I’m ancient enough to remember when early games such as Pac-Man were all the rage, though I was very young at the time. Despite all the duds and wrong paths, it’s hard to deny that the then nascent and promising video game industry and video game scene have come a long way, created a big catalog of wondrous games as well as having permeated the culture and people’s minds. Truly, video games, mostly thanks to ever more powerful computers, have come a long way since, a very long way (not that Pac-Man isn’t awesome), and it’s been quite a fascinating and rewarding journey to be part of, witnessing the unrelenting growth of this new area of human creativity, from humble beginnings to the highly advanced — but still early! — stage we’re in now.

Though I did get to play the original NES I never actually had one (I had Commodores — VIC20, c64, Amiga), so last year when I heard about the NES Classic — a new mini version of the old NES, shipping with 30 well chosen built-in games — I was pretty happy, finally a chance to delve into that piece of gaming history more deeply. Sweet.

Then began the troubles. The preorder sold out. But no hurry and no worries, I could wait, especially with my eight mile long backlog of games. I’ve waited before.

Then the console was released, months went by but the shortage remained. I was starting to get mildly annoyed, but not terribly so, I can wait, no big deal.

Then Nintendo dropped the bomb: production of the NES Classic was to end. Wait, what? They can’t be serious. They were serious. Didn’t see that coming, and they sure as hell didn’t tell us it was coming. Instead, they let us keep our hopes up for months needlessly (save for the lucky few that got hold of a unit.)

That was kick in the gut. For god’s sake Nintendo, you egregious tantalizer, why. By way of explanation they did say something about limited resources. That’s a bit cryptic, are they saying they’re selling it at a loss? I would have thought that getting a beloved and strongly sought-after product to the market would become a net gain, not a loss. If they’re selling it at a loss, why not simply set a higher price so that they can afford to produce more units? I wouldn’t mind, and I doubt others would either, especially when the alternative is not selling it at all. But Nintendo stands firm in their inept decision.

Luckily, all is not lost. On the contrary, the situation is pretty good. I learned recently about another initiative of Nintendo — to offer an online service that includes the possibility to play classic Nintendo games on the latest Nintendo console. It’s a Netflix-like subscription service, and at a decent price ($20 or so per year, if I recall correctly.)

(There’s an upcoming SNES Classic console, but I won’t make any effort to get it. It too will be a limited edition and probably be hard to get. I don’t want to keep my hopes up for nothing, esp not with that online service coming anyway — which from what I can tell will be better anyway, more games.)