UPDATE 4.26.17: Nintendo has straight-up 86'ed the NES Classic. Reports of stock coming were false. No word yet on Virtual Console-capability for the Switch. A follow-up article to my minor prognostics is on the way.
It's March 2016. Half a year on and I’ve got $60 here that says I will never be able to buy a NES Classic at its MSRP.
Christmas 2016 was my first with the in-laws. My brother-in-law and I share a lot of likes. A perhaps unreasonable love for Nintendo is one of them. When I saw that he had the Nintendo Classic on his wish list, we claimed it. This little device isn't just a re-issue of the original 1985 NES console. The NES Classic is a tiny replica of that original NES with 30 games pre-installed, no cartridges required. I put the NES Classic in an Amazon wishlist alongside an extra controller, a carrying case and the oughta-be-included extension cables for the two controllers. Then I waited.
Christmas came and went. It is now four months since the release of the retro-console and, this side of a back-alley scalper, it is still unavailable. Average prices were as high as current-gen consoles around Christmas and have since fallen to around $150 at several quasi-legit outfits around the web.
I love my brother-in-law but I refuse to fall in for the artificial shortage trickle-release nonsense surrounding Nintendo’s product releases. When the Wii was released, I called a Best Buy 28 miles away down a long mountain road every Sunday morning for several months just to see if they had received any during the weekly restock. The current word from Nintendo is that they never anticipated the popularity of the NES Classic. Rumors swirl that brick and mortar shops are receiving irregular shipments. It's real! People have seen them in the wild. But no one knows when and no one knows where this illusive crypto-console might turn up. A website claiming to have information just shunts me to eBay scalpers.
Nintendo says the device is far more popular than they expected but that doesn't explain why they haven’t been able to make a dent in the grey-market over the past fiscal quarter. If Apple misread the market for an iPhone and four months later had failed to meet market demand, their shareholders would revolt. Nintendo is leaving money on the table.
So what gives?
The NES Classic is a replica NES housing a tiny Linux micro-computer set up to emulate NES hardware with 30 included games (ROMs). It is what it is. Plug it in to the wall. Plug it in to your TV (via HDMI!). It doesn’t require connectivity to the Internet. There’s no requirement to phone home for updates. Take it or leave it, right? The unit includes 512MB of memory. No cartridges to blow. A half-gig ROM stick may not sound like much but the original NES console cartridges only used between 8 kB and 1 MB of ROM memory. Wikipedia points out, “128 to 384 kB was most common”. Homemade ROMs suggest there’s some truth to this.
So work with me here.
I am going to suggest that the reason the Nintendo Classic is MIA is that some higher-up at Nintendo might have realized that they had inadvertently released a near-perfect product, a reasonably priced stand-alone NES emulator with time-tested hardware add-ons and the ability for homebrew modification. No compatibility issues. No hardware or software that will ever need updates to better connect to your home wifi system. It is perfect.
So what?
With $60 and a bit of work, a user has the ability to install and play not 30 NES games but the entire NES catalog. Or at least every decent ROM you could scrounge up. This flies in the face of everything Nintendo has done over the past three decades. Ever since the Wii, we’ve been able to buy legacy games for Nintendo’s consoles through the Virtual Console, Nintendo's walled-off online store. With the Wii U, our licenses didn't transfer and we had to buy the games through its own store. With the Switch we anticipate the same. Want to play the original NES Super Mario Bros. on the newest console? The Wii license you purchased in 2007 won’t transfer. Neither will the Wii U license. Who am I kidding? You probably didn’t buy a Wii U. But requiring its users to re-up their licenses for 1985 titles has become a regular feature of the Nintendo lifestyle. This lifestyle sucks.
Nintendo has been unwilling to sell their legacy catalog on iOS or Android devices. Nintendo doesn't like the Apple Tax on all in-app purchases. They also are probably frustrated that the purchases transfer from device to device. A license for NES Castlevania bought when you had an iPhone 3G would still work today on your new iPhone 7+ unless Nintendo refused to update their emulator app. It would be inconsequential for Nintendo to release an emulator for our phones. Third-party NES emulators exist for jailbroken iPhones. Once in a while an emulator will even sneak through Apple’s iTunes disguised as something else. But these products do not carry that all-so-precious Nintendo Seal of Approval.
Far more intriguing to most retro-fanatics has been the progress of companies like Analogue with their NT, NT mini and 24k Gold NT—all sold out at the time of this writing. Analogue did not take the emulation route. They have repurposed original boards and added modern components for HDTV connectivity and Bluetooth controllers. If you have the original game cartridge—or a cart carrying a totally legally acquired (TLA) ROM on SDHC—you can play any game developed for any Nintendo system within the NES generation.
For still others, the openEmu software makes it possible to play a NES ROM (TLA) on your home computer.
Here is some wild speculation: The NES Classic availability problem could just be due to shipping logistics. But I doubt it. After the release of the Switch we will go a couple more months with no movement on the NES Classic. Then, with much fanfare, an update to the NES Classic will be announced. This update will promise more games, better games and the chance to buy even more games at a later date through a custom-made Internet portal. It will be virtually identical to the existing unit but will have network capabilities, an always-connected requirement to play and extreme lock-down against homebrew modifications.
Nintendo forgot the DRM. There is no logical reason for a lack of components on such a standard Linux product. The ROMs under emulation are nearly 40 years old. Nintendo has been developing emulation software for decades. Tiny Linux boxes are not in short supply anywhere in the world. Nintendo probably repurposed a NES-shaped pencil-sharpener for the NES Classic case. Yes, it’s really that small.
If the NES Classic has really been ghosted from the market, is the unit worth $250 four months on? If you've got the money, go for it. Otherwise, my recommendation would be to work backwards from a computer emulator like openEmu and find out what kind of player you are. "TLA" ROMs still a problem for you? Could you be satisfied with the 30 included games on the NES Classic? Do you have a bunch of old cartridges you’d like to slap into a new bullet-proof console?
-Ryan Blocher loved his original NES and still regrets selling it to a nice Australian family in Cairo in 1992.