Dear Reader:

You are viewing a story from GN Version 5.0. Time may not have been kind to formatting, integrity of links, images, information, etc.

NES Classic Edition almost didn't feature game boxes on the user interface

by rawmeatcowboy
15 October 2017
GN Version 5.0

The following info comes from a dev team interview via Famitsu, as translated by NintendoEverything...

- very few staff believed that NES Classic Edition / Famicom Mini would be a hit
- with Switch coming out soon, most staff at the company weren’t really paying attention to the NES Classic
- Yamato, a former developer and now a manager of the sales department, said that it would make fans happy
- Yamato strongly suggested there should be a TV commercial
- since the product itself was met with stock shortages, they could barely air ads
- the original plan was only to show the title screen of the various games on the menu UI
- dealing with copyrights for game boxes would be difficult
- when they made the menu with game title screens, they noticed almost everything was black, as most title screens were black
- when this was seen by other devs at Nintendo, they asked why game boxes weren't shown
- Nintendo’s Kazuyoshi Nishi had a tough time convincing third-parties to work with Nintendo on adding game boxes
- everyone finally gave their permission to feature the original boxes in the end
- the game icons are square-shaped so that both American and Japanese boxart can fit
- when the NES Classic Edition was heading towards the end of development, Takao Shimizu from Nintendo’s planning and development department strongly suggested that there would be stock shortages
- by this point, Nintendo had already decided how much they were going to produce for launch

[Link]