Sega Genesis Mini unboxing

We had Nintendo consoles, and only Nintendo consoles, in the house growing up.  But when I was in late grade school/early middle school I lived on base at Camp Lejeune, and down the street was a good friend who lived in a Sega household.  Inbetween getting up super early to watch ExoSquad and wandering around the woods along the New River, a lot of time was spent playing Sega games.

So, when the Genesis Mini dropped to about $50 a few months back, I thought, why not?

The Mini is a gen-1 replica, and the box reflects that.  There are 40 Genesis and Sega CD games on the console, plus two that weren't released in North America(Darius and Tetris).  There are a few notable absences, such as Sonic&Knuckles and Mortal Kombat.  My understanding of the situation is that the hangup is Michael Jackson-composed music on S&K.




Like the Classic Nintendo consoles, the Mini is small.  Sega had put out a Genesis replica a few years back that was full size, and the net effect was a feeling of cheapness with the extremely light for it's size device.  Taking the Nintendo route of shrinking it to fit the smaller mainboard was smart.

As you can see the included controllers are the three button models rather than the six button ones. In my opinion they feel well built, although my wife's opinion was that they felt cheap.  They also fit better in my hands than the classic Nintendo controllers do, no doubt a reflection of Sega targeting an older demographic back in the day.



The gameplay itself is fantastic.  Sonic, Earthworm Jim, Castle of Illusion, etc. All hold up well,a testament to the quality of those first gen 16-bit games.  One that didn't hold up well was Street Fighter II.  I played this all the time on the SNES growing up, and the speed of the action compared to modern fighting games aged poorly. 

All in all, I think that this is a great little console, just like the Nintendo replicas.  I think that if you are going to be playing games that take advantage of the 6 button function, like street fighter, you should consider getting one of the 6-button controllers from Retro-bit's line. 

Refurbished Treasures: NES and SNES classic unboxings.

I missed it when the NES and SNES Classics, small ROM-boxes produced by Nintendo of their Famicom-platformed consoles, hit the market a few years back.  With a limited run, the systems are difficult to find new-in-box, and for most you have to scour eBay or similar websites.

Well as it turns out Nintendo of America sells refurbs on their website.  I have heard excellent things about their refurbished products, and going into some sort of nostalgia stage I decided to go ahead and order them.  I chose the cheapest shipping option and the arrived from Redmond after about 2 weeks.

The box came with anti-tamper tape

The shipping box came with anti-tamper tape, and had two smaller boxes inside-one for each system.  They were well backed with individual wrapping for all the components.  You'll note that the boxes themselves are just cardboard with stickers on them; you won't find retail packaging with these.

The first thing I noticed after opening the packages is that the consoles themselves are small.  I had known that they were going to be mini-sized, but the included controllers are about the width of the consoles.  My tiny, gnome-like hands hold them just fine.

The NES only comes with one controller.  This is perhaps not as unreasonable as it sounds; the majority of NES games, when they were two player, tended to be sequentially rather than concurrently.  In addition I was surprised to see that the port was not the original controller ports.  For some reason I had thought that they were going to be, even at the point where I was scouring the Internet for a NES Advantage.  The cables are stupid short, something that I hadn't noticed back when I was in middle school and this was in a TV in my bedroom.  Picking up controller for the first time in going on 30 years was shocking; the controller was tiny compared to modern consoles which seem to have older gamer sensibilities in mind.

The SNES uses the same ports as the NES, although those are hidden behind actual faux-SNES controller ports.  I'll be sure to see if I can use a SNES controller on the NES.  Again, the cables are short but the controller feels a lot better.  Could be because I  played it in high school more, and muscle memory is more forgiving.  As with the NES controller, the build quality was high.  These replicate an early SNES controller without the engraved top.

Looking over the consoles and controllers, the quality is astonishing.  It seems as if the Internet Stories about the quality of Nintendo refurbed products are true, if I didn't know they came returned I wouldn't have known they were pre-owned.  I searched for blemishes and scratches and couldn't find any, and the build quality was very high.  I'm a little reminded of Internet Stories were someone orders a blemished firearm from someone like Palmetto and they can't find any visible blemishes.

So far I have to give a big thumbs up to Nintendo of America for their work at their refurbishment center.  I realize it could be that these were returned un-opened, but I gotta wonder if NOA wouldn't have sold them as new if it were the case.