Gadgetory

what's it like to play the Nintendo Entertainment System earlier this year Nintendo launched their online services force which members and as part of that to include the ability of players access to a number of classic NES games at play in one or two players elicits although small but slowly growing and as part of that Nintendo sold these limited NES controllers for the switch when I see eliminated I mean limited you can only buy these from Nintendo's online store and even then you must be subscribed intend to switch online and on top of that it's limit one per customer though you do get them in a pair as you can see right here and the idea here is exactly what you would imagine it's an NES controller that's designed to work for the switch so at face value just looking at the front this is straight up at NES controller design and the only real major differences are well first off it's a little heavier because there's actually wireless tech in here and something a little more advanced than old-school NES controller and the biggest visual difference is what you can see on the top where it actually has the joi comp style railing so you can slot this on the side of the switch so the only reason you would ever need to is to either sync it or to charge it but it does also give you access to an Ellen R button which add a little extra functionality that you need in order to get the most out of using it with your system now with the approach of making these super limited it seems like a Nintendo's leaning much more towards treating these as kind of collector's items rather than actual functional controllers that you just walked down to a store and buy and that makes sense for a lot of reasons I mean it is a cool functional joy comp but it's not exactly fully functional in normal sense for instance you are missing a very large number of buttons you don't have a home one a screen capture you don't have X or Y you're missing basically everything you would need to play anything outside of the simplest of NES retro games which is how Nintendo very heavily marketed but there's actually a couple little surprises about it that you wouldn't expect the biggest being the fact that while Nintendo does say hey this is really only meant for NES games which is partially true because once again not a lot of buttons you actually can use this other switch games it's not necessarily a good idea because you're missing a lot of stuff but there are a small handful of retro style games that only need two or three buttons one of them being a shoulder that you can use this on for instance actually tried this out on towerfall and it is everything you need a shoulder button for dashing a jump button attack button and actually found it to be more comfortable than using a single joique on sideways because while retro controllers aren't exactly the most comfortable designs out there it's still bigger and better than using a tiny little joke on squished up like this now once again this isn't really designed for that and while you can play the game using it the lack of a home button means that if you want to actually exit and switch to another game or do anything beyond actively playing it you need to pick up another controller so it's not really a functional choice if you want to play anything outside of NES games but thankfully Nintendo did address the issues of lack of buttons in that app specifically when using this for the app it's actually intended for the NES system on the switch it actually remaps some of the buttons to where you're able to use it still as a fully functional joy conference since the LNR buttons will now act as a screen capture and a home button and hitting them simultaneously will work the same as using the ZL and Zr buttons on normal joi cons which allows you to access things like saving or loading different save states or of course going back to the game selection menu which is you know kind of important one interesting little addition to that I don't think didn't - no actually officially announced anywhere is the fact that when you're using this controller with the NES app it actually changes the sound effects as well to match up with an old-school Nintendo system as opposed to the more kind of updated switch sound effects simply put this is awesome it's definitely a collector's item as Nintendo's kind of marketing it and how they're limiting all the quantities I don't think it's anything people need to rush out and buy right away because they just want to have an NES tile controller but if you're a collector and you enjoy the concept of playing the retro games on your switch this is a great idea and I think it's a step in the right direction because the Wayne intent has been treating the emulation on the switch so far it could be better and this is I think one of the first ideas that really starts to click and show better attention to that back when they first launched the emulator in the switch one of my big complaints to the fact that it's a really cool idea and it's something that I think fans really want but in 10 it wasn't really treating it the right way I mean yeah it's great that we have some really big name games on there like Leonard of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 3 and I think there's some really cool ideas they've experimented with like adding these special edition modes of them like being able to play Zelda with all the items right away but at the same time it's a really limited library and kind of feels like it's just not quite enough even though it is just a perk to add on top of what should be an online-only service honestly I really think that instead of being just like a perk associated with an interest which online the library of NES games should just be their own separate side perk that you're either buying stuff individually permanently or it's it's own separate subscription with a larger list of games available and having a separately sold controller like this I think ties into that idea so much better because it's not just a situation of oh you signed up for online good job do you also maybe want this controller it goes for this it's like no here is this separate service that's for dedicated retro fans and here is an awesome accessory to pick up for it and I think it just makes a better pitch overall and there really is a market for this I mean even look at other accessories that were made by third-party companies like a pedo they've made a line of different NES controllers that kind of our combination of something that's functionally useful for modern games but features that kind of retro style of these systems and I think this acts as a very strong competitor for that obviously you don't want to use this in games outside of just the NES emulator but if your goal is just capture that old-school retro feeling while playing those old-school games on the switch this does an amazing job of that again I think this is an awesome collector's item I don't necessarily think you need to rush out and buy one if you just want a functional controller for your switch but if you love the retro stuff on the system and you they have high hopes like me like Nintendo's going to shape it up and make it truly live up to its potential this is a great step in the right direction