Impulse Buying to Come Again!

Boy, that couldn't have been timed better. On the day I received my stimulus check, Amazon sells the international version of its bite-sized Neo-Geo arcade cabinet for thirty dollars. Yep, that's an insta-buy right there. It doesn't matter that I have a half dozen other mini consoles already or that I purchased the Humble Bundle with most of these games included a few years ago. It doesn't matter that it didn't get glowing reviews from critics, with many complaining about the blurry display on television sets. (Who needs a television? It has its own built-in screen, right?) It doesn't even matter that SNK forgot what microswitches were after all these years, because I wanted one of these bad, and for $29.99, there's no way I could resist. 

That's like, thirty dollars for forty games and a system that can play them. Do you know how much a Neo-Geo and forty games cost at retail thirty years ago? Eight thousand six hundred dollars. I'd be stark raving bonkers not to get this! And while I'm aware the Neo-Geo Mini's got issues, a lot of that stuff can be circumvented with hardware I already own, like the M30 joypad. An inevitable hardware hack will take care of the rest.

There was one other thing I wanted to mention before I go, because it's kind of important. Nintendo is closing the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS in forty-two different countries, mostly in the Caribbean and South America. Should this concern you? Definitely, if you happen to live in Barbados. However, considering Nintendo's past actions, this move probably won't be limited to travel hotspots like the Virgin Islands. Recall that early last year, the company shuttered its Wii eShop in America, denying millions of players access to the games they already purchased. This first step toward planned obsolescence suggests that the digital storefronts for the Wii U and 3DS will be on Nintendo's hit list next year. 

The company's aggressive retirement of its past consoles isn't just frustrating for the players who still use those products; it's downright bewildering when you consider that its competitors are less eager to nail the coffins shut on their legacy hardware. You can still download games for such oldies as the Xbox 360 and PSP, and either play them on those systems or their successors. Nintendo's insistence on giving their own games an expiration date not only reflects poorly on them, it casts a shadow on the concept of digital content. Does anything really belong to you in this modern age? At least one game company seems to think the answer is "no."

(Special thanks to CMunk, whose 7-12 Serif font was the closest I could find to the one used in mid-1990s Capcom games like Saturday Night Slam Masters.)