Get Ready to Pay Upwards of $300 for a Super Nintendo Classic [OPINION]

Now that Nintendo has announced the SNES Classic, the nostalgia hype train has started up right where it left off when they discontinued the NES Classic. Get ready to be disappointed, people. Nintendo will fail you again.

Sure, it would be cool to own an SNES Classic or NES Classic. I like old games. Forget that there a million other incredibly cheap and easy methods to acquire these games and much more (Raspberry Pi, Softmodded Wii, etc.), there is a definite appeal to the plug and play aspect of Nintendo's new "Classic" systems. You can forget about it though. Unless you're lucky -- I can almost guarantee you won't get one of these for retail price.

I have many fond memories of the NES. I got one when I was 5 or 6 and loved it like a family member. It is that shared history with the brand that makes what I'm about to say feel like a betrayal, but it needs to be said. Nintendo is an awful company.

Over the past few years, there have been a handful of Nintendo products that interested me, yet I was unable to purchase them because Nintendo routinely short-stocks the stores when demand is high. This is something I've learned from personal experience, and have heard first-hand from several people that work in the industry. That's why it was borderline impossible to buy an NES Classic right up until they discontinued it. That's why I couldn't get my kids Nintendo 2DSs for Christmas last year. It's why I've written the company off, and have given up hope that I can score any of their few worthy products at the retail price.

Nintendo is a nostalgia company that won't accept that they're a nostalgia company. They have a ton of great properties under their belt, but have continuously failed to launch a system that can rival competitors Sony and Microsoft. That's because all of their systems from the last decade have been based on gimmicks. Whether it be a system that's a tablet, a controller that has a screen in it (By the way, Dreamcast called. 2001 is over), or motion controls -- they constantly try to "reinvent the wheel" and, ultimately, end up failing.

Nintendo needs to lean into their nostalgia a little bit more. They could make an ultimate retro system with 100-200 great games on it, charge $200 for it and it would sell like hot cakes. I mean, what else are they doing with that back catalog? Nothing, that's what. However, to succeed they would need to keep it on the market, and actually ship more than 3 to every store, which is something they seem incapable of thus far.

The bottom line is that Nintendo could make boatloads of money and bring a lot of disgruntled consumers back to the table if they just chose to. They won't though. The fact that they discontinued the NES Classic before most people could get one at a reasonable price, and the way they regularly short-stock their products make it very clear to me they have no interest in customer satisfaction -- only hype. Get ready for the SNES Classic to follow suit. If you want one -- you're gonna have to pay at least triple the retail value to a third party on the open market. See you on Craigslist.

The SNES Classic does look dope though. Here's the list of games included with this thing you won't own: