Wednesday 27 July 2016

The Mini Nes and the AT megadrive

dsc0153edited.jpgSo if your into Video games and either Nintendo or retro games in general then I am pretty sure that you have heard that Nintendo are brining out a new version of The Nintendo Entertainment System. Well what do you need to know well for a start its called the NES Classic Mini and its an official product, it comes with 30 games on it but no way of adding any more games and no way to play the original NES cartridges. It has a HDMI port so it can plug straight into a modern TV and be played instantly with no need to mess around tuning it in like you would have had to do with the original NES. It costs £50 andis coming our in November, for your cash you get the machine a HDMI cable and one joypad, now its important to note that this pad has a modern connection ( It is the same as the port in the bottom of a Wii mote) so you wont be able to use any Original NES pads you have laying around on it, nor will you be able to take your new NES mini pad and use it on a classic NES. Apparently though if you have a Wii classic controller this can be used as a second pad, so you could save yourself from having to invest in a second pad if you already own one of those.


Ok so here is a list of the games you get on the NES mini.
  • Balloon Fight
  • Bubble Bobble
  • Castlevania
  • Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
  • Donkey Kong
  • Donkey Kong Jr.
  • Double Dragon II: The Revenge
  • Dr. Mario
  • Excitebike
  • Final Fantasy
  • Galaga
  • Ghosts 'n Goblins
  • Gradius
  • Ice Climbers
  • Kid Icarus
  • Kirby's Adventure
  • Mega Man 2
  • Metroid
  • Mario Bros.
  • Ninja Gaiden
  • Pac-Man
  • Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
  • Star Tropics
  • Super C
  • Super Mario Bros.
  • Super Mario Bros. 2
  • Super Mario Bros. 3
  • Tecmo Bowl
  • The Legend of Zelda
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
I cant really fault them for the games they hae picked after all you have all 3 of the Super Mario Bros games, both Zelda games, Metroid, Punch Out, Excitebike and various other Nintendo games but then you also get awesome games from other publishers such as Final Fantay, Mega Man 2 and Super C. I find it a bit rubbish that you get 2 out of the original castlevania trilogy but in general it is very hard to fault the choice of games.

Am I going to buy one though? Well not at £50 I am not. Why? Well I already own a NES and about 80 cartridges, sure I own punch out, the 3 mario games, megaman 2 and one of the Zelda's but there are a lot of good titles on there that I dont own and it would cost me more to buy cartridges of them than it would to buy this machine but still I would rather invest my money in some actual Retro gear. I know a lot of people are attracted to the official stamp and the hi build quality but if you just want to play these games there are much cheaper ways as well there are plenty of NES clone machines or heck if you want to plug something small up to a TV and play you could get a raspbery PI and ram if full of games and find a halfway decent pad for less than this machine costs, before someone screams at me fo rbeing illegal I think id legally be well within my rights to download Roms for the 80 NES games I own and to play them, plus you could get a PI to be a megadrive and SNES and all mannor of other things all of which I have decent sized collections of games for.

On a final note I know that some places have been trying to say its going to be a SEGA vs Nintendo christmas again with a new AT games Megadrive coming out well its not really for many reasons. The AT games megadrives have both advantages and disadvantages over the NES Mini, for one the AT games machine have awful pads, they are basically the most 3rd party trashy type pads you can imagine, thats largly solved if you have some megadrive pads laying about. it doesnt look or feel like the best machine out but its biggest issue is that even though it often comes with more games than a NES mini   usuallly 40 (80 according to the boxes but 40 are real and 40 are usless rubbish new flash type games which dont deserve counting) and even though it can run actual real original game carts from all countries it sometimes doesnt run them quiet right. Sometimes this is a bit of jerkyness here and there but most of the time its the sound which seems to really suffer. At the end of the day we dont know how well the NES mini will run but I seem to think it will be as close to perfection as possible with Nintendo treatign it as a full on official product and the fact that well the NES was a less powerful sort of less complex system in the first place (also there have been a million clone consoles which from what I have seen have run the games absolutly perfectly so it cant be that hard to get right). I think the simple truth is a lot of people miss the old SEGA VS Nintendo days and kind of wanted to see some kind of christmas return to this so tried to make out that this was the case.

If you want a NES mini then buy one but go into it knowing all you can. If you want an AT games megadrive well know the faults and if you can deal with them. Then  well keep your eyes open and dont neciserily get the latest one, as far as I can tell from playing on them theyve never really changed all thats changed is the games on them and the box art really.. I own an AT games megadrive which I got for £15, for that amount it was a decent thing to mess around with for awile and to try my various carts on, get a real Megadrive pad though.... if you own a PS3 or 360 though I would just advise you get the Megadrive Games collection disc with like 40 games on it, it runs a heck of a lot better, playing that felt like playing a real Megadrive.


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