PDA

View Full Version : Nintendo SNES Mini



Harrison
29th December 2018, 08:52
Finally got one of these for Christmas and it's great little system. I know you can emulate SNES really easily on just about anything these days, but there is something about having a mini SNES with real controllers from the real company.

And yes you can build a similar setup for less with a Pi and clone case, but Nintendo have done an excellent job with the interface and emulation. My SNES Mini was picked up for £69 from Currys. I love the fact they haven't just included the features of the original game carts with their save slots in game, but also included savestates. Plus you can change the display settings to emulate scanlines or pixel prefect.

Only annoying thing is it doesn't come with a power supply. It's USB powered, needing a supply that provides 5V 2A. This is a pretty standard power requirement for most usb powered systems these days. My smartphone adapter can run this, but luckily when I upgraded the electrics in my house last year I included a load of wall sockets with built in usb sockets that can supply 5v 3.1a and it works perfectly with the SNES Mini, so no power adapters! If you do consider getting some usb wall sockets make sure you get ones that supply 3.1A or higher. The cheapest ones only apply 1.5A and are not powerful enjoy to charge modern smartphones or run devices like this.

The only negative is how addictive Nintendo games are! After connecting it up I decided to have a quick go at some of the 21 games included. Problem is I started Zelda and got hooked again. Suddenly realised it was 2am last night and I had obtained all the little extras I could to that point such as extra heart pieces, Ice rod etc and already have one pendant and at the entrance to get the next one. Great game I'm going to have to complete again now. Lol.

Next week I'm going to hack it and add some more SNES games, plus put the emulation layer on and then add some NES, Megadrive, NeoGeo etc games. I might add some N64 games, but only 6 are currently reported to be fully working. Emulation layers are being worked on so it might improve, but I'm not that fussed about anything newer than 16bit for this little system. It can managed to emulate up to PSP and PS1. Will also be expanding the storage by storing all the roms on a usb stick. Great fun.

Harrison
4th January 2019, 23:18
Why did I ask for a SNES Mini for Christmas? Now I'm addicted again and can't stop playing!!! Lol. Still my favourite 16bit console.

Already half way through Zelda and loving it. Still think it's the best Zelda in the series. Have collected all 3 pendants and the master sword and am in the dark world rescuing maidens in destress. Doesn't seem quite as hard as I remember, but I'm still going to finish it again with all items found and areas discovered.

Discovered my wife had never played Super Mario Kart! I KNOW! Was she living under a rock? I'm sure I'd played it with her before. Anyway she wanted a game, but then gave up and quit 5 minutes later saying the game was impossible to play as the controls were hard to work out. What? Said the steering was too sensitive and she never made it round the first corner! Lol :rolleyes:

Tom said he wanted to try. Bear in mind he's only 6 and never really played a video game other then a couple of early arcade games such as Space Invaders and Pacman on my arcade cab. I discovered he also couldn't get the hang of it and couldn't get past the first corner! What's going on!! Shamed. We made the decision to keep him away from gaming mostly until he was interested himself so he would become interested in other things, and it has worked. He hardly ever sits starring at a screen, which is what we wanted. He would rather grab some paper and do some artwork or writing, build some lego etc.. great. But also embarrassing he can't pick up a video game! Lol. It seemed more a hand to eye coordination and multitasking issue. Couldn't steer and accelerate at the same time. Oh dear. Need to start intensive game training!