If you managed to get your hands on an NES Classic Edition this holiday season, you may already be tired of the 30 classic games pre-installed on the system by now. Nintendo has made clear that the tiny replica NES will not officially receive new games, especially with no WiFi protocol to download them. But that hasn't stopped budding hackers from scoffing at Nintendo's claims and adding games their own way.

This week saw separate hackers in Japan and Russia figure out soft-mod solutions to adding new games to the NES Classic. This means you don't need to grab a screwdriver or a soldering iron to mod yours.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/hackers-unlock-nes-classic-upload-new-games-via-usb-cable/

I didn't think it would happen without hardware modifications because of the limited I/O and it has happened much quicker than I expected.

I would still much prefer using a RaspberryPi or similar but there you go!

Hopefully this means any future "Classic" console will just have a slot for a GameBoy-like cart to go into and just let people buy additional games.

It's 2017 Nintendo. They will instead stop production on the NES Classic and remove virtual console functionality from the Switch. Remember, the best way to protect your precious precious IP is to never let anyone access it ever at any price.

I was going to buy a friend of mine one of these for Christmas but ended up just making her a Retropie instead.

Precisely none of Nintendo's anti-piracy measures have stopped people from hacking the crap out of their hardware. I wish for once they'd just embrace modern technology instead of fighting it so hard. Imagine this thing with an NES style store front, expandable storage and enough of them to go around. It's like they don't want to make too much money.

I just added over 30 and it's running fine. They don't get sorted alphabetically though. It's in alphabetical chunks. Adding my Lolo games now hoping it doesn't explode lol.

Only tried US NES releases. No idea if Famicom stuff works (ie Castlevania 3 sound chip stuff), etc

EDIT - Tried it with 69 added (total 99) and started getting C8 errors when accessing the games. Running everything ok at 94 total so far.

I love mine so much

I wonder if you can load any other types of roms into this thing, like snes games.

Piracy sucks.

@coldblood said:

If the hardware is capable, I could see someone making an SNES emulator that would run on it. The NES's lack of buttons might be an issue. Sega Master System games on the other hand...

@segajupiter: Piracy is the only thing keeping thousands of games accessible and playable.

Most NES games are both from defunct companies and impossible to buy in a way that gives money back to the developers. The best option being Nintendo's eShop which isn't accessible without a Nintendo machine. Pirating these older games is essentially making no difference to anyone.

Egh, buying a Raspberry Pi and going about it that way still seems like the better way to go about playing these games if you're really serious about it.

Actually, screw the mini and the pi and give me one of these things:

Not only obscure stuff, but things as mainstream as the original Strarfox. Nintendo is apparently unwilling to pay the money or do the legal legwork required to rerelease that game. The only way to play that game legally is on an original SNES cart and that's motherfucking crazy.

Cheap, easy, fun! I did one as well and I've enjoyed it very much. Not knocking this product, but Pi 3 is the size of a credit card and can do amazing things. The dang thing has wifi, it's so rad.

[Sigh] We stand at Feb 7th and you still can't buy one for $59.99.

Did Nintendo realize at the very last second that these things were easy to hack and just stopped making them because of that? I do wonder if that was the case, because I don't think I have seen a system pop up and sink into the deep underworld of scalping so fast and completely.