Hot_Deals

I think it was $89.xx a while back. I thought about pulling the trigger then but I forgot about the shipping, I'm too cheap.

Yeah, the shipping cost does give me some heartburn as well. Too bad they’re not selling this thing locally. Even so, I think it’s still an excellent value for all the great games you get. I would consider if it weren’t for the fact that my time is limited and between my Xbox and SNES Classic I have more than enough to keep me busy.

$22 shipping... Yikes

Can confirm that Honey shows it was $89.20 for nearly 2 weeks in late Feb, then after returning to $97.36 for 3 days it dropped to $92.49 for 5 days before hitting this new low of $88.10.
I'm more interested in it as a collector since I have most of the rest of the mini's, I also like the 6 button controller, but I do agree @Staraang that I've just got too many games already in my backlog, including 95% of the games on the 6 minis I already own that I've not touched.

Slickriven wrote:

Exactly why I’m trying to resist these temptations. I was close to getting a Switch recently but then I held back because I knew the Xbox would have plenty to offer to fill up whatever meager time I have. Hell, Game Pass alone feels like I’m in a candy store with more games than I know what to do with. It’s easy to fall in love with idea of owning and playing all this crap but truth be told it’s just not going to happen for most of us with how busy life gets.

And even collecting.. there’s only so much stuff to collect before it starts taking over significant parts of your house and then you start wondering what it’s all for. Besides looking at with some satisfaction.

1000% agree man. GP crushes so much of my time because I really should try this game before it leaves, and I wouldn't want to have to purchase it after having free access...
Thankfully I've played a ton of GP titles and got such a great value from it, from solid titles I happily beat, to crap that I'm glad I could try for really only my time investment, to even a handful that sucked but I beat anyhow for who knows why.
But all that gaming time spent there means less available for other purchased games and systems really. I want a Switch too but really only to play Metroid Dread so that seems foolish. Want a PS5 to play Ratchet, Returnal and Ragnarok... And other non-R titled games, but it's pricy and my game time is already overloaded. Heck I'm trying to focus on just playing non GP games and that's not easy.

Frank wrote:

Shipping from Japan is expensive. Heck shipping in general is expensive.

Slickriven wrote:

Yeah I feel that man. For me, though, time is too precious at this stage of life for me to spend it on games that might suck. I can't be wasting time on mediocre games when there are so many outstanding titles out there so I'm pretty selective about what I'll play. I mainly wanted to a Switch due to the extensive retro library. The titles I most want to play on PS5 is Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us. But they're not going anywhere so no point in getting either console until I've exhausted what I want to play on Xbox.

Price has trickled slightly lower now $87.98 - down 12 cents

Slickriven wrote:

$50 would be the sweet spot for me, but clearly there's a market willing to pay close to $100.

Whats sad about this item is if it had the games the japanese one came with it would be sold out and likely worth $150 to $200. Happy with mine though and tempted to get another.

I like all my mini consoles.

I never bought the PS1 mini or I might not be able to say that

The PS1 mini got a bad rep for good reason, the packed in games were weak, the price was high and the controllers aren't dualshock. I got mine at about the bottom of the price range, $25 and for that price, especially after hacking it to add more games, it's great. Plus the 8bitdo wireless controller thing works and allows me to use an Xbox controller.
My least favorite mini is the C64 one, that was a pointless purchase.

I like the c64 but it is definitely the fiddliest mini of the bunch.

The C64 mini was a bit rough at launch but if you updated it since then, it's a lot better. You can add games to it with a USB stick without hacking or such, and you can hook up a USB keyboard to help out with any issues in downloaded games. My son and I had a blast playing games from my childhood for months until I ended up getting a Raspberry Pi400.

Slickriven wrote:

Totally agree. I bought my C64 Mini, never opened it, and ended up dumping it off.

Frank wrote:

I got the C64 almost completely to add to my collection, but the Beat a Game thread I ran caused me to consider it an owned console and try to beat something on it. I did that, barely in '21 but took it off of my list in '22 and have no real interest in returning it. The joystick is the biggest failure point as it's really shoddy and trying to hold it in my left hand while moving it around with my right didn't work great for me. I have the Legends Mini and it's pretty good, it's so big I can set it on my lap or desk and use my left hand to move the stick around - the actual joystick is also way better quality on that.

Collecting is why I even want this Gen2 mini, but of all the mini's the Gen's interface is pretty decent so having a 2nd wouldn't be bad. I just don't want to shell out over $80 total on it, not when it'll largely collect dust.

Slickriven wrote:

I agree 100% with the joystick, it's 100% garbage. I bought some USB SNES gamepad clones for cheap on Amazon and we played with those. Obviously I'm not advocating buying more hardware to play it but if you have USB controllers sitting around they will probably work as long as you upgraded the firmware.

I'm aware that nostalgia is a big factor in some of these old systems, and if you stuck with only the games included with the system, it's pretty lackluster. Having spent a good chunk of my childhood on the Commodore has it in a different light for me lol