I am one of those people that reminisce about the past in a poetic kind of way. I have extremely fond memories of playing the NES Classic with my brother. We only had a few games, but we played those almost constantly. Saving our money until we could buy another game. Which means, I fondly remember the pixelated Mario in the first game. And how I always thought it was his head hitting the bricks, and not his hand, as it didn’t really extend past his hat. So why am I waxing so poetic about the classic NES system? Because they brought it back and now they’re taking it away again. How can they toy with my emotions like this?
Released as a nostalgia product, essentially, the NES Classic was not intended to be available long term. And with far “better” gaming systems on the market now, that only makes sense. But I think Nintendo is missing the mark in a big way with this. There are so many people in my generation who want to bring back those memories of old. Who want to remember what it was like sitting on the floor of their living room as they played this for hours. So why only release it for a short amount of time? Or only make a limited number of units?
My thoughts are that they were looking to boost sales, and bring people back to Nintendo. While I love Nintendo, I feel a bit juvenile in that. I am not a big gamer myself, but would absolutely love to have one of these at home. In fact, at 6 pm last night, Best Buy Canada had released a bunch of the units. Yes, that is the technical amount. And by 6:02 pm, they had sold out of all of them except for a handful of the Zelda units. As I was reading the article that mentioned these sales, I thought to myself that maybe I would consider getting one. But I was deeply disappointed when I got to the bottom of the article and learned that they were all gone.
Getting back to this idea of Nintendo being juvenile. Or maybe it’s not, and that’s just how I view it. I love those kinds of games, and I think it’s because it takes me back to a time in my life when everything was simple. Whereas true gamers are in it for the game. And maybe that’s the difference between Nintendo and other systems. I will probably get a lot of flack for saying that, but maybe we play Nintendo games in more of an entertaining way. Or when we’re younger. And as we get older we either switch to different systems and continue gaming, or we stop entirely and have fond memories of our time with Nintendo.
Whatever your penchant is for playing, does this release make you happy? Or does it sadden you of good times past and make you wonder why Nintendo is toying with you this way? I’m in for the second option, I think. While I love the idea of re-releasing this system, I’m a bit upset that there weren’t more units available. After all, there seems to be a market for it. So give the people what they want. Bring back the NES Classic!