Updated by Gabe Gurwin on 06-26-17: Updated with Nintendo’s statement on console’s availability, as well as information on controllers’ cord length.
Confirming rumors that recently came to a boil, Nintendo announced the Super Nintendo Classic Edition, a follow-up to Nintendo’s incredibly popular plug-and-play NES Classic Edition emulator box, will hit stores September 29. The bite-sized SNES will come loaded with 21 classic titles, including Star Fox 2, which was never officially released anywhere, including Japan.
The Super Nintendo Classic Edition will include an HDMI cable, USB charging cable and adapter, and two wired SNES controllers, enabling multiplayer right out of the box. The cables for the controllers will be five feet in length, up from the three feet from the NES Classic’s controllers — that console also only included one controller per package.
The list should have many gamers in their 30s and 40s salivating over the chance to dive back into their nostalgic favorites. The jump from 8- to-16 bits on the SNES was a huge jump in the creative potential of games as a young medium: Many games from the console are still widely played and listed among the best games of all time, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country and Street Fighter II. The role-playing games on offer are also particularly extensive, with hundreds of potential hours waiting in Final Fantasy III, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, and Secret of Mana.
For many players, though, Star Fox 2 will be the main selling point for many, however. Developed in 1995 as a direct sequel to the original Star Fox, Nintendo axed the release in order to focus on their upcoming Nintendo 64. Various unofficial ROMs and fan translations have circulated ever since, but this will be the first time Nintendo has officially released the sequel in any capacity. Players will need to beat the first level of the original Star Fox to unlock it.
Nintendo also hopes rectify its biggest issue from last year’s NES Classic launch, creating enough hardware to meet consumer demand. The NES Classic sold out almost immediately when it went on sale in 2016, with sporadic units making their way to store shelves before the system was discontinued completely. Nintendo told IGN that “significantly more” devices will be available. Like the NES Classic, however, the system might not be available after its first few months on sale: Nintendo said it will sell the SNES Classic through the end of 2017.
“At this time, we have nothing to announce regarding any possible shipments beyond this year,” Nintendo said in a prepared statement.
There were nearly 800 games officially released for the Super Nintendo from 1991 to 1998, so inevitably some people’s favorites won’t make the cut. We think that Chrono Trigger is the most glaring absence, for instance. It’s nevertheless an impressive line-up, however, and given its predecessor’s success, we expect it to sell like hotcakes this fall.
Remember when transparent gadgets were the coolest things you could own? Sony is bringing that late '90s aesthetic back with its new PS5 Prism Collection. The gorgeous lineup gives your DualSense controller and PS5 console a glossy, see-through makeover in three eye-catching colors.
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/2115459064981512662?s=19
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.