The Time-Travel Delights of the Super Nintendo Classic

The SNES Classic was hallowed property from the second it was announced. It’s a plastic hard drive, the size of a slim paperback, with a plastic shell that makes it look like an shrunken Super Nintendo console. There’s a fake indentation in the top where a cartridge might go, but that’s just for show. Instead, 20 classic games of the 16-bit era (and one new title) are already loaded inside—a treasure trove of nostalgia for children of the ’90s and a charming wayback machine for modern gamers.

It’s never been hard to play Super Nintendo (which was released a little less than a year prior), seems to have some magical grip on players. When it was announced, pre-orders sold out within ; despite Nintendo’s promises to make more copies than the NES Classic (which still retails for its list price on the secondhand market), the SNES Classic has still been nigh-impossible to find as it hit stores this week.