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Tech

What Is This, a Famicom for Ants?

Nintendo's upcoming "mini" Famicon nostalgia console for Japan has ridiculously tiny controller to match 1983 design.
Image: Nintendo.

Smaller isn't always better when it comes to tech. At some point operability suffers when devices get too small, and in line with that trend smartphone screens grew larger even as their guts became more complex.

Nintendo, though, has other ideas. It's releasing an adorable "mini" version of its 1983 Family Computer (or "Famicom") gaming system in November for the Japanese market alone, which would be great and all if the controllers didn't look as though they were meant for grade-school Lilliputians or Marco Rubio's idea of Donald Trump. As seen in the announcement video, they're tiny. The model looks as though he or she's holding a business card meant to look like a classic gamepad, and revealingly, we never actually see it used to play games. It's clearly meant to make the so-called Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer jive with the original's design, which came with docks for two controllers on either side of the main box, but it's also a case where taking a few liberties might have been justified.

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It just can't be that fun to play, particularly if you're a Westerner who plans to import it just so you can one-up your friends who bought the similar diminutive $60

Nintendo Classic Edition

that's due for our shores on November 11. The original NES had no such docks, though, and thus the controllers for the NES Classic remain comfortably full-size. They're almost as big as the Mini NES box itself, and perfect for the paws of the nostalgia-drunk 30-somethings who're probably most interested in this.

But our version isn't without strange truncations as well. Nintendo apparently opted to make the cords for the Nintendo Classic Edition's controllers a mere three feet long, much

to the despair

of

USGamer

writer Bob Mackey. Mackey had high praise, though, for the actual emulation, which "appears to be the same as what's found on the Wii, and thankfully, not the Wii U."

If you're a die-hard collector, the Famicom version might be worth picking up if only because its built-in 30 games differ slightly from the 30 coming to the NES Classic. There's River City Ransom, for instance (one of my personal childhood favorites), and Final Fantasy III. Of course, you'll have to be able read Japanese to play them, which is certainly no small feat in itself.

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