SNES Returns

When Nintendo announced the mini Super Nintendo in 2017, priced around €80, it felt inevitable. This was always going to happen. A tiny plastic box full of games I hadn’t thought about in years but also thought about constantly.

The SNES was the first console that made me understand what it meant to actually care about hardware. Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi’s Island, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past—I’d sit there for hours, not because I was trying to beat them, but because I didn’t want to do anything else. That’s hard to explain. There’s something about that combination of games and the moment in gaming history when everything felt open and possible.

A mini SNES sitting on a shelf feels like a consolation prize for the version of myself who had infinite time. I know it won’t feel the same when I plug it in. I know I’ll play for twenty minutes, feel the weight of trying to recapture something, and then stop. But I’ll buy it anyway, because not having it means accepting that thing is really gone.

The question is what games they’ll load on it. If they’re smart, they pack the actual classics—not just the obvious Nintendo stuff, but the Square games, the Capcom games, the Konami and Rare games that made the SNES what it was. Probably they won’t. Probably it’s designed specifically for people like me, the one impulse buy in an otherwise adult life.

I’ll get one anyway.