Nintendo is bringing back the NES — NES Classic Edition

[pbj]

Good reviews. Six freaking dollars. We will see.

 

And THIS was a carpal tunnel nightmare...

[opt2not]

That's the most suggestive joystick I've ever seen. 

[pbj]

The only video game item I've ever returned in 30+ years.

[8BitMonk]

And THIS was a carpal tunnel nightmare...

I had those for my Amiga 500 back in the day. The best thing about them was that you could turn them 90 degrees in the hand you were holding them with and then put the joystick between your index and middle finger on the opposite hand and waggle like a mofo up-and-down (instead of left and right) for games like Track & Field.

If you remember doing this you have some true old school cred. 

[Mike A]

Yeah. That thing wrecked my hands. I had one for my Amiga too. I think mine only had one button though.

[ChadTower]

Worst controller I ever owned.

[lilshawn]

Worst controller I ever owned.

not even the cheetah?

[Mike A]

That is a little disturbing.

[ChadTower]

Can't say I ever owned that one.   

[Howard_Casto]

Any Atari joystick, ever is terrible, I thought we all knew that. 

[yotsuya]

Any Atari joystick, ever is terrible, I thought we all knew that.

I spent many, many hours on the originals. Ain't nothing wrong with 'me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Howard_Casto]

Yes you recovered is all that means.  The spring on 2600 joysticks was so stiff it was like trying to bend a tree trunk while holding the tree's roots in your hand.  Compared to the Jaguar, that was one of their BETTER designs.  Atari had a lot of good stuff going for it bitd, but good controllers was not one of them.  Wico made some nice third party options though. 

[yotsuya]

Again, as a kid I had no issue with 2600 joysticks. I'll fistfight any man who says otherwise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Howard_Casto]

Put up your dukes then, because Atari joysticks were pure crap.  Gaming didn't really begin until the NES because of it.  If you want a good Atari joystick get the crappy @games plug n plays.... their "cheap" joysticks use rubber pads like a modern gamepad and thus are a dream to use compared to atari's outdated 70's weak sauce.  Or get the revised 7800 gamepads that basically ripoff the nes gamepad.... those are great too. 

[yotsuya]

Put up your dukes then, because Atari joysticks were pure crap.  Gaming didn't really begin until the NES because of it.  If you want a good Atari joystick get the crappy @games plug n plays.... their "cheap" joysticks use rubber pads like a modern gamepad and thus are a dream to use compared to atari's outdated 70's weak sauce.  Or get the revised 7800 gamepads that basically ripoff the nes gamepad.... those are great too.

10 paces at dawn, motherscratcher...

In all seriousness, for Atari games you just needed to move in eight directions and fire. The joystick fit in my hand and was really easy to use. My hands would sometimes hurt after I played on them for hours, but that's pretty normal. I don't want to ever remember thinking "Damn, I wish I had better joysticks."


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[ark_ader]

Put up your dukes then, because Atari joysticks were pure crap.  Gaming didn't really begin until the NES because of it.  If you want a good Atari joystick get the crappy @games plug n plays.... their "cheap" joysticks use rubber pads like a modern gamepad and thus are a dream to use compared to atari's outdated 70's weak sauce.  Or get the revised 7800 gamepads that basically ripoff the nes gamepad.... those are great too.

What a load of bollocks - these were great to play with:

[ark_ader]

Worst controller I ever owned.

not even the cheetah?

Is it me or does that joystick look like the creature from Alien?   Yep.

[ChadTower]

I never had any issues with the 2600 stick either.  I never felt one as stiff as Howard has described until way later when they were really old.  Howard, could your wrists have been affecting this? The 2600 stick is still one of my all time favorite controllers.  It just feels right.  Yeah, nostalgia and all that, but they weren't hard to use at all.

[yotsuya]

I never had any issues with the 2600 stick either.  I never felt one as stiff as Howard has described until way later when they were really old.  Howard, could your wrists have been affecting this? The 2600 stick is still one of my all time favorite controllers.  It just feels right.  Yeah, nostalgia and all that, but they weren't hard to use at all.

Exactly, I never had issues controlling the cursor/character in the games I used to play. I never ever once remember thinking that I wish I had something better. If my hands hurt, I chalked it up to the hours of gameplay I was putting on to them. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about it was when you use them so much the joystick covering popped off and got lost so you had a skinny white stick left.

[ChadTower]

In fact, the only thing I didn't like about it was when you use them so much the joystick covering popped off and got lost so you had a skinny white stick left.

Probably good training for adolescences, I suppose.

[pbj]

So, that controller gave me a weird "left with the receptionist" shipping confirmation.  Ain't no receptionist around here.  Then I noticed the invoice said "Amazon Customer, Gift Shipping Address."  So I fired up Amazon chat, instant refund.

My new theory is when third party sellers (Amazon Warehouse Deals in this case) get stung with a price mistake, they're opting to give you a bogus tracking number and pretend it got lost in the mail.  Happened with Walmart and that PS4 game a few weeks ago, too.

[ChadTower]

People do that on Ebay too.  Had it happen a few times now on auctions that ended low.

[pbj]

Well, it showed up at work today.  Work address is nowhere near my personal account, so I'm going to assume the wrong cookie got parsed.

 

[lilshawn]

free is free i guess...add it to the free amazon thread.

or I'll give you 1.00 for it, corn in hand.

[ChadTower]

But can I get just one rib?

[thomas_surles]

Got change for a hundred?


But can I get just one rib?

[pbj]

So, I had to crack open the wireless controller and resolder the positive wire.  Explains the near mint open box condition.

It's quite comfortable, and with the TV in gaming mode I got to Bald Bull before I took a hit so no lag perceptible to my skill level.

 

[pbj]

Famicom back in stock via Amazon Warehouse deals....

[bigster]

I finally hacked it.  You are missing out if you don't hack for just the down select of nothing else.  So far I have blazed through zelda, and megaman 1-3....gonna finish all mega then move to little Sampson

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[ChadTower]

It's quite comfortable, and with the TV in gaming mode I got to Bald Bull before I took a hit so no lag perceptible to my skill level.

 

That's a good test right there.

[nitrogen_widget]

So hyperkin is releasing their own hdmi enabled system.  We'll have to see what the picture quality is, but 720p hdmi, 4:3/16:9 selectable, pal/ntsc selectable.... all hardware, no emulation... uses standard nes controller sockets, $39.99  It doesn't look like complete crap to boot!

https://www.amazon.com/Hyperkin-RetroN-Gaming-Console-NES-Gray/dp/B072PC59FQ/ref=sr_1_1/142-7926072-4770631?ie=UTF8&qid=1494628619&sr=8-1&keywords=retron+hd

Similar items are beginning to appear on aliexpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Video-Game-Console-To-TV-With-Wireless-Gamepad-Controller-HD-HDMI-TV-Out-For-8bit/32796675488.html?spm=2114.01010208.3.24.El3OtC&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_2_10152_10065_10151_10130_10068_436_10136_10137_10157_10060_10138_10155_10062_10156_10154_10056_10055_10054_10059_100032_100033_100031_10099_10103_10102_10096_10147_10052_10053_10050_10107_10142_10051_10084_10083_10080_10082_10081_10110_10111_10112_10113_10114_10179_10181_10183_10182_10185_10184_10078_10079_10073_10123,searchweb201603_1,ppcSwitch_5&btsid=4243853c-1c0e-4d5f-8057-2e2b1d792c0c&algo_expid=ba313c09-b6ca-4973-a032-e5ccd133d503-3&algo_pvid=ba313c09-b6ca-4973-a032-e5ccd133d503

anyone order this?
I think my kids would love it for their birthday.
not so much if catches fire while they use it.

[ChadTower]

I bought one today.  I was at a store, they had a demo unit running Ring King, it looked pretty good.  I spent the $40 on it.


Got it home, hdmi puts out nothing.  The system works via AV but I can't get anything via HDMI out.  I can switch from composite showing the game to HDMI with a blank screen.  Tried swapping HDMI cables, nothing.  The HDMI out is dead on this thing right out of the box.


And I bought it at a store 75 minutes from home.  Why... why... 

[pbj]

Famicom Minis holding fast at $90 on Amazon.   

[ChadTower]

After that I was so pissed I dug out the toploader and the DeOxit and went to town cleaning everything.  Console connector, games, etc.  Got it all working maybe 90% with the occasional graphical glitch.  My son and I spent the next two hours paying Double Dragon and TMNT.  I'll take that instead. 

[Howard_Casto]

Famicom Minis holding fast at $90 on Amazon.   

^This^

Honestly your top loader must have been left in the back yard or something for it to give you so much trouble.  I've had to "Fonzie" carts to get them working on some consoles, but other than that...

So FWIW I finally got a chance to sit down and look at some of the structures in the NES Classic gui.  As I suspected, making a HD skin should be rather trivial.  The skin's coordinates are just a script and at the top of the script the source png file along with the file's dimensions are defined.  Assuming the frame buffer can handle larger images (it should) it's only a matter of increasing the image size and changing all the coordinates for the various screen elements.  So I might try to do a HD skin when I get a chance.  I actually like the stock layout, but I would prefer the sprites to be less blocky and I would really like to rework those hideous menu icons at the top.  I also want to look into displaying more game info about the selected game, I just need to see how the game title is loaded.... the individual game infos are in an xml file so one element should be just as easy to read as another.  It would also be nice to change the sorting script to allow a sort by more info (console, rating, ect). 

[ChadTower]

My kids have never seen anyone beat Tyson so I might make that a summer project.  I used to be able to beat him consistently.  I don't think I can do it on any of our newer TVs, though, so I'll have to dig out the one remaining CRT we have.

[pbj]

Man, if I'm having a REALLY good run on that game I can get to Bald Bull #2.

 

[ChadTower]

SNES Classic was just announced.


This one I'll preorder.  I have never had much of an SNES collection.

[pbj]

Mmm... good list of titles on the SNES Classic... Makes me think they didn't increase the storage capacity of the system any, though.

[Howard_Casto]

Hmm..... at 80 bucks it seems just a bit too expensive.  It comes with an extra gamepad, so I guess that would bring it up to 70, but considering the nes classic edition already plays snes games I'm wondering where that extra 10 bucks came from.