NES Classic is America's best-selling game console

[beschizza]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/03/nes-classic-is-americas-best.html

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[Dire]

I wonder how many are buried in the backs of closets after the owners realised just how poorly NES era games have aged? I know mine is (see also 2600 Flashback and 90% of MAME ROMS)

[agies]

I don’t feel like most of the games on the NES Classic have aged all that poorly. Sure, they’re hard but the addition of save states takes a bit of the edge off.

[AnthonyI]

Does it crash like the original did? I can recall getting far in a hard game like Blaster Master, and then the screen turns into a jumble of artifacts, and all my progress gone. You can’t have a genuine NES experience without the system crashing randomly at inopportune times.

[Engineer666]

I have the SNES version and I loooove it! So easy to use and most of the games inside are still a blast to play.

[anon75430791]

I have a significant NES collection still.

Which is to say I’ve realized this.

[Snakefarmer]

I just wish my parents would have let me keep my old NES instead of selling it at a yard sale before we moved for the 5th time.

[coherent_light]

Don’t know, but since I never played those games, and recently finally had a chance to watch my wife play, I now realize these games must hold up pretty well. (Better than Atari games do, which were always very limited.)

[coherent_light]

I know that. I feel the same way about the Vectrex we used to have.

[Snowlark]

Most of them, yeah, but that’s the case with any console. It’s just that NES accumulated a galactic library over its long lifespan, during which genres were still in their infancy. Super Mario Bros. 3 remains one of the most fun platformers to play and the graphics are (to me) still engaging because the designers had finally figured out how to get the most ‘pop’ and shading from the NES’ limited palette.

Granted, many platformers had jumps in higher levels that seemed engineered to be within one or two pixels away from certain death and those are frustrating (looking at you, Ninja Gaiden). Difficulty should really be a matter of quick wits and response time, something that the developers of Super Meat Boy understood and absolutely nailed.