Nintendo has shown off the Nintendo Classic Mini: NES in action for the first time in a trailer, giving us our first idea of how the system will actually function – and it’s looking like a pretty good buy.
The first bit of good news is that the European model has been confirmed to run all games at 60Hz, which is a huge deal – not to mention something which wasn’t necessarily a given, as Nintendo has put out 50Hz Virtual Console releases in the past. While the faster gameplay isn’t quite authentic to the experience NES gamers in this region will have had a few decades ago, you’re getting to play the games as the developers intended them.
The system’s three display modes have also been shown off for the first time – regular 4:3, 4:3 with a CRT filter and pixel-perfect. The regular 4:3 and pixel-perfect modes are nice and sharp over HDMI. The CRT filter is shown to simulate blurring, scanlines and the mild waviness caused by composite dot crawl. It’s not yet known whether these components of the filter can be toggled individually, so you can have scanlines without the blurring. Finally, the “suspend points” system of savestates was revealed. This allows for up to four positions per game to be saved, and can be activated at any time. All of this is accessed through a front-end that is as slick as is to be expected from Nintendo.
The Nintendo Classic Mini: NES will launch on November 11th 2016 and most retailers are carrying it for £49.99.