{"id":775,"date":"2017-09-26T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid"},"modified":"2017-09-26T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T16:00:00","slug":"editorial-the-snes-classic-mini-star-fox-and-downsides-to-being-a-mega-drive-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/09\/26\/editorial-the-snes-classic-mini-star-fox-and-downsides-to-being-a-mega-drive-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: The SNES Classic Mini, Star Fox, and Downsides to Being a Mega Drive Kid"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/1\/original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/1\/original.jpg\" alt=\"SNES Mini.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Late last week I remembered that the SNES Mini was right around the corner, after it had somewhat drifted out of my mind. The past month has been somewhat busy and chaotic on both a personal and professional level, with Nintendo having the audacity to release a system that&#8217;s selling rather well. With the silly season of Autumn \/ Fall and Winter releases there&#8217;s been plenty to think about, and the humble 3DS has had the occasional gem here and there; throw in a Direct etc, and it&#8217;s been a busy time.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;d lost track of the SNES Mini; being based in the UK I&#8217;m fortunate enough to have made a pre-order during the Summer, and when I clocked that its release was imminent it certainly cheered me up. I even held off on a game purchase or two I&#8217;d been planning; like most I only have a specific amount I can spend on games, and those pre-orders need to be paid. Besides, the SNES Mini has new games as far as I&#8217;m concerned, and not just\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/snes\/star_fox_2\">Star Fox 2<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>To quote everyone&#8217;s favourite Metroid game &#8211; confession time&#8230; (stares wistfully out of a window). I&#8217;ve never played\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/snes\/star_fox\">Star Fox<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/0\/original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/0\/original.jpg\" alt=\"Star Fox.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Some longer term and particularly attentive readers may have learnt already of my shameful lack of history with Nintendo &#8211; considering the fact I write about them &#8211; but here&#8217;s a crash course. My first &#8216;gaming&#8217; system was a ZX Spectrum (like a Commodore 64, but British), and then we got a SEGA Mega Drive. I&#8217;d have been about 6 years old when the decision was made, and so my older brother made the call; I&#8217;ve never regretted it to this day. I was a SEGA kid in those 16-bit console wars and loved the Mega Drive \/ Genesis; the original Sonic games, Streets of Rage II, weird games like Gynoug, that was a huge part of my childhood. At one point we got a good PC too, so I grew up with LucasArts titles and Theme Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Some of my colleagues had both a SNES and Mega Drive growing up, but that was never on the cards for me. We had the PC I mentioned, too, and my brother and I were all about building our game collection as well as we could. Gaming was actually expensive back then &#8211; my receipt for\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/megadrive\/sonic_the_hedgehog_3\">Sonic the Hedgehog 3<\/a><\/strong> shows it was \u00a339.99, and that&#8217;s in the early &#8217;90s. I remember we also paid a crazy amount just for the cartridge of\u00a0<strong>Street Fighter 2<\/strong>, it was madness. Throw in PC gaming, and I&#8217;m grateful to my parents for getting us all the games they did.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/2\/original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/2\/original.jpg\" alt=\"Lylat Wars.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Anyway, my first Nintendo system was when my older brother spent the pay from his first proper job on a Nintendo 64, and it was the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/n64\/star_fox_64\"><strong>Star Fox 64<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>bundle (or Lylat Wars, as it was in Europe). That game blew my mind, and its brevity didn&#8217;t bother me because mine had been a childhood obsessed with arcade machines and their stunning games. The 3D visuals were game-changing &#8211; which would only become more the case once I saw\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/n64\/super_mario_64\">Super Mario 64<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/gamecube\/legend_of_zelda_ocarina_of_time\"><strong>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; and even simple things like the Rumble Pak were exciting. I remember we unboxed it, plugged it in and took turns playing through Star Fox 64, over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>That was my first delicious taste of &#8216;owning&#8217; a Nintendo system &#8211; naturally it went with my brother to University a little while later, it was his system after all! I&#8217;d briefly played a SNES in an era gone by at a relative&#8217;s house, but my first extended time with Nintendo hardware was that N64.<\/p>\n<p>It was the Wii Virtual Console that changed everything for me. I spent a lot of money over the system&#8217;s life catching up on classics and not-so-classics from the NES and SNES era. In some ways that obsession with the Virtual Console is what turned me from being a Wii and DS fan into being a &#8216;Nintendo&#8217; fan, to the point that I now write about them every day. I played dozens of 8- and 16-bit games through the Wii, wonky emulation and all, and that&#8217;s where my first taste came from. The 3DS and Wii U followed, and on the portable I played catch-up with quite a lot of Game Boy games. I was basically filling in my childhood from an alternate universe, one where we picked up a NES (though their distribution was minimal in my part of the UK) and a SNES instead of a Mega Drive.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/3\/original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/09\/editorial_the_snes_classic_mini_star_fox_and_downsides_to_being_a_mega_drive_kid\/attachment\/3\/original.jpg\" alt=\"Star Fox 2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>So when my SNES Mini arrives Star Fox will be the first game I play, <em>at last<\/em>. I&#8217;m a fan of the series, driven by a love for the N64 game and the excellent 3DS re-release, and I&#8217;ll finally get to see where it all started. Due to limits in space \/ time \/ money I&#8217;ve never retrospectively picked up a SNES or the game, and in gatherings with a clone system or actual SNES it never got booted up. And, of course, it never came to the Virtual Console, which would have been my route in.<\/p>\n<p>I know of it, though, its legend. I&#8217;ve watched the videos, I get the comedic references, I&#8217;m aware of how fantastic the music is, I&#8217;ve read about it. To me it&#8217;ll be essentially a new game that I&#8217;ve waited on for a couple of decades, that gem that should have been on the Virtual Console but never made it. The same buzz many felt when\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/snes\/earthbound\"><strong>EarthBound<\/strong><\/a> finally arrived will be my Star Fox, actually &#8211; admittedly, that&#8217;s a sad lament of a Mega Drive kid.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-youtube\">\n<div class=\"youtube\">[embedded content] <\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>And then I&#8217;ll play the sequel, to see whether it was a great game cruelly cut at the last minute or a flawed one that should have been left in the ROM recesses of the internet. Yes, I&#8217;m aware that I could have played both Star Fox games through emulators and ROMs long before now, but I never owned them so I never thought of doing that. Whether I&#8217;m an idealist or a na\u00efve fool is up to you.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I&#8217;ll just be playing &#8216;official&#8217; ROMs on the SNES, as I was on the Virtual Console, but that&#8217;s fine. I&#8217;ll probably even have to sit close to the TV because the controllers are wired and limited to a few feet. I may be a 30-something gamer now, positively ancient in the world of the internet, but it&#8217;ll be another chance to see what I missed out on in the early &#8217;90s.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t regret being a SEGA kid, but I know that being a Nintendo kid would have been equally awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late last week I remembered that the SNES Mini was right around the corner, after it had somewhat drifted out of my mind. The past month has been somewhat busy and chaotic on both a personal and professional level, with Nintendo having the audacity to release a system that&#8217;s selling rather well. With the silly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}