New reports and rumors suggest that Nintendo isn’t completely done with remaking its old consoles and selling them again, just the NES Classic.
As the gaming company with the longest console history here in the United States, Nintendo has released eight separate consoles since the ’80s. Late last year, it released the NES Classic Edition, a smaller version of its Nintendo Entertainment System. Unsurprisingly, it became extremely difficult to find. Then, about a week ago, Nintendo announced they wouldn’t make any more.
Now, this week, Eurogamer reports that instead, Nintendo will have something else later this year. The pattern suggests an SNES Classic. Eurogamer’s sources report that that’s what the plan is. However, it seems prudent to say at this point that Nintendo has confirmed nothing. In fact, Eurogamer tacks on at the end of its report that Nintendo “declined to comment when contacted.”
Of course, one might take a decline to comment as a flat-out confirmation that that’s what’s happening. Besides, Nintendo didn’t announce the NES Classic until July, per Entertainment Weekly, about four months before it supposedly hit store shelves. (If you ever saw one on a shelf, how long did it take before someone else snatched it up? That’s a semi-serious question.) In other words, if this is what’s happening, Nintendo will probably announce it on a similar schedule. Eurogamer notes that the idea is supposedly to sell it over Christmas again.
Of course, it also name-drops the big titles like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and even Donkey Kong Country, but just three games, classic though they all may be, do not a seller make. Let’s assume that we’ll have somewhere close to 30 titles once again. The three Donkey Kong Country games, Final Fantasy III (now better-known as Final Fantasy VI), Super Castlevania IV, Yoshi’s Island, Star Fox, and Mega Man X could all perhaps show up on this kind of system. Maybe even EarthBound could get some love.
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Would you pick up an SNES? Or have attempts to buy an NES Classic frustrated you too much?
Perhaps most interestingly, does this mean there may be a Nintendo 64 mini version in two years?