Will the Super NES Classic be Super?

Recently, Nintendo announced they’re releasing a follow-up to last holiday season’s wildly popular (and wildly underproduced) NES Classic (NES meaning Nintendo Entertainment System) with this holiday season’s new nostalgic gadget: the Super NES Classic.

I’m very excited. More excited than the announcement of the NES Classic. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. I grew up on Nintendo home consoles and over time, my collection of games has been, unfortunately, ravaged by thieving friends. Almost every game I have lost is present in the SNES Classic’s library. Such masterpieces as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my favorite out of the many Zelda games), Final Fantasy VI (my favorite out of all 15 of the main Final Fantasy games) and what has been a solid contender, and often winner for the greatest game of all time, Super Metroid. The game selection isn’t huge at 21 games (compared to 30 for the NES Classic), but the games list is virtually a who’s who list of the Super Nintendo’s library. Fortunately the SNES console has two controllers included as compared the NES Classic’s one. Expectations are high.

My concern is that like the NES Classic, it will have a limited holiday run of only a few months. Only a few million NES Classics were made, creating a large market for scalpers to charge up to ten times the console’s MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) of US$60. Currently the price for a used one sits around US$150. With an MSRP of US$80, and popular buzz online seeming to strip out what the NES Classic was stirring up, without enough consoles released, there could be a lot of angry people out there. Again. We’ll see this holiday season.