It’s not even been a year but the NES Classic Edition and it Japanese equivalent, the Classic Mini Family Computer, have been on quite a wild ride. From the surprise announcement out of the blue, to being sold out from day one, to being hard to find after launch, enduring various hacks and exploits, to its surprisingly quick retirement, the little boxes of nostalgia just keep making headlines.
Time for one more. A new upgrade kit has been announced that lets you use a Wii Remote, Wii U Pro Controller, DualShock 4, iCade and other controllers on your Famicom Mini, or NES Classic Edition. While there have been wireless options available for the NES Classic for some time now, some better than others, this option is a permanent hardware upgrade that may increase the value of the Mini even further.
The news is even better for Famicom Mini owners, like me. There has been no other option so far except to use the shrunken-down, permanently attached controllers hardwired to the unit. Though I did see a Famicom Mini for sale in the wild about three times in Japan, other than the useless but cool looking Famicom Mini Disk Box and some carry cases, no controller or other peripheral options were available. But now there is an alternative for us!
Brook Accessory, from Taiwan, has developed a piece of kit called Nincade. It’s basically a small bluetooth receiver that you install in your Mini (NES or FC) which can then pair with practically any controller, including those for the Wii. Installation does require you to open you Famicom (or NES) Mini, as obviously there are no ports available. There are only a few steps to follow: Open the machine, detach the controller cables, attach the Nincade to the Mini and close ‘er up. The coolest part is that to pair the controller you have to enter the Konami code! If you don’t know it by now, there’s no helping you.
If you want to add a permanent wireless feature to you Mini, possibly increasing its value, and finally get the best controller option for you, it might be worth checking out. It costs $30USD and is available now - I give the Nincade a test drive, as well as a walkthrough of the installation process in the video below. Check it out to see the Famicom Mini do tricks it was never meant to.
For more info, visit the Brook Accessory website: http://www.brookaccessory.com/NINCADE/list.html
If you liked this video be sure to check out Gaijillionaire's Club for more things retro, Nintendo and Japan.
Comments 20
Scalpers rejoice! Another piece of kit to get people interested in buying from you again!
Cool! I have both the mini NES & Famicom, but the mini NES gets all the love as I use an 8bitdo wireless joystick with it. This would solve that problem and make the mini Famicom much more useful.
So a somewhat obscure upgrade kit for a discontinued system. I hope their overhead is low cause there's no way they're going to sell many of these.
Retro pie on a RPi 3 and a 8bitdo is better to he honest.
Can you still use a wired controller after installing the Nincade?
@samuelvictor
Exactly. I bought the Edge Advantage joystick, and would still like to be able to use it when I want to.
Ordering it right now!!
Does Gajillionaire - the name next to the "By" - work here or is this simply an ad for his YT channel? His profile says he's been a member for just over a year and he has 39 posts in all that time. That's a slow day for SLIGEACH.
You Famicom.?.?? Damn this sight has become disturbingly r-cist. I dare not say the full-word. For I may experience others thoughts as jeers an uneasiness. Suckers🍭
@LinktotheFuture @samuelvictor yes you can. If you push the sync or home button, it disconnects. the FC controllers are always wired in. I apologize for leaving that out.
@Gaijillionaire
Very cool! I think I will have to get this.
@rjejr Yes, I'm a writer for the site. I often attach videos to stories but I've written some that don't as well. I admit I should comment more than I have been, but nobody beats Sligeach.
Why isn't someone working on something like this for Switch? It just seems to me with the Switches wild success this would be a perfect fit and probably generate wild sales for this product. My biggest complaint about Switch is the price for extra controllers but nobody seems to even worry about it
@Gaijillionaire you going to ces asia in shanghai?
@Gaijillionaire "Yes, I'm a writer for the site."
Well that's OK then. Andy Robertson from Family Gamer (or something similar) also has articles on here, though not a lot since the Wii U's demise now that I think about it, for his YT channel, but I always felt like he was a part of here, if only tangentially. If you work here, the more the merrier, but if you were just some random YTer trying to make a buck I think NL should say so. I did check your profile looking for a connection but couldn't find anything conclusive.
And nobody writes as much as SLIG, though a few years back I probably could have given him a run for his money, but I kind of burned out. Now I'm down to about 2 dozen posts a day. That number next to my name at top is 4494, but I'm not really sure what that is.
@rjejr Ok I get where you are coming from. I research and submit articles the same as everyone else. Just trying to bring out as much news that isn't covered anywhere else yet.
@Jamotello No I will not be there, sorry to say.
@Gaijillionaire Nobody is writing about how a 30 dollar 3rd party pro controller from Retro got totally pulled a few days before release on Switch. Could somebody find an answer to that? It has been bugging me to no end especially since I pre ordered 2 of them on Amazon and can't get an answer from Retro or Amazon. I would like to know if Nintendo pulled the plug to sell it's own controllers or if that controller was a joke in the first place since it was announced on or near April 1st. I would love to buy an extra set of Joycons but 80+ dollars is alot. I'm actually getting more and more frustrated every week that a 3rd party hasn't stepped up to announce a near future controller option. Makes me wonder if Nintendo is holding them back at this time.
Can you attach the original NES Mini controller to a Wiimote and thus play wirelessly AND the way it was intended?
Oh, I just found out you need one kit per controller, so buying it for 2 players brings it up to the price of the NES Mini itself (60 euro) + shipping. Just a bit too steep for me, but a very nice option never the less. I do wonder if there is any input lag though!
@Windy Sorry, I have no info on that. I tried to look it up but I found only one cached image and it looks like everything else has been taken down.
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