"Rage Mage Classic Edition"

 
 Rage Mage Reviews!
Today I stood in the midst of an angry throng. No, they weren’t shouting “hashtag not my el presidente!” They were shouting “hashtag never Nintendo!” Under the garish primary colors of a Toys R’ Us sign, I stood taking in the fragrant aroma of 25-40 year old cold sweat and hair, Starbucks red-cupped coffee, mouth-breathing, and social unrest as I waited my turn. I was patient as I could be. I only ate one whining man-child before it was my turn at securing my man-child machine.
But then the soul-deadened cashier informed the mob with her black, plastic eyes (like a doll’s eye) that the man-child machine was no more. There were no more NES Classic Editions in the universe. Just one more subtle jab at progressive principles by Nintendo, a company so stuck in the past that they’ve recently reopened a wing in their facility to start developing playing cards for the yakuza again.
Violence erupted like so many butthurt college kids. This was the scene earlier today on Amazon.com:

So what was a shamelessly embittered person with enough subjective motivation to do another living human being harm really to do but maul the nearest man-baby I could find as he slunk into his low-riding Honda Civic and nab his NES mini for myself? And by the way, that’s not a confession. It’s bragging. #RageSwag
Here you can pretend to care about my impressions on the device.

The NES mini is more mini than NES. It is so tiny in fact that I had to use a pair of tweezers to pick it up between the carpet hairs after dropping it on the floor. Its unrepentant mini-ness extends to its un-extending controller cord, which is exactly as long as is pictured above. Which is 4 inches. You literally have to put the console in your lap in order to play it.
This is harder than it sounds considering the fan on the back of it is louder than a politician yelling over their confirmation bias applause. The machine also gets hot really fast, due no doubt to its outdated processor trying to function after its 30th birthday. I seared my loins and didn’t even enjoy it. Even with the fan, the thing crashes worse than Nascar drivers on National Braille Day.
The NES mini is also heavy, too. Don’t let those pasty YouTubers with their unboxing vids tell you “Uhhh… Hey guys… uhh… uhm… uhh…” or the pentagenerian poseurs over at IGN inform you that it’s light. I’ve heard it’s as light as a piece of styrofoam. Yeah. If that piece of styrofoam was filled with the condensed fragment of a dwarf star. You know when you’re sitting on the crapper constipated for so long that your thighs, the least atrophied muscles in your body, get their blood circulation cut off? It’s like that. It’s manifestly unfit for the lap.
The NES mini is of course famously pre-loaded with the worst games on the system. Thirty of them. People are shelling out their hard earned government cheese for games they’ll never beat. Wandering around Metroid and Zelda II for five minutes before shutting it off just so you can say you played them and impress your married-with-children friends? That’ll be 60 bucks.

But what many people don’t know is you’re not stuck with the thirty baby games. You can open the NES mini up, take out the computer chip, flip it upside down and reinstall it on “track B” to unlock the thirty secret and infinitely better games. Where’s Waldo? Gilligan’s Island. Mario is Missing! LJN classics. Tengen. Every Wisdom Tree game. Everything you could want to tell the world you’re a smelly, unwashed hipster are all right here, you corporate cash-piggy.
What’s worse, all of the great features Nintendo promised us are not here. Procedurally generated games? Nope. The ability to download new games off the internet? Nuh-uh. A sprawling online mulitiplayer? Nah. And that’s the biggest travesty of all. Even crappy games like Balloon Fight, Final Fantasy and Castlevania were designed for internet connectivity so that prepubescents can call each other racial slurs and hurl verbal feces, but you simply can’t do that here. Why else should I even play a game if I can’t make total strangers feel terrible for not being perfect at video games? Like what’s the point?
Nintendo has since sworn on their own inevitable grave that they’ll get the online multiplayer up and running. Until then, I’m just waiting for the “2-bit Intellivision Classic Edition” to finally come out.
What are my closing thoughts about the NES mini?

Below I included the only link I could find where you can buy the NES Classic Edition for yourself. You’re welcome, you small-faced metrosexual.
https://www.underthetablegames.com/Nintendo/52-NES-Classic-Ed
 
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