuals who would scalp or purchase to sell for an outrageous price.
Nintendo’s main focus was finishing up their latest project, the Nintendo Switch, their next home console. After the switch was released, Nintendo announced that they were going to do another classic series, but this time for the Super Nintendo, another beloved Nintendo classic. This caused a lot of speculation within the community as to how the scalping issue would be handled. Listening to its fans, Nintendo responded quickly and addressed that there would be a significantly larger quantity of Nintendo SNES Classics for sale and there was no need to worry when the first batch sold out since that multiple release dates would occur giving everybody the ability to purchase a console. Fortunately, I picked up a Super Nintendo classic on launch day.
The Super Nintendo classic is an incredible console. It is portable, and it came with two controller’s in-box, so that users would be able to play with friends the console came loaded with 21 of the Super Nintendo’s most popular games, which includes Super Mario World, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter 2 and even the incredibly rare EarthBound. One of the more interesting features was a rare copy of Star Fox 2, which was only released as a prototype was set to unlock as soon as users beat the first level of Star Fox 2.
There are a few issues I had with the console. Some of the better games were not included. Another issue was the console’s hardware. The Super Nintendo Classic used the same electronic board that the NES Classic used. Super Nintendo games were notorious for being ahead of their time, and many games had framerate issues to where the game couldn’t keep up with itself. But despite not having improved, it is still an incredible console and is a must-have for any collector.
These consoles retail for about $90, and those interested can find them at most major retailers such as Walmart or Target. If users cannot find it in store and must have it, resale value has dropped significantly down to about $120. Nintendo claims that this was a limited run, but there has not yet been an announcement for a final release date.
