There's Another HDMI-Ready Famicom On The Way This Year

Where can I order this to be delivered to Ireland?

Those controller cords look short too.

It's also more expensive at roughly €70. But then you do get an extra controller and AV output.

This is the best one simply because it comes with the best version of the NES/Famicom controllers. Seriously these were so much more comfortable than the boxy other controllers.

They should call them "figure 8" controllers, then the 2 of them side by side would represent the 88 games. Never let a marketing opportunity pass you by.

So, just what are those 88 game, real games or clone stuff?

I wonder how 8-bit games look in a VR headset or on a 4k tv? This is a very weird gaming holiday, the past, present and future of gaming all being promoted at the same time.

I'll pass on this one ! ... I'll wait for Nintendo to release the MINI SNES I mean ofc they will do it some time soon with built in games !

@rjejr uhh "88" has some not so great connotations...

...please bring a NES 2 version to the rest of the planet...

Gotta know what's under the hood. I can't imagine it being a FPGA sice it's so cheap. Probably still emulation similar to the Retron.

Off the subject, we bought one of the "plug & play" genesis systems but we took it back the next day. The controllers were poor quality in my opinion.

@foodmetaphors Did not know that. People in Japan must not care though, they put 88 games on this thing.

Ah, Japanese do seem to like 88.

http://www.walkjapan.com/tour/shikoku-88-temple-pilgrimage/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/japan-choosing-88-animation-travel-064602187.html

Maybe they purposely picked 88 games?

Wouldn't the pixelated format and stilted animations of the NES tend to look better with RGB or even S-video settings than HD? Even in that sample character image shown, the character on the left clearly looks like a smoother, cleaner image, it's just being purposely dulled/darkened to make it seem less appealing. It's a lot easier to see this in action when you alternate between the two settings in an emulator. Proper RGB or S-video settings look as bright and colorful as that HD image, with the smoothness of the SD image.

@rjejr "I wonder how 8-bit games look in a VR headset"

Well, depending on if you want first person views, something like this:
Zelda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gzXHUyfdyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6NqMSz5fw
Duck Hunt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxK_WJ-V1c8

And otherwise it will just be more or less like 3DS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnaCqEObA7g

@PlywoodStick Smoother yes, cleaner no. Discoloration artifacts are clearly visible. And the smoother image is also more due to the lesser technology, which actually makes it look more fuzzy which kind of masks the jagged edges of graphics. Almost a kind of anti-aliasing...

@ThanosReXXX Woops, you're right, I misused the term "cleaner." There's a good comparison video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI60A3DpI6w

HD produces a clean image because it can be made lossless, since there's no conversion between analog and digital, just a straight digital image. Smoothness tends to go along with messiness. I think I'm just so averse to the sharp pixels of HD that being messy somehow looks "cleaner" to me.

I don't get why people wouldn't considered the AVS as a Famiclone, it uses chip parts to play NES games just like every other clone and besides two of my NES games which works on the Super Retro Trio wouldn't even work on the AVS. Saying AVS is superior to any other clone out there and refusing to acknowledge it as a clone is just ignorance. Unless it's built by Nintendo themselves it's considered a clone no matter what and a clone will have compatibility problems.

@PlywoodStick Oh, don't get me wrong, for some systems, I also prefer the smoother look, and Genesis/Megadrive games especially even used the color interference to their advantage by applying certain tricks to display transparencies and more colors and such.

@foodmetaphors Well, at least in China they do. Means "lucky, lucky".

Car plates with 8 on them have been auctioned for several thousand dollars.

I'm honestly more impressed with the physical look of this thing than Nintendo's effort on the Famicom Classic and its tiny controllers.

@retro_player_22

Yes, the AVS uses "chip parts to play NES games"... but so does the NES.

It's not called a "Famiclone" because it doesn't use the NOAC (NES-on-a-chip, which is basically an emulator and the I/Os for it.) or another emulation solution like this or the Retron5.

Instead, the AVS uses a full FPGA board which sets itself to be just like the the transistor arrays on the many chips found within the NES. It's not an emulation, it's more a simulation, which is why you get near universal compatibility (aside from not being able to use ROB, the lightguns, or a few Chinese bootlegs which are actually getting fixed now through Firmware updates).

All that said, this is an exciting time for the NES! I can't wait till people start doing this with the SNES in a few years, no doubt.

Having just received my AVS, I can say it's nothing less than amazing. The difference between the AVS and famiclones is very apparent to anyone who grew up with the original hardware. Famiclones use NOAC and you get a lot of funny glitches with those. The FPGA in the AVS is programmed to behave identically to an actual NES. When you put a cart in the AVS, it reads and interacts with the cartridge the same way as an NES would.

Will it run homebrews??? Million dollar question.

Sadly games that had support for the mic on the second controller well... won't work as intended without the mic.

Huh, I saw this exact Famicom Mini ripoff console in one Don Quixote already on the shelf being sold this week? Maybe it was an older non-HDMI version of this.

I really dig the retrousb AVS. Hands down the best NES experience I've had, and I'm kind of a retro snob. Glad to see some choices in the marketplace, though. The NES Classic thingy looks great, but pre-orders in the US are still MIA and it won't accept carts, so HDMI options like this are a great way to go.