This $499 aluminum NES is the NES of your dreams!

You will soon be able to purchase a new NES built to original spec, with a few extras.

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I still have my NES. About 15 years ago I sold all my video game items to GameStop for a store credit so that I could buy a used PS2. I bought the PS2 with Rygar, Ratchet and Clank, and some other game that escapes me.

Boy, that was a big mistake. I’m not saying buying the PS2 was a mistake, but trading all of my old stuff in for a used console, which broke shortly thereafter, was a mistake. I’m talking my Nintendo 64, SNES, Gameboy Advance, Genesis, Game Gear, all the games, and a few other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. All of them. It was the biggest credit that GameStop had ever had at that time at that location. It was over $400 of store credit if that tells you anything.

I kept three things from my collection on that day: A Link to the Past for SNES, Tetris for NES, and my NES itself. The NES I refused to sell. There was no way I was going to sell something that brought me so many hours of enjoyment as a kid. The console is a piece of gaming history. It’s responsible for bringing console gaming into the mainstream and making characters like Mario, Sonic, and Crash Bandicoot a household name. I couldn’t let it go. So I kept it, tucked away in a box until a day arrived in which I required it. There it sat, through multiple moves, in multiple locations, until that day came.

My son, age 5, had become interested in games. He’d been playing games on tablets and phones for a while, but it was time for him to check out what real gaming was like. Out came the NES. We hooked the almost thirty year old console up to the newfangled LCD TV and powered it up. The console, of course, brought up a flashing screen with the power light flashing in unison. My son looked at me inquisitively. “What is this?” he was surely thinking. So naturally, I turned off the console, took the game out and performed the ritual every one of us has hundreds of times: I blew into the cartridge. Upon resetting the system we were greeted to the familiar Tetris screen and off he went.

The thing is, the system boards in these old consoles can start to go bad. Contacts can degrade and get dirty, and your once bulletproof console can start to malfunction. That’s what happened to mine. The graphics started glitching, sprites would disappear and reappear, and the game became largely unplayable. After putting up with it for an hour or so, we put the system back into the box from whence it came and put it back in the closet, unsure of when it would ever come back.

I’m sure you feel my pain. You can dissemble to console to clean it, new system boards can be bought, but there’s also another option.

Analougue Interactive has started building an aluminum NES, the Analogue Nt, built to original spec, using the identical CPU and PPU as the original. It’s capable of playing all NES and Famicom games in their original conditions while simultaneously offering newer features like HDMI output, high fidelity sound, and four player support out of the box. Scanlines can even be added to recreate the feel if you decide to connect through HDMI.

The console can be ordered in multiple anodized colors and Analogue is selling OEM controllers they claim are brand new. It’s a bit steep at $499, you can be sure you’ve got a system capable of playing all your favorites trustfully. Of course, you could always buy a RetroN 5 or just fire up an emulator, but that’s not what this is about. This is about reliving the glory days of NES gaming all over again. The Nt is available for pre-order now.

Source: Analougue Interactive

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