The hot item this holiday season for many people has proven to be the NES Classic, a nostalgia-heavy offering that for $60 gets you a gizmo that looks like a smaller version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System packed with 30 games, all of which are completely awesome. Availability has been dismal, with many stores offering it in their physical stores only — even AMAZON. Trying to snag one of these things is beginning to affect my blood pressure, and, aside from my being apparently susceptible to poor marketing tactics, there’s really no reason it should because, again, the principle selling point here is just nostalgia.
I’m a child of the 1970s and 1980s. The video game phenomena really got going right when I was old enough to sort of understand what was going on, and, man, did I take it in. I experienced “Pac-Mania” and envied every kid in school whose parents let them have an Atari. All of my allowance was spent at the local arcade every Saturday, where I’d blow through a cool $5 in about 15 minutes playing Donkey Kong, Tempest, and Q-Bert (I was terrible at all of them). My first home system was the ColecoVision, a true technological miracle in its day, and I played the hell out of that thing. Then the impossible happened. Video games became “uncool.” See, it was important in the ‘80s for kids to grow out of everything, to the point where you’d soon find yourself surrounded by young future finance bros everywhere. It was terrible. If you held your interest in, say, video games or Transformers, that made you a pariah. Until, that is, a certain little company called “Nintendo” made video games cool again in 1985.
The Nintendo Entertainment System took over the world and truly laid the foundations for what would become the modern video game industry. Games introduced in 1985 would go on to become major franchises that still thrive today, like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. With each game, we would invest hours and hours grinding it out, getting better until we were able to finish the game, and it was always so much fun, albeit a little frustrating at times because sometimes these games were really hard. I had dozens of games that I remember very fondly, and, as a matter of fact, I still have may of them, along with a fully functional NES. They’re all in storage, but still. I have them.
So why the hell am I so hung up on getting the NES Classic?
I can’t even answer that concisely, really. I like the idea of having a library of 30 games at my fingertips much the same way Netflix makes movies and TV shows available — scroll until you find what you want, then boom. There are no cartridges to swap out and blow into so they work. I like that. Plus, you can save your games — many cartridges don’t have that option. And the price is great. For $60 you get the console and 30 games. That cost hundreds back in ’85-’87. So the whole package is wonderfully convenient, and, as I mentioned, my actual console and cartridges are all currently in storage, so this gizmo makes it all the more convenient. So is that really it? Is that why this is a big deal? “Give me convenience or give me death”?
Part of the problem is the way this system has been rolled out, and the fact that Nintendo and Amazon are huge jerks.
Availability has been dismal. Stores like Target and Walmart have been getting as few as one console per shipment. A “big” shipment in my area has been six consoles at one Target. I mean … come on. This leads to people camping out in hopes of getting one. And there were none available anywhere on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Right now I’m doing that thing where I stare at Nintendo with one eyebrow raised in incredulity. Do you even WANT to make money on these, Nintendo?
Amazon has been using the NES Classic to draw attention to their three West Coast physical stores and to their Amazon NOW service on the East Coast, a service that, of course, is not available in my own city, a major East Coast city. None have been made available to standard Amazon Prime members or to the general public for purchase. I find this to be so aggravating.
See, based on what this thing actually is, I assumed I’d be able to stroll into Target any old time and pick one up. But the sheer lack of availability has succeeded in drumming up an incredible amount of hype just in time for Christmas. So now we find ourselves in the position of 30-year-old video games suddenly being the hottest thing on the market in 2016.
Nostalgia always wins, I guess.
So Nintendo, please — TAKE MY MONEY!
What’s been your experience with the NES Classic? Were you able to snag one? Do you not see what all the fuss is about? Sound off below!