Nintendo Re-issues Special Edition "Cartridge Classics"

Many frequent readers of this website know that basically every person involved with it has been looking forward to the RetroN5, which finally releases this month. Little did anyone know, however, that there is one big fan of the system that nobody expected: Nintendo itself.

Ryan at The Gamer's Lounge got to sit down for his annual interview with Reggie Fils-Aime, where he proceeded to gush about the joy Nintendo is finding in the existence of the RetroN5.

"Unfortunately, we all know the Wii U hasn't sold as well as we wanted it to. But we at Nintendo always have our ears to the ground, and the perfect storm has arisen: with the huge preorder numbers the RetroN5 is seeing, combined with the recent clearance blowout sales at the local Radio Shack, we realized that by blowing the dust off the old cartridge molds and melting down some leftover Wii Zappers and other leftover Wii clip-on accessories to form the cases, these reproduction cartridges basically pay for themselves in production!"

"Our first line," Reggie continues, "will be some of the titles we know people have been looking for, such as The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy 1, but Series II will break out the true classics such as Mario is Missing and the uber-rare Super Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge combination. We are fully aware of the fact that the RetroN5 is HDMI only, and therefore won't work with the original Zapper, but we think this cartridge will sell itself on nostalgia alone!"

Nintendo doesn't plan on stopping at the original 8-bit system either. New prints of EarthBound and F Zero will be coming for the Super Nintendo, and don't forget about the Game Boy, which will receive new mint copies of the original Tetris.

Reggie also shared another issue with Ryan: "Honestly, we had all of this planned to announce recently at a certain "big event" but had to replace that announcement with the Cranky Kong reveal for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. We were so stoked about the number of systems playable on the RetroN5 we only assumed they'd be putting a Nintendo 64 slot in as well. So we had made all these copies of Superman 64, ready to release, only to find that it wasn't in the system. So, we went and inked a deal with Atari, figuring that we could just jam whatever parts we could fit into an Atari 2600 cartridge, slap an E.T. label on it, and nobody would ever know the difference. Lo and behold, the darn thing doesn't have a 2600 slot either! So our big reveal was lost, and we just threw out that Cranky Kong reference and hoped it would cover it all up. Looks like it did the trick! We're currently looking for a good deal on some land we can rezone into a landfill or something to get rid of the leftover E.T. cartridges though."

Regardless, be on the lookout for this first run of classic cartridges at your local Babbages and Software Etc, for the 1980's price of $49.99, inflation adjusted to about $107. But hey, that's what you pay for nostalgia!