Even with today's prices, $500 goes a long way in the world of videogame consoles. For that money, you could buy an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4 or a Wii U and still have at least $100 left over for games. Or, for the same price, you could just buy the coolest 8-bit NES ever.
The Analogue Nt is no emulator. It’ll use your old Nintendo cartridges, work with your old light gun when you want to play Gumshoe, and it has the same core guts as the original Nintendo Entertainment System. But this one has four controller ports instead of two, as well as some add-on components and features that help it catch up to today’s TVs and consoles.
Aesthetically, the Analogue Nt is miles more refined than the cartridge-based consoles of yore, trading in the plasticky build of the original NES and the faux-wood paneling of the Atari 2600 for a contoured unibody aluminum design. And while this new-wave spin on old-school gaming packs the same CPU and PPU (picture-processing unit) as the original Nintendo, it’s more than just an overpriced NES in a fancy box.
For one thing, it lacks the regional-lockout restrictions of the original NES, and it has two cartridge slots to handle both NES cartridges and its Japan-only predecessor, the Famicom. It’ll even handle original add-ons like the Famicom Disk System or the R.O.B. robot, if you are one of the seven people who bought one of those.
If you’re willing to pay more for the HDMI Adapter Upgrade ($79), you’ll get perhaps the marquee feature of this console’s skillset: The ability to upscale standard-definition video coming out of the console to 1080p or 720p HD. That option includes a built-in HDMI port around the back, and it should translate to the sharpest 8-bit graphics you’ve ever seen.
Keep in mind that upscaled HD content won’t fill the whole screen of a 1080p TV natively, although Analogue Interactive has built in a “Horizontal Stretch” feature you can adjust while the game’s paused. Otherwise, the system preserves the aspect ratio for the games, so you’ll get black bars on the sides of the screen. If you’d rather kick it super-retro, there’s an option to turn on faux scanlines so it looks like you’re playing games on an older set. "The Analogue Nt is the only way to play NES games in 1080p, directly from the original Nintendo CPU and PPU," says creator Christopher Taber, owner of Analogue Interactive.
Those are just a few of the tweakability options Analogue Interactive has baked into the HDMI Upgrade version of the system. While a game is paused, you can adjust everything from the color pallette to the upscaling intensity to setting up hotkeys to quickly access deeper controls. There’s a video of the deeper settings here.
Unfortunately, for that $500 base price, you get neither the HDMI Upgrade option or controllers. The latter cost anywhere from $10 to $50 through Analogue Interactive, depending on if you want a brand-new NES controller or a third-party knockoff. You can also get a refurbished Famicom controller for $30, and there are AC adapters available for the U.S., Japan, U.K., Europe, and Australia.
Clearly, this is a passion project. "The Analogue Nt is designed around the heart and brain of the original NES," says Taber. "We started by reengineering the original NES while remaining true to the original hardware. So you can experience the NES with the hardware it was designed to be played with. No emulation. The Analogue Nt is precision fabricated from a solid block of aircraft grade aluminum—engineered with an uncompromising attitude to quality. There has never been another video game system like it."
It's available in four colors, but anything other than plain silver is going to cost you more, too. Red, black, and blue versions of the system cost an extra $50 each. So all told, it'll cost you more than $800 to get a system with four original NES controllers, the HDMI options, and a sweet paint job—around the price of two PS4s. But really, for 8-bit enthusiasts, it might be a steal.
"8-bit games represent a certain aesthetic: the pixel art, music and gameplay," says Taber. "The NES is compelling because of the games, of course: Zelda, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Mario etc. Some of the greatest games of all time."
