Reggie Fils-Aimé has revealed the true origin of Nintendo's retro consoles. According to the former president of Nintendo of America, the NES Classic Mini and SNES Classic Mini were not born from nostalgia, but from an urgent need. The company needed a product that would generate sales at Christmas while the Wii U was struggling in the market. The NES Classic arrived in 2016 as a temporary lifeline.
Limited emulation and recycled hardware to save the season 🎮
Internally, the development was a low-budget operation. Nintendo took a low-end ARM chip and combined it with a proprietary emulator to run classic games. The NES Classic used the Allwinner R16 SoC, similar to those in cheap tablets, while the SNES Classic opted for an Allwinner R40. Both systems limited output to 720p and offered basic CRT filters. There was no technical innovation; just a quick fix to generate revenue from an old catalog.
The Christmas where a little plastic box saved Nintendo 🎄
It's curious that Nintendo's biggest Christmas success in 2016 was a console that couldn't play anything new. While the Wii U gathered dust in stores, the NES Classic sold out in minutes. Parents bought their kids a little box with 30 games from 1985, and the kids were blown away by 8-bit graphics. Nintendo learned its lesson: when you don't know what to sell, you can always sell the past. And it worked.