Sunday, July 9, 2017

Nintendo Classic Mini: SNES and NES

More commonly and easier known as the SNES and NES Mini's, these are minified versions of the original counterparts where a collection of the greatest hits are available in HDMI output and implemented save states among other features for old school and new school gamers to enjoy.

This is a perfect opportunity to talk about the art of reselling and scalping these much sought after items, but when you think about it, everyone performs this when a profit can be smelled from high or long distances, such as much desired tickets for oh I don't know, Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande concerts.

So while these items are produced in limited numbers and sold out instantaneously at retail companies, the reselling and the scalping is a booming business, going so far and so insane as to offer dozens of NES Mini's for 4 or more times the normal price, or the fact that SNES Mini PRE-ORDERS can be bought from these convenient merchants before they have even released officially on the 29th of September.

I understand why it happens considering the amount of popularity and success is immense, but I think that Nintendo is partly to blame too. As they have shown us with the limited runs of Amiibo's and the Nintendo Switch to give you other recent examples, I believe that Nintendo is creating artificial scarcities of these items deliberately in order to create hot fuzz and marketing out of nothing.

It's rather hard to be spot on for this theory, but that is what I think is happening, on purpose. It's a hot and current controversial topic to consider, but it does bring a lot of attention towards it all, both in a positive and negative manner.

By the way, the reason I do not own a NES Mini is because of 2 reasons; It's sold out everywhere and going for high prices through resellers, and secondly, because I officially started collecting for the original NES back in February, I decided not to go for it even back in late 2016.


This is an entire different matter for me with the upcoming SNES mini, because while that system is arguably the best console and game library ever seen yet, I don't currently collect for it, I only have a total of 8 SNES games, I experienced many through emulation in the past(although it has been a while), and I don't own 18 of the 21 games lineup!

Speaking of which, the lineup for the SNES mini is excellent, all of them deserve a spot with the only exception being Kirby's Dream Course, which despite being a fun puzzle game, could had been swapped with a more popular game like Chrono Trigger, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time or Final Fight.

But man that lineup has so much masterful amounts of quality, and I'm especially excited to see EarthBound, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and Final Fantasy III(VI) finally having an European release if the Virtual Console is ignored.

Despite having played and beaten all of the games before, I can't wait to go back to the past and own them in this way, possibly play through them with buddies and re-experience the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Perhaps in the future, after cooling down with NES collecting, I might tackle this SNES collecting too, which is equally just as hard.

Star Fox 2 is a special occassion. Years ago, I already beat and reviewed it on Flok Factory, but if the rumors are true, then I have only beaten an incomplete version just like everyone else, and we might just see the true Star Fox 2 take the main spotlight and perhaps it's also the main reason for owning a SNES Mini, aside from having 2 controllers with long cords, HDMI output, save states and more.

Luckily, I was able to pre-order a SNES Mini, but only because I happen to have friends working at the Dutch retailer called Nedgame. And with this coming up, I have also decided to delay buying the Nintendo Switch, as I've got plenty of big personal projects coming up later this year.

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