Buying an old NES and a bunch of games to try and relive your youth is admirable. It's also a complete pain, storing and swapping out enormous cartridges and trying to figure out whether or not your TV even has a coax input. The NES Classic Edition gives you all the nostalgia with none of the hassle. Arriving in November, it's a miniature of the real thing, packing 30 games into a palm-sized box — including all three Marios, both Zeldas, a couple Castlevanias, Metroid, Punch-Out (sadly minus Mike), and the best football game ever made, Tecmo Bowl. It connects to your TV via HDMI, and its controller can hook to a Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games.
Sony may be winning the next-generation console wars, but that doesn't mean the boys in Redmond don't have anything up their sleeve. The Xbox One S is the first salvo in the race to get 4K-capable boxes into the hands of gamers. Dramatically slimmed down — it's 40% smaller than its predecessor — this new console offers support for High Dynamic Range gaming, as well as Ultra HD Blu-rays and streaming 4K content. It also has a built-in IR blaster for controlling your TV, stereo, and such, an enhanced controller, and up to 2TB of storage. Arriving in August.
The first arcade game to be based on a real-life sport, Pong has now gone full-circle, entering the real world in this Pong Table. Created by Daniel Perdomo and his friends, it took two years to develop the game, which has rectangular paddles and a square ball to stay true to the original. The paddles are moved mechanically, while the ball glides across the surface thanks to a mechanically manipulated magnet underneath the playing surface. LED scoring and retro side graphics complete the build, which is unfortunately not for sale.
Created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, the Analogue NT 24k Gold Edition is the most luxurious way to take in this classic game. Every piece of the Nt's aluminum enclosure receives plating in pure 24k gold, and is then polished by hand in Seattle. Otherwise, it's the same as the standard version, with the ability to play NES, Famicom, and even Famicon Disk System games — the latter being rather important since Zelda made its February 1986 debut on that format, and didn't see a cartridge release until the next year — on the original controllers. Included in the package are an HDMI upgrade and an original gold The Legend of Zelda NES game cartridge.
Many expected the Oculus Rift to give us our first taste of VR. Unfortunately, a high price and ridiculous minimal specs — PC-only, among them — left many of us on the outside. The PlayStation VR should help fill some of that void. Needing nothing more than a PS4 and Playstation Camera to power it, it's far more accessible, and doesn't slouch on the specs, either, with a 5.7" OLED 1080p display running at up to 120 fps, 3D audio from built-in headphones, and, of course, a highly capable controller that you're already intimately familiar with. Arriving in October.
