A Final Farewell to the Mini-Console

A Final Farewell to the Mini-Console

Much like their physical footprint, the NES Classic Edition and its ilk had only a small time on this earth.

Once, they ruled the earth like tiny gods. Mini consoles! For a hot minute of history, the world found itself obsessed with miniature replicas of classic game systems, each one crammed with their favorite games. But today? Today they’re a vanished breed, and the best you can hope for is to find new old stock of a gadget from nearly a decade ago sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere.

The internet collectively remembered that those things existed a couple of weeks ago, which kicked off a brief conversation asking, "Whatever happened to mini consoles?” The definitive answer to which arrived over the weekend, when former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé stated that the NES and Super NES Classic Edition systems only happened because Wii U flopped and they needed something to boost holiday sales in 2017 and ’18. By the time the Super NES Classic Edition arrived, though, the Switch had become one of the strongest sellers in Nintendo history and the corporate bottom line had ceased its Wii U-inflicted sagging. Nintendo never made a Game Boy or Nintendo 64 Classic Edition because, well, they didn’t need to.

Ah... memories 🥲

Those systems did stick around long enough to spark a brief fad as other companies with possession of a console IP perked up and said, “Ooh, us too!” Some of those efforts turned out even better than Nintendo’s! Sega and Konami both tapped the retro maniacs at M2 to create their Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 mini systems, and they poured a ridiculous amount of love into those machines, e.g. dredging up and refining a lost Tetris game and creating screen filters to allow you to experience the cataract-like visual sensation of playing a TurboExpress handheld system on an HD screen. We even got in on the action here at Limited Run, distributing Sega’s <A HREF=“”>Astro City Mini and Mini V mini-arcade cabinets in the U.S.

But then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the mini console movement dried up. And not just because Nintendo bailed on the venture. The reality is that the market had more or less become tapped out. The NES and Super NES Classic Edition hit big for a few reasons, all of which added up to an ephemeral moment in time. People were hungry for great Nintendo experiences, which they couldn’t find on Wii U. The Nintendo Classic Editions had great interfaces, software selections, and emulation, which made them feel like a “next generation” version of earlier mini-systems like Atari Flashback. They also had a great novelty factor: you loved the NES, now here is an NES that is extremely small, plus it has the best games on it and plugs into a modern TV!

Nintendo and (Doug) Bowser team up to drive a nail into the mini console coffin at the Switch launch event in NYC, 2017.

More than that, though, once Nintendo had checked NES and Super NES off its list, everything else would have been diminishing returns. The only classic pre-Wii Nintendo system that had seen international success on par with NES and Super NES was Game Boy... and, as we saw with Sega’s Game Gear Micros, miniaturizing a handheld system results in a device that’s literally too tiny to use. But, realistically, what other mini consoles (besides Game Boy and maybe N64) could have worked as a mass-market gadget without getting into costly and complex emulation of 21st Century systems? There was only one generation of TurboGrafx-16 hardware, which M2 and Konami aced; Genesis was the only Sega console that managed to be a hit in more than a single region; and Sony massively dropped the ball with its PlayStation mini and ran any potential goodwill on that front right through the shredder. Plus, as we saw with the Astro City Mini line, once you power through the mainstream names that have broad appeal, you’re left focusing on hardcore communities like shooter fans—and niche communities are a hard sell on top of being a small subset of the overall market.

It probably bears mentioning here that multipurpose devices that only run (shall we say) unofficially obtained software took off in a big way shortly after the mini consoles became popular. There was no small amount of mini console hacking back in the day, allowing people to load their own ROMs onto Nintendo and Sega’s machines... but MiSTer and RetroPi are built entirely for that purpose, require no hacking, and can run games for dozens of classic machines. Meanwhile, the mini consoles often sold out and required a bit of a chase to acquire. As history has proven time and again, when piracy is easier than legitimate ownership, people are happy to hoist the Jolly Roger.

So. Will we ever see mini consoles again? It seems unlikely. If nothing else, the rising cost of basic electronic components mean that a new mini console would sell for twice as much as the NES Classic Edition, pushing it well out of the impulse-purchase range. Plus, ultimately, only Nintendo had true, repeated, large-scale success with their mini endeavor, and they’ve moved along to Nintendo Switch Online subscriptions for their retro game distribution efforts. Now they can charge you monthly for access to the same games you only paid once to play on NES Classic Edition.

Behold, I live! Sort of.

Which is not a criticism of Nintendo Switch Online, per se. It did at least give us perhaps the final iteration of the mini-console in its Virtual Boy service. A retro gaming setup that requires you to wear a head-mounted Switch 2 inside of a Virtual Boy helmet? God bless ’em. If we can’t feast on a new mini console in the year 2026, at least we got to enjoy a little serving of classic Chaotic Weird Nintendo for dessert.