GRcade

Let's be honest, the main appeal of these mini consoles isn't the games, these are all available on virtual console or emulators. It's the console itself. A miniaturised version of your favourite childhood console just taps into that nostalgia in such a specific way. They look fantastic, imagine having a complete set of miniature Nintendo consoles all in a row on a shelf. It's genius really.

Poser wrote:But you can play any NES game on pretty much any Nintendo console, or using any emulator, and that's not stopped the Mini NES.

True, although I'd wager the NES mini was so popular due partly to the limited supply (Nintendo employed a similar strategy in the early days of the Wii) and the perceived nostalgia value. PlayStation games are also much more readily available than NES or SNES games so picking up physical games isn't as difficult and I'd wager there are more working PS3s out there than there are working NES or SNES.

It would be interesting to see just how far they could go in terms of console tech with machines of that size.
I'm pretty sure a PS3 version wouldn't be possible but maybe Xbox?

bear wrote:I think a SNES mini is almost as far as you can go with these sort of things. The early 3D games have aged absolutely terribly.

I partially agree with this. There are obviously some amazing games from the N64/PS era, but I am not sure I would be that fussed about ending up with 30 of them on a mini console. Remasters or rereleases on current gen hardware is enough for me.

Preezy wrote:Let's be honest, the main appeal of these mini consoles isn't the games, these are all available on virtual console or emulators. It's the console itself. A miniaturised version of your favourite childhood console just taps into that nostalgia in such a specific way. They look fantastic, imagine having a complete set of miniature Nintendo consoles all in a row on a shelf. It's genius really.

Yep I have a feeling a lot of the people who bought it already had access to all the games via emulation so it certainly wasn't just the games.

Peter Crisp wrote:It would be interesting to see just how far they could go in terms of console tech with machines of that size.
I'm pretty sure a PS3 version wouldn't be possible but maybe Xbox?

What? No Atleast not yet anyway

Maaaayyyybe an N64 but I have my doubts.

Floex wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:It would be interesting to see just how far they could go in terms of console tech with machines of that size.
I'm pretty sure a PS3 version wouldn't be possible but maybe Xbox?

What? No Atleast not yet anyway

Maaaayyyybe an N64 but I have my doubts.

The lack of drives and less cooling required makes a huge difference.
The N64 already had huge spaces in the hardware for ports (it was an amazing piece of kit) so I suspect a rejig could be fairly easy.
I don't own one but how powerful are phones these days as they have even less internal space.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Karl wrote:They should obviously keep producing & shipping the NES Mini up until Christmas, when they launch the SNES Mini. It's absolute madness that they aren't doing this. I'm not even annoyed at them, I'm just baffled that such an obviously terrible business decision has been made. If I were a shareholder I think I'd have my head in my hands right now.

If we take Sony as an example of a company in the same line of business they kept producing the PS1 and 2 for decades because they knew they could make money doing so. They managed to do so while also manufacturing vastly more powerful hardware because the older hardware was easy to produce.
As you point out Nintendo could make a lot of money with the NES Mini but they decided not to bother it's like they don't want free money.

It's 2017 and I still can't play my digital PS1 games in my PS4.

Preezy wrote:Let's be honest, the main appeal of these mini consoles isn't the games, these are all available on virtual console or emulators. It's the console itself. A miniaturised version of your favourite childhood console just taps into that nostalgia in such a specific way. They look fantastic, imagine having a complete set of miniature Nintendo consoles all in a row on a shelf. It's genius really.

100% this

That's why the "just emulate" argument doesn't work with me, I want the NES mini to sit on my shelf and look pretty

Mafro wrote:It's 2017 and I still can't play my digital PS1 games in my PS4.

That's the main factor in me hanging on to my PS3. I have a hard drive full of PS1 games. If I could play them (and my handful of physical PS1 games) on my PS4 I'd probably trade the PS3 in.

Floex wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:It would be interesting to see just how far they could go in terms of console tech with machines of that size.
I'm pretty sure a PS3 version wouldn't be possible but maybe Xbox?

What? No Atleast not yet anyway

Maaaayyyybe an N64 but I have my doubts.

Obviously that's the latest and greatest mobile chipset on the market but it's still a phone emulating a GameCube and looking like it does an alright job of doing so.

I think Raspberry Pi 3 can emulate an N64 so a N64 mini in late 2018 is certainly possible. Biggest problem I could see is the lack of Rare games which were some of the biggest titles on the N64. Well that and the earlier problem I mentioned of early 3D stuff aging terribly.

The Pi 3 needs to be overclocked, and cooled, but yes, it can be done.

bear wrote:

Floex wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:It would be interesting to see just how far they could go in terms of console tech with machines of that size.
I'm pretty sure a PS3 version wouldn't be possible but maybe Xbox?

What? No Atleast not yet anyway

Maaaayyyybe an N64 but I have my doubts.

Obviously that's the latest and greatest mobile chipset on the market but it's still a phone emulating a GameCube and looking like it does an alright job of doing so.

I think Raspberry Pi 3 can emulate an N64 so a N64 mini in late 2018 is certainly possible. Biggest problem I could see is the lack of Rare games which were some of the biggest titles on the N64. Well that and the earlier problem I mentioned of early 3D stuff aging terribly.

I want to know how to put those onscreen controls on the windows version of Dolphin.

I wonder if Sony and SEGA are looking at this and thinking they can do something similar with PS1, Mega Drive, Saturn, and maybe even Dreamcast.

KK wrote:I wonder if Sony and SEGA are looking at this and thinking they can do something similar with PS1, Mega Drive, Saturn, and maybe even Dreamcast.

I hope so, I'd pay good money for Mini version of all of those.

Don't forget Master System.

There kinda have been MS and MD versions; but they have been licensed by Sega rather than manufactured by them. I definitely would like to see official, "mini" versions of both!

Considering I missed out entirely on the Saturn era, I would throw money at a mini version.

Pedz wrote:Don't forget Master System.

Master System One of gaming's biggest what ifs for me is "What if the Master System had third party support?". As I understand things it was a technically superior piece of kit compared to NES but Nintendo had all the big developers locked down to exclusivity deals. The upshot of that is most of Master System's better games were first party Sega titles meaning there aren't many pesky licensing issues to consider.

Floex wrote:Considering I missed out entirely on the Saturn era, I would throw money at a mini version.

This, although considering how notoriously hard Saturn is to emulate I don't see it happening any time soon.

Floex wrote:Considering I missed out entirely on the Saturn era, I would throw money at a mini version.

As much as I'd love one, I can't see it happening.

First of all I presume because of the ridiculous hardware its pretty difficult to emulate without brute forcing it, which might be a problem for a budget device. Secondly it was a disc based system so I imagine the games are getting towards the size where it would be difficult to put a bunch of them on built in memory which wouldn't be prohibitively expensive.