Nostalgia is a pretty powerful thing. So powerful in fact that it can blind us to what we're actually getting. The Classic NES system is not a bad product by any stretch of the imagination. But it's hardly a great one either. It might be great to bask in the nostalgia of games we once played as children, but it's hard not to talk about the shortcomings of the system itself and the potential it could've had otherwise.
It might be hard for some people to recognize just how big of a craze the original NES was when it was relaesed in 1985. I'm just as nostalgic as anyone when it comes to the NES. Like many people around my age, the NES was the first video game system I ever played. The very first game I ever played in my life was the original Super Mario Bros. and I still play the game more often than I care to admit three decades later. It's still fantastic. There are plenty of games on the NES that I loved that by default 30 games is only a fraction of the number of games I actually played on the NES.
So let's first talk about all the good stuff with this system. The system itself comes with thirty games already loaded on. The games included I've listed at the very end of this review. This review doesn't serve as a means to review each game individually, it's easy enough to find information on all of them. Some of these games truly are real classics. The original Castlevania, the Super Mario Trilogy, Tecmo Bowl and Kirby's Adventure are timeless classics. Other games like Kid Icarus or Ice Climber are often forgotten classics while games like Final Fantasy are here more for legacy reasons than anything else. You are, however, getting a good deal of games to play.
I should also point out these games look great, but you can choose how they're displayed. They can be pixel perfect, in the standard 4:3 or with CRT scanlines for a more nostalgic feel. No matter how you play, though the games are certainly brighter and more polished than playing them on your virtual console.
The classic NES is small, but it functions just like the original NES did back in its time, and it's incredibly easy to set up. You press the power button and you get to select from the thirty games to play. You'll be happy to know the games do include save states. The only small problem is that there's no way to really back out of the games with the default controller that comes with it (supposedly there's a way to back out if you use a classic controller). You always have to reset the console. This won't be a problem anyway because the controller has a ridiculously tiny cord that's only about two and half feet long. That's almost laughable
The problem with the classic NES begins to surface when you take off the nostalgia goggles for a moment and recognize two very distinct things. The first is that the best games here have been reissued countless times. In particular, the Mario Trilogy. It's a staple that has to be included, but we've been given this trilogy so many times that by now it's hard to imagine anyone that wanted these games again not already having them in some capacity. Between reissues on the SNES, GBA, Wii (in the All Stars Anniversary Pack) or the virtual console (on Wii, Wii U AND 3DS) you've already got plenty of ways to access this trilogy. It doesn't take away from the package to have these games, but it's not necessarily adding a great deal to it either.
The other problem is that some games have not aged very well at all. The original Final Fantasy, for example, was groundbreaking at its time but the releases it had on PSX, GBA and PSP fix problems the original game had that are not fixed here such as attacking air when an enemy dies and all your characters are programmed to attack that enemy. Other times you're going to feel like there are missed opportunities to include other definitive classics. For example: Super C is here, despite the first Contra still being one of the most talked about video games in the NES's library... while Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is likely one of the least loved games to be featured on this entire list. All of this would be no problem at all if Nintendo allowed you to download other classics or allowed you to insert the original cartridges. But the system itself is too small for the original cartridges, and not allowing people to download additional games feels like a missed opportunity.
There are a lot of games, but pretty soon you'll start realizing that some haven't stood the test of time as well as others. It doesn't make them bad necessarily, but it might make you less excited about some of what's here once you jump into them. Your mileage, of course, will vary. I was excited to play Kirby's Adventure, and was surprised at how well the game holds up. The controls are still tight, the adventure is still fun and I had few frustrations getting through the game. But whereas I had that experience with Kirby's Adventure, Ninja Gaiden was a game where I didn't quite have the same nostalgia. The over abundance of enemies and the constant being knocked into pits didn't feel quite as awesome as it did back in the day. It was more arcade like in its approach, and that's no surprise as many games developed for the NES took after the arcade approach because being ridiculously difficult and then starting you from the beginning was a good way to make sure you'd spend a lot of time with the game. Again, it doesn't make it bad, it just makes it a product of its time (though surprisingly this feeling did not come when playing Super C). You are playing games that are firmly a product of their time and so you should expect them to also come with the limitations and design philosophies of that time. Some of these games are dwarfed by these philosophies. Not every game ages well, but it's still nice to see how far we've come. Luckily most of the games do hold up better than you'd expect... which only makes the moments that don't hold up stand out so much more.
As such what you're really getting is a time capsule more than anything. Despite being for nostalgia, I actually think this is more beneficial to younger gamers who want to learn a little more about where gaming has been in the past thirty or so years. It's just a shame that we aren't given the option to enjoy more games than what we have. As far as I know there are no expansions being released and no way to download further games. This makes the Classic NES something that's nice in the short term, but in the long term you're likely to treat it less like a video game system and more like a toy you occasionally pull out of the toy chest... and the legacy of the NES is far more important than that.
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Below is a list of games that are on the Classic NES:
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 Climber
Kid Icarus
Kirby's Adventure
Mario Bros.
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Pac-Man
Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
StarTropics
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
he's only 4 still hasn't grasped that you have to move and jump at the same time
I'd rather play it tonight after anticipating it than sell it for like 100-200 profit.
That cord extender is definitely gonna be a must. Not sure wtf they were thinking with that short ass cord.