My experience hacking the SNES classic

I love my SNES classic. It has an incredible lineup of games, covering some of, what I consider, the best games of all time. However, like most people I've spoken to, it is not quite perfect. I think this was inevitable, as you can't please everybody all the time. Nintendo did a great job. But with no ability to add games through a Nintendo sponsored way, I turned to the internet to add those last couple games that would just make it perfect.

The good news is that it was super easy.  I had no trouble following this geekwire articles' short instructional.  This is actually really relieving, as some of my favorite games that I once owned have since lost to time, such as Tetris Attack, Gradius III, Spiderman and X-men, Arcades revenge, and others.  Now I have access to these games, thanks to a large cache of ROMs I collected during my younger, wilder days.   First game I tried out?  Tetris Attack.  Still amazing.  

Puzzle games have a little bit of a Siren's song for Jane that she can't resist so we spent some time playing Puzzle-Bobble together.  It's a great game, but fairly ruthless and quicker than I would have thought.  (Of course, now that she's seen Bub and Bob, I have to get an NES classic so we can play Bubble Bobble!) 

Unfortunate gaps in my ROM library include Actraiser, Tetris and Dr. Mario.  I would love to revisit Actraiser's music and town simulator.  It would be nice to play Tetris and Dr. Mario without buying a NES classic, but c'est la vis.  I'm happy.  

P.S. As we all know, the Nintendo 'classic' consoles have another serious issue:  controller length.  For some reason the controllers are super short, and the extensions are super long.  It's awful.  However, I think I've found my preferred solution:  Longer HDMI and USB cables.  I just happened to already own an 10 foot HDMI cable and a USB extender.  So I use the regular SNES controllers and set the classic on the coffee table.  I just stuff the cables underneath my entertainment console when I'm finished.  Seems to be working out pretty well.  I especially like this solution because I can reach the RESET button without having to get up.  I enjoy the action on the thing, but it would also have been nice to have reset option on the controllers.  

P.P.S.  One fun thing about openly reviewing the SNES games is how many awful or 'meh' games there are.  I tried out every Marvel branded game I could find, and they were all pretty bad. 

Another interesting discovery was Wordtris.  This game is a hot mess.  Ostensibly, you connect letters to form words, but I found that the letter choice was so tough, and the speed of the dropping so fast, that I just dropped letters wherever I could fit them!  And the silliest part is that it worked!  I just threw the letters in a neatly ordered pile and let the game figured out what it spelled.  I think I've played that game with my niece before.  

Finally, Jane and I few rounds of a 'Where in the World is Carmen San Diego' SNES port.  It was amusing nostalgia, but pretty simplistic.  PC ports from the 90s tend to have a certain 'look' (Wordtris is also clearly a PC port).  It's a fun experiment to check out these games.