Nintendo Classic Mini announced

[Tanooki]

I've never noticed it with the controller lag either so I've chocked it up to a few things with this so called lag. 1) Crap television that suffers from input lag in general, but more perceived on old tech run through RCA or HDMI either way. I have a 10yo Samsung that lags so bad I can't play SMB3 on the Allstars disc, though the game was badly coded and sold it to get it again years later on a non-garbage TV and finished it learning that lesson about display lag and checking it against future TV buys. 2) The paranoid ramblings of overly sensitive types. 3) Curmudgeon types who grouse irrationally over the CRT being dead and having to get cute with tech or hoard old sets to deal with it.

 

I've used 2 of the systems over a total of 3 TVs and in no case was there any lag issue with Mario games or something more pissy that's very timing sensitive either.

[Gamemoose]

I decided to take the plunge and get one. Of course, all the stores that had stock in my county don't. Oi.

 

I checked online at the usual haunts and would have to pay double to get one. I happen to check JC Penny online and they supposedly had stock and free shipping. I placed my order and it went through, so we'll see.

[0078265317]

I decided to take the plunge and get one. Of course, all the stores that had stock in my county don't. Oi.

I checked online at the usual haunts and would have to pay double to get one. I happen to check JC Penny online and they supposedly had stock and free shipping. I placed my order and it went through, so we'll see.

I thought they were going out of bussiness. Anyhow good choice. You will enjoy it. Edited July 11, 2018 by 0078265317

[Gamemoose]

I thought they were going out of bussiness. Anyhow good choice. You will enjoy it.

I saw someone mention it on a forum thread at Cheapassgamer. If it goes through, cool but I'll still keep my eyes open locally.

[Gamemoose]

Holy crap! It came already!

 

I had it sent to work so I know it wouldn't be sitting in a mailbox for who knows how long. I got a confirmation email an hour ago it shipped and when I got back to my office, a package was sitting on the storage cart outside my door.

 

So if you are looking for one in the US, go jcp.com and look it up. It was free shipping and all I had to pay extra was state tax.

[Gamemoose]

I thought they were going out of bussiness. Anyhow good choice. You will enjoy it.

And you were right. I hooked it up last night and I hot in a good hour (!!) of play time with it. There are minor....so very minor things I noticed (Zelda 2 death screen doesn't really flash anymore for one) but it's so minute it didn't matter. Control was lag free and spot-on. Sound was also lag free and I couldn't hear anything out of tune in the games I really knew well.

 

It still blows my mind the videos I saw two years ago that showed this lag but yet it didn't exist for many. It definitely shows perhaps now more than ever you have to be selective on what TV to have/use. I have a feeling that what may have caused people to have problems.

[Tanooki]

I've been saying it for years beyond being on this site. It's all about the TV, and not down to a single maker or generalized model. It's down to specific TVs even of a same line as they'll perhaps be made in certain batches where they handle old lower tier signals up through HDMI better. The game industry caught onto it ages ago with Guitar Hero with the calibration area where you do some motions and it would calculate how far behind you were what is seen on screen. Game Mode is there too, but even the internal processor being crappy enough still can nullify fixing that. That's why a place like displaylag.com exists with a huge supply of TVs going back I think like 10 years now and for most, buying a TV over 30ms is buying a death sentence for lag on sensitive modern to old style classic games.

 

I have a Samsung so bad that it makes Mario Allstars (Wii release disc) unplayable, but 3 other TVs I have run it as nicely as my first LCD I ever bought (Panasonic Viera 720p before they added in post processing stupidity) which was as nice as a CRT. It blew me away when the Samsung failed, ended burning on the game for being crap and selling it to learn years later when one passed by me again and on another TV it wasn't the game. Ever since i never buy a TV without researching the lag. So for me the NES/SNES CE/Mini doesn't have problems playing things as fussy as Punchout to Guitar Hero or some crazy shooter game. I'm convinced it's mostly just bad TVs but some people are just overly hypersensitive to it, they'll need either a computer grade LCD that doesn't have the lag problem or a CRT to get over it.

[high voltage]

Saturn, my local German version Walmart, has loads of mini NES, mini SNES, mini C64 for sale, but they're not selling very well. Too expensive. They had one (1) Flashback 8 for sale.

I asked the salesperson....why only 1 Flashback...Oh we sold them all, that's the last one...

 

Cool, that's what I like to hear.

 

Edited July 16, 2018 by high voltage

[NE146]

Yep.. In my mind I say a shortage is over when I randomly walk into a store and they have stock on hand with no one rushing to buy it.

 

Last night I saw NES Classics and NES Classic controllers for sale at Target in Charlotte last night.. they had 4 of the controllers but I took a pass. There's no shortage of controller options for the nes/snes classic.. and I prefer the Wii U Pro controller anyway.

[digdugnate]

i got my hands on one yesterday- one of the local walmarts had like 10 of them so i made the 35 minute drive out to pick it up (i live in nowheresville southwestern Missouri). I absolutely love the console; the controller feels great in my hands/responsive, and the console displays really well on my el cheapo flat panel tv.

 

one thing i felt the SNES Mini did better than the NES was the length of the controller cable- i'll be hunting for an extension cable or a controller with a longer one. 3 feet is ok on my desk, but isn't going to do for couch NES sessions.

[Flojomojo]

Amazon has these in stock now, no markup or waiting or bullshit. I (finally) got one but haven't unpacked it yet. I'll probably keep it stock since I have so many other ways to play NES games, but I've noticed that Nintendo is suing a couple of big ROM sites for $150,000 per infraction.

[Gamemoose]

I modded my NES Mini, though I have to resync and take some games off that didn't work right and update the cartridge icons. Big Nose the Caveman and Bee 52 got flagged as the Mini didn't have the mapper, Track and Field 2 had some major graphic glitches and Wizards and Warriors wasn't quite right. Could be the roms I have as well.

 

Other than that, the system is still working great. My younger kids are taking more interest in it than before, which is neat to see.

[digdugnate]

I modded my NES Mini, though I have to resync and take some games off that didn't work right and update the cartridge icons. Big Nose the Caveman and Bee 52 got flagged as the Mini didn't have the mapper, Track and Field 2 had some major graphic glitches and Wizards and Warriors wasn't quite right. Could be the roms I have as well.

 

Other than that, the system is still working great. My younger kids are taking more interest in it than before, which is neat to see.

Rad Racer II was flagged as well. when you run it, it looks pretty funky!

 

I haven't looked at patching it, tho.

[Oldschool80skid]

Rad Racer II was flagged as well. when you run it, it looks pretty funky!

 

I haven't looked at patching it, tho.

The patched rom works great.

[Tanooki]

So we're in agreement the scalpers got scalped again by Nintendo. Serves them right if they sell at best to break even and take losses.

 

Ultimately hacked or not, I didn't, there is such a fantastic arrangement of the games on there that it can keep you busy for 100s of hours easily or more depending on skill level going into it. It's hard to argue against either from them that they didn't make the best closed console compilation out on the market for the value. Sure there are some holes for collectors because of licensing and choices, but the hardware is hackable by anyone using that one app to load out a huge library for that system or others too.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Tanooki

[Oldschool80skid]

You can still find them in Wilmington, DE.

[0078265317]

Lots of my targets say get it tomorrow. So its still going strong.

[godslabrat]

Question, and sorry if it's been covered before, but does the European Classic use the same NTSC ROMs as the US Mini, or did Nintendo swap them for PAL versions?

[empsolo]

Question, and sorry if it's been covered before, but does the European Classic use the same NTSC ROMs as the US Mini, or did Nintendo swap them for PAL versions?

AFAIK, the Euro mini uses the US romset.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[digdugnate]

^^ agreed with @empsolo.

 

if you guys/gals would like actual manuals for the games and console instead of the lame 'oh, just scan this QR code thing' from the Nintendo, here's the website. (im old-fashioned and curmudgeonly)

 

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/index.html

[atarilovesyou]

The input lag affected my play of Punchout on the first run of these systems, but the sound lag wasost noticeable for me. I was hoping this second run would have corrected it, as the SNES mini has no lag of any kind, plus a fantatsic CRT sim that is miles better than the NES one.

 

I play both systems on the same hd tv, so it shouldn't be my tv...but it just may be. You never know. But why lag on the Nes, but not the Snes? I'm sure there is a reason.

 

The thing is many a NES classic reviewer has noted the sound lag. Could it be we all have laggy tvs? Maybe. I have not heard about he 2nd run Nes mini having improved sound lag, just a board difference that now matches the Snes board...cost cutting, sounds good to me.

 

Can anybody who owns both and has experienced the sound lag I talk about comment if it has been improved on with the 2nd run? Thanks. I plan to test it out myself when I find one out there, but I'm currently unable to.

[digdugnate]

i haven't noticed sound lag, but i noticed a tiny bit of input lag on games like StarTropics. .

[Gamemoose]

The input lag affected my play of Punchout on the first run of these systems, but the sound lag wasost noticeable for me. I was hoping this second run would have corrected it, as the SNES mini has no lag of any kind, plus a fantatsic CRT sim that is miles better than the NES one.

 

I play both systems on the same hd tv, so it shouldn't be my tv...but it just may be. You never know. But why lag on the Nes, but not the Snes? I'm sure there is a reason.

 

The thing is many a NES classic reviewer has noted the sound lag. Could it be we all have laggy tvs? Maybe. I have not heard about he 2nd run Nes mini having improved sound lag, just a board difference that now matches the Snes board...cost cutting, sounds good to me.

 

Can anybody who owns both and has experienced the sound lag I talk about comment if it has been improved on with the 2nd run? Thanks. I plan to test it out myself when I find one out there, but I'm currently unable to.

I was going off some reviews myself when the NES Mini first came out and was floored at the lag that was displayed. One YouTuber did a split screen showing real hardware, an AVS, a Retron 5 and the Mini. The mini always seemed to have sound that was off enough that it'd drive a person nuts. Like Mario jumping and the "boing" sound happening while he's in the air rather than when he jumps.

 

When I decided to go digital in recent months I researched lag and comparisons of emulators vs the Mini. That when I came across a play test that I mentioned. There was no lag- the dude tore through Mega Man and all the lag I saw didn't exist. That's when I took the plunge.

 

It's like modern TVs are fickle when it comes to input sources. I think you really do have to try out and fiddle with settings in the hope that things work right. It doesn't seem right in my mind but that must be the new norm.

[derFunkenstein]

My local walmart had 4-5 each NES and SNES in the case (Pekin, IL) yesterday.

[Tanooki]

^^ agreed with @empsolo.

 

if you guys/gals would like actual manuals for the games and console instead of the lame 'oh, just scan this QR code thing' from the Nintendo, here's the website. (im old-fashioned and curmudgeonly)

 

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/index.html

 

I took that a step further, used a firefox tool and I ripped the entire site and stored it on my computer (same with the SNES site too.) Very easy access to the manuals PDF and not when you don't have to mess with a connection. It was dumb of them not to stuff the PDFs or at least a basic Wii-VC like manual inside the device. More enlightened types may understand and have downloaded a QR code app to their phone, but it probably throws off far more people looking for some basic help.

 

 

Oh and the US ROM set thing, it has been known since the original run so maybe it just wasn't covered since then.

 

 

As to the NES Mini lag thing, it's a myth. It's all the same garbage that has been going on since CRTs were replaced in the mainstream and more and more filters were added to those HD TVs as time went along. The early LCD TVs didn't have any filtering really that would pre-process video and audio in various ways, but they still weren't as tight as like a PC screen (they'd still roll under 30ms though.) 30ms for most is about the break point where you can see, feel, hear a delay issue. They're all caused by a mix of how the internal chipset works in general with old low level signals, but then there's also all that processing inside for filtering the image, movie quality, clarity, audio, and so on and each adds another step of time for delay in milliseconds. People continually want to blame the product from Sony, Nintendo, Sega, MS whatever and it's not them, it's the TV. That's why spaces like displaylag.com have been around for year and more and more places try and review and cover all these TVs (every make, model, and size as internal guts change) and then spit out the results for the consumer. I won't buy a TV at/over 30ms for old games, they fail. I learned that the hard way on a 40" or so Samsung I got 10years ago before I knew better, and I thought I had a broken game and system (Mario Allstars/Wii) but learned years later it was the lame TV so I pulled my pre-HD consoles off it and won't run old style games even on newer either because of that. People need to get educated, and lay off the blame game. Nintendo isn't in the business (or any of them really) for releasing buggy substandard meh level crap for systems.