GameBoy Advance, Classic NES Limited Edition, ESRP $99.00

It’s the same SP you know and love, just NESified. You can see the controls, set up to look like the original NES controller. Red B and A buttons, black D-pad and select/start buttons, grey box pattern down the middle and red Nintendo logo in the corner. What you can’t see is that the design overlay is also slightly rough, giving that grippy feel the NES controller’s overlay had. The fancy-schmancy box has both that gold and white font that used to adorn old NES hardware packaging, and the original GameBoy logo. The back advertises the Classic NES Series games out right now.

Closed, the top of the lid has the NES vent pattern painted across it, and the silver and black logo is replaced by a red and black one. The screen assembly and top half of the controller part is a light grey, the bottom half darker grey, mimicking the two-tone color of the NES Control Deck. Maybe I’m hallucinating (if you can do that with your hands), but the system feels lighter than my old Platinum one. I don’t imagine the skin I added gave it any more weight, maybe it’s just lighter plastic. A different boot animation would’ve been cool, something 8-bit in look and sound.

And a red power light to replace the green one would have been a nice touch, not to mention the dreaded flashing power light for games it can’t read or if there’s no cart in it. But, you take what you can get. Minor wants aside, it’s pretty snazzy. It’s for anyone who still has an NES in the living room (and two or three more in the closet) and plays it regularly, and if you can find a Gamestop or other store taking a bit off the price for trading in a used SP (in my case they took 60 bucks off the price), you might want to jump on that. And while your wallet pays homage to 80s gaming technology, might I suggest…

Classic NES Series: The Legend of Zelda, ESRP $20.00

Chances are pretty good that you have this game, as well as about 90% of the current Classic NES Series games (Legend of Zelda, Bomberman, Xevious, Excitebike, Ice Climber, Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man and Donkey Kong) in one format or another. Originally I was of the opinion that “I already have these games, I’m not paying 20 bucks for ‘em again.” But it called out to me. I couldn’t buy this little NESish system without at least one NES game. In my opinion, Zelda is the only one worth 20 bucks of the lot. You can get Pac-Man in a separate compilation for 10 bucks at Wal-Mart, Xevious is a crappy shooter, the NES Donkey Kong only had like 2 or 3 levels, and shit… even my grandpa beat Super Mario Bros. Bomberman and Excitebike are a big maybe. I’d put ‘em at 10 bucks. Zelda, on the other hand, is a long and arduous task, rife with monsters, dungeons, puzzles, and hours of play time for the first half (1st quest) alone. And before I forget, the Classic NES Series games even come in cool grey cartridges, instead of the usual black. Just like the original! Isn’t that keen! I didn’t just say “keen” there.

You know the drill. The evil Ganon has stolen the almighty Triforce of Power, and sets his sights on the Triforce of Wisdom. Hyrule’s princess Zelda breaks the Triforce of Wisdom up and scatters it to eight dungeons across the land, royally pissing off Ganon and forcing him to kidnap her. Now it’s up to young traveler Link to save Zelda and bring peace to yadda yadda, cue theme music.

The game is a perfect emulation of the original, the only real exceptions being corrections to spelling and grammar in text, and a very slight squashing of the vertical resolution to adjust for the not quite square GBA screen. It’s not really even noticeable though, and is a much better alternative than shrinking the whole thing down until it’s square. It seems to use Nintendo’s standard retail emulator, the same one used in the Animal Crossing games transferable to the GBA, as well as the one used in Metroid: Zero Mission. Hitting the shoulder buttons brings up the sleep mode menu, and hitting select and up at the status screen during the game now brings up the “save/continue/retry” menu that normally comes up after death. It doesn’t allow you to save your exact location and basically pause the game, it just saves your progress without chalking up a death. The sound is spot-on. You’ll forget that you paid 20 bucks for another copy of this game when you hear that classic theme. The “ZELDA” name trick does still works to go straight to the 2nd quest. Really the only gripe I got with this game is that it doesn’t come in one of those cool gold cartridges.

So I guess to conclude, I’d say this is the only game out of the current Classic NES Series that I can recommend. It’s the only one still worth 20 bucks almost 20 years after it was first released (Jesus Christ, has it been almost 20 years already?), and it’s it, and that’s that. A game like this is above ratings systems, so I’ll just skip that.