135 quids for 30 NES games... Wow, what a scam.

I'd laugh if it was just a raspberry pi inside. Wait, that has more functionality, I forgot.

You know that Stuart is about to make a serious point when his thumb and index finger touch.

Just say "Nintendo NES System" so everyone's angry.

My grandmother had a NES which I'd play Ice Climber on. That was about 15 years ago though, and the NES has seemed to have gone missing. Also, my grandmother is dead.

I distinctly remember Star Wars for NES being £10 more expensive than the actual console. Electronics Boutique were selling the console for £39.99 and Star Wars was £49.99... insane!

The reason it's in short supply in the UK, is that Nintendo have made approximately 4 of these for worldwide distribution. This is what Nintendo does. It is intentional.

*holds a Nintendo controller* "It's exactly the same as the old Nintendo one!"

Who else would watch an Ashen's let's play channel? I mean... yeah... I know how immediately concerning that sounds but I think it'd work pretty alright. I'd watch it.

Maybe it's designed with the USB so you can run it off the TV's USB ports, like a Chromecast!

Can't wait for the NES Mini XL.

The reason why younger people in the UK think everyone had a NES in the 80s is because The English speaking internet is overrun by Americans, and the NES in the USA was MASSIVELY popular. In the UK it was all about home computers. The Commodore Amiga and DOS were the most popular gaming platforms at one point. As for this little box - even for £50 it's a rip-off. My sister actually had a NES in the late 80s so it IS nice for her casual nostalgia gubbons but anyone with any shred of sense will use their laptop, or buy a cheap netbook, shove every emulator in existence on there and buy some USB joy pads. I have a NES, SNES and N64 controller that I connect to my laptop. Got an offbrand USB PS3 controller I can use for PS1 games too.

probably a raspberry pi hot glued in there

The NES mini uses roms on a version of Linux, so it's only a matter of time before it's hacked to allow "backup" games on a USB. The Famicom Mini already was hacked a month ago, but the hack doesn't actually allow you to import games yet.

I had a NES. This is the first I’ve heard about it not being popular in the UK. Now I feel special!

Ahh, nostalgia. Despite living in the UK, I actually did grow up with an original NES (my nan had one for whatever reason) and I can confirm it had both mario 3 and ninja turtles. I stunk at both. But, first console, and I still love the thing 13 years and a handful of replaced parts later despite it not getting too much use anymore.

Speaking of virtual console, why the hell aren't my purchases cross buy.

A scalper's wet dream, this

So thankful that i got to experience these old relics. I was born in 95 and luckily had friends with pass-down consoles and handhelds. This also prompted the collecting of later handhelds and consoles. The memories are as clear as day. Great content as always ashens.

As a 37 year old who grew up in the UK, the NES was a HUGE part of my childhood. My friends had them too and it brings back a lot of memories indeed, I might have been part of a niche but at the time it certainly didn’t feel like it.

So glad to hear you speaking about how the NES wasn't a big thing over here. That's something that I've spoken on in the past, coz so many people were like "How can you not love the NES?" Meh. I was still playing my Electron when the NES came out, and when I saw one, it was demoing Donkey Kong, and that had been the bundled game for the Colecovision, some years earlier. I just looked at it and thought "Seriously?"

doesn't the ouya have more nes games?

What honks my chuff needs to be a weekly segment.

His notes about why the NES didn't sell well in the UK really opened my eyes as to why my Australian parents got an Amiga instead of any console, until I showed up of course

Who here actually owns a real Nes rather than this?

I know people like their nostalgia but it's stupid that they didn't update the controller to have all the features the Classic controller could utilize. It's the stupid Gamecube Controller in Smash 4 all over again.

I love Brits who calls a TV for "telly". Always warms my heart.

I grew up with the C64 and then the Amiga. I remember my friends raving about the NES and other consoles and the quality of games on the Commodores was far better. I count myself lucky.

I want a SNES classic, that's where I started gaming. EDIT: FUCK ME IT'S REAL AND ALREADY SOLD OUT FML

125 pounds? JUST INSTALL FUCKING EMULATORS ON YOUR PC AND GO NUTS. *For fuck's sake*.

Well said on the whole thing about how tiny the market for the NES was in the UK. The whole rewriting of history really grinds my gears. As you say you only need to look at the sales charts to see insignificant it was. Nobody gave a damn about Nintendo until the press started writing about the new and mythical Super Famicom being released in Japan and import units turning up and being reviewed. There was of course the Turtles pack for Christmas 1990, but frankly any serious gamer would have shelled out (see what I did there) a few more quid for the newly arrived Megadrive.

And to think sometime around 2004 or 2005 I saw a stack of original NES machines (all reputedly working) at this flea market mini mall and probably could have negotiated a nice price for the lot and all I thought at the time was "who'd want these?"

Take a stuffed animal, dip it in a mixed bucket of glue and confetti and you have a Hatchimal! Make your's today!

just get an emulator

Ashens, the purveyor of sad onions and singing caterpillars, has once again spoken of the very things that cross my mind as a British gamer from the 80's onwards.

I thought this was pretty cool until I found out about the raspberry pi 3 kit. :/

Does Nintendo of Europe have a fear of Power Adapters or something? Why do they never have them?

These things would have been pretty awesome if they just were a cheap way to access the nintendo store without buying a full blown Wii/WiiU. buy it from the shop, comes with enough nintendo points on it to buy 30 nintendo games or whatever other games you might want from the store. then you could buy more to put on it with your own cash too, give it say an 8gb or 16gb of internal memory and it'd be on my christmas list. as it is I'm just gonna get a raspberry pi and find someone to 3d print me a scaled down nes to make my own at some point.

What is it with Nintendo releasing Products w/o AC Adapters ¿¿

CRT mode is actually important for some of the games because of a graphical design technique known as "subpixel shading" that only works in a slightly blurred scanning display. Megaman 2 uses that technique quite a lot. Without the CRT mode, stuff that's supposed to be relatively detailed looks like an indistinguishable mess of pixels without the blur and scanlines.

In 1988 I was the only kid in my school that had a NES or even wanted one.

give it to big clive to take it apart. i bet theres hardly anything inside.

I'm from the UK, and I had an NES back in the day. Loved it.

Both my cousin and a friend of mine has an NES, I remember borrowing my cousin's one for at least one weekend. Didn't realise they weren't all that big here. Most people I knew had Spectrums, Amstrads etc. I tried pirating Spectrum games with a double recorder myself. Never worked. We also had a SNES at one point too, but since I had no friends I have no idea how many others had one.

what a crap. a totally overpriced but low quality android unit with just one emulator. better buy a raspberry pi 3 with retropie.

"Learn" Pfft. Nintendo has always done that shit. Don't forget, that they made toys well before the nes.

It did go back in stock in 2017 and remained as shelf warmers (believe it or not) until i think 2019 when nintendo said they'll stop producing classics altogether. So i was wise enough to get it during the full restock. And then people as you said, realized they didn't want it and was just a nostalgia thing. Hince the whole shelf warmer thing. And now in the aftermarket. They're at least 75 usd with the system and controller alone.

Oddly enough, it looks like the CRT filter is different on this version from the US version. This one has that weird shimmy that just looks bad, but the US version actually looks pretty true to life. Is this some sort of NTSC/PAL thing? Haha

I love your videos man! You're a big inspiration

15 years ago, I purchased a knock-off version of one of these things at the mall for $30, but it had over 100 games on board, and the hardware was entirely inside of the controller. But today (even though I also have a collection of original NES cartridges that numbers in the hundreds) FCE on the original Xbox remains the best way to play. Nintendo: stop selling us the same products again and again- especially when they are inferior by our present technological standards. This is just a holiday gimmick that takes advantage of the less tech-savvy.

As it happens I have a CRT telly (and an Atari 2600) from my mother. After making a not so great serial terminal that connects via composite video, I can also agree a CRT is nowhere near as messy as the filter.

I always liked the term "Joypad". It really demonstrated a time gamers were having joy lol.

Thank you for setting people straight. It's only Americans that love the anus off of Nintendo, especially the NES, also very important to note that the "console crash" of the 80's was a solely American thing, did not affect Europe or Japan. In fact in the UK the industry thrived with the the very systems you mentioned. I also feel we were more spoilt for choice. C64, Micro, Spectrum, then the Amiga, Megadrive, Snes, Master System. All I know about the states was they had the NES LOL

This is 200 bucks with limited games. There's a sega one with 80 games for 30 bucks at family dollar. Let that sink in.

Gaming on computers was a thing in the USA and UK, so the first Japanese consoles didn't generally perform that well, it wasn't until some years later that they finally took over the market in western countries. Over in Japan itself they were never huge into gaming on computers, instead the Japanese used arcade machines before home consoles were developed, the home console was developed as basically a home arcade machine in theory, to connect to your TV etc. So consoles have a long history in Japan, I think it wasn't until around N64 and the first Playstation that the western PC gaming market truly was beheaded, the N64 and PS1 truly sold all over the place in the western market. I was a child here in Australia when the PS1 and N64 came out, and truly they dominated the entire gaming market pretty much. Prior to these however, it was common to play some games on the computer, and those computer games were pretty bad to be honest.

I had an Amiga 500+ growing up (lays down with his memories)

Why hello there, Ouya 2.0!

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in Sweden the NES was the shit. Everyone had a NES at home, except for the dtrange kids with a sega. Everyone lend each other games to a point where "bye mum, im going out to lend dome games" was a common phrase heard in our house. We had computers and the other systems as well, so I wonder why the NES did so poorly on the UK compared to here... Marketing maybe?

Everyone mentioning that you can have emulators with more capabilities seems to forget about two things: 1) Emulation with downloadable roms is a piracy 2) Not even one emulator, not to mention chinese NES knockoffs, has the same colors and general feel as the original Nintendo. NES mini was created with a maximum care to give the user the same experience as the original, which no emulator can give you (different colors, graphics, sound).

I appreciate the rant at the end. I was in the Vans store recently cause they did NES themed shoes and I was trying some on and I said 'I swear this console wasn't a thing in the UK' and she's like 'yeah it definitely was I remember I used to play the SNES all the time'... yeah wrong bloody system love.

I love watching ashens review Nintendo products.

"hdame" sounds like how Mario would say hdmi

It was nostalgic for me as an '86 baby. I still remember my brother and I, putting together our Christmas and Birthday monies just to buy SMB3, and it was in fact the price you are saying to buy this for! Definitely more expensive than cassette. I do miss the gaming booths..

Even back when the NES was first out (US), I called them control pads, though usually just controllers. I don't have any of my old NES game instructions nearby, but I'm pretty sure the term used in them, at least in the US, was control pad. The term "Joy-pad" is probably a UK or rest of the world thing. In the US at least where I grew up, the only control device that had "Joy" in the name, were Joysticks for PC or games in arcades.

Cant you get the actual console for cheaper than £125?

You always make me laugh. I love your dry humour. keep on doing what you're doing with your HDME.

My mum had a nes in the 80s, She also got a snes in the 90s, I am into retro games a lot (Especially nintendo) My father had an acorn electron which i recently bought, I own all of nintendos consoles (Including modern, game & watch and the super rare pokemon mini) i just wanted to say because ashens said "Kids think this is what we were playing in the 80s" Well of course you weren't playing nes mini in the 80s or the nes since it was released in 89 (in uk)

I ended up ordering a D99 famiclone off aliexpress with a 400in1 cart for half the price because i couldn't get the real thing.

I feel like the NES Mini was meant to be a desktop toy or gadget because the wires are really short and so you could press reset easily

Considering most modern TVs, it doesn't really need a separate power adapter, it runs off fine if you just plug it to the TV's USB connector.

The flap not opening is probably the most OCD triggering thing ever

I have the original (which I have had since 1990) with an Everdrive cartridge. Beats this thing for sure.

Having extra HDMI cables around is nice because they're often overpriced, even in this day and age.

In Spain, I never saw a NES until 1990. Not kidding. And only 1 kid in my whole schoolyear owned one. I saw a Megadrive before I saw a NES, and yeah, we all onwed Speccys or Amstrad CPCs or C64s. Few Amigas or STs because they were expensive and we were poor. We were the very last nation in western Europe to drop the 8bits and move to 16 bits (around late 1990 to 1991) and at that point, most people moved to PCs because a 286 with VGa and a Sound Blaster would wipe the floor with any Amiga AND you could use it for school other than just games, so you could convince your parents to make the HUGE investment it implied, which you couldn't for just yet another gaming computer when you already had an 8-bit with pirated games.

Kind of a shame it's not expandable. I thought that was gonna be one marketing strategy, to offer some sort of exclusive pack later on where it can hold another 30 games for a fraction of the price. Or at least the system can only hold so many games at a time and you can swap out games for another to make a customizable NES mini. I think that would be a cool idea. Being able to have a unique NES mini.

There are listings on eBay UK for one of these with prices in the hundreds. I kid you not. Absolutely ridiculous, people willing to pay those prices need a good slap. Nintendo messed up the supply and demand ratio. Wonder if they'll get it right with the SNES Mini.

I'm happy that my modded Xbox classic can run nes games up to 1080i or 720p,with video filters and everything, and I only paid 15 dollars for it.

Something that honks my chuff, omg I almost spat out my coffee 😂

I got mine (playing it now) got it Christmas 2018 btw. As an Xmas gift from my grandparents 2 hours after I got a PlayStation classic off my mum&dad lol

What did you do to Larry Bundy Jr!?

Hi, I don't know what to comment but I just wanted to comment, I love your channel. Hi.

I too, do not remember that consoles were a thing, back in the 80's. I was 4 years of age in 1980, and 9 in 1985, and by the time the 80's were comming to an end. I heard about the first familiy in my city (15000 residents), that had a NES box. All through the 80's, most people had Commodore computers, a few people had PC's and only a really small number of people had Apple systems. I only know of 2 households through the entire 80's, that had Apple systems. The home market in Denmark, were most of all C64's in the mid 80's, and from 1987/88 to 1991, it was all Amiga-500's. From 1995, it was all about PC. They tried to sell NES systems though, and there were allways one avaliable in the toyshop, turned on that you could play on. It stood in between barbie and lego. Imagine that... NES thought about, not as something serious, though being thought of as a toy. Ranked the same as Lego and Barbie.

My girl got one delivered to her randomly. We waited a few days in case someone came to claim it but nobody did (not yet any way). I set it up a few nights ago and it's definitely kinda okay. The wires are a bit short but it was almost reminiscent of sitting on the floor, cross-legged in front of the TV. Solid assortment of classic games. Real easy to use. Wouldn't pay 50 quid for it but, since I didn't, I can't complain.

I love the history lesson he gives at 15:00, it just shows overall how incompetent Nintendo was at the time and still are. I mean one of the reason it sold so well in the U.S was because Atari fell and Nintendo jumped in to replace them after the North American game market crash. I think Nintendo at the time may have just assumed that outside of the Japanese Market the rest of the world didn't have gaming or something.

How do you lose to Glass Joe?

OMG! YOU GOT A NES MINI!? You must have travelled every realm in the universe to get that! 😯

I live in the UK and I had one, although it was much later on. I got it for Xmas 1989

He's the angry, Nintendo, nerd.

RIP nes classic discontinued now 😞

Ashens needs to do a guest article for 'Retro Gamer magazine' talking about how the NES didn't do so well in the UK in the 80's.

I bought a Atari flashback 8 gold series with wireless controllers it's awesome it comes with paddles also. 95 bucks. I love it

That cord length really honks my chuff

You can hack the system to get more games

i love that the only footage from punch out was him getting knocked out by glass joe lol

Can't speak for anyone else, but I remember the NES being huge in my European country. I never personally owned one, but fondly remember playing the NES at friend's houses.

Who wants Ashens to review one of the bootlegs

what is it with nintendo these days and not adding chargers and plugs

I read somewhere that the reason the controller cable is so short is because it's literally just a Wii Classic Controller in an NES Controller case, and the Wii Classic Controller just used to plug into the Wiimote, hence why the cable is so short.

Haven't watched Ashens in a long time (like 6 years) and I am glad to say nothing has changed, it is exactly like I remembered it.

Neat device, but at the end of the day, it's just an emulator in a box that you can't add more games to...... fore a shit ton of money. I'd rather just buy a cheap preowned netbook, and a usb NES controller. Download Retroarch, and the entire NES rom set, and run it to a tv via HDMI. You'd have something 10x better for a lot cheaper. Not to mention it could play a LOT more than just NES.