Analogue Super Nt
It’s time for Nintendo’s Classic Mini consoles to make way for a full-on revival of your old Super Nintendo game cartridges
From US$189.99 ($248.23) analogue.co
The Analgoue Super Nt is a retro gaming console that’s a little different to Nintendo’s mini recreations of the NES and SNES. Rather than repackaging a small selection of classic games, the Analogue Super Nt imitates the original hardware right down to the inclusion of a cartridge slot, enabling you to plug in your favourite old games.
You can even re-use your old controllers because it has the same ports for them. No controller is supplied here though, and you can’t just substitute a USB model. If you need a controller, Analogue recommends 8bitdo’s controllers ( 8bitdo.com). We tested its wireless version, which worked a treat and feels like the real thing, with added modern convenience.
The console’s menu is opened with a special button combo, and many settings can be altered mid-game. A little tinkering might be necessary to find the best settings for your TV; get them wrong and you might notice some tearing on repeating background graphics and some distortion on character sprites. We noticed this, but it was easy to get rid of them.
If your retro gaming interest doesn’t extend to hardware maintenance, you might find the battery in some game carts that saves progress may be dead. Sadly there’s no provision for manually saving progress and reloading it when you want to continue – that would have been the moustache on the Mario cake.
One feature is unmistakably modern: HDMI output. Even if your TV supports other, older connections, going digital makes old games look incredibly vivid. Super Nt has a bunch of resolution and scaling options to play with, plus a scanlines filter to imitate the appearance of a CRT TV. We preferred that switched off, but as always, it’s really down to personal preferences.
We encountered no compatibility or stability issues, but that’s not to say Super Nt’s mimicry is perfect. Issues with some games have been fixed already through firmware updates – installed via the SD card slot – and added new features, notably a tool for entering cheat codes.