It is not a ridiculous overstatement to suggest that the Nintendo Entertainment System saved the games industry. Back in early 1980s, when the company released its fledgling console in Japan (where it was known as the Famicom), the business was undergoing a crisis. A flood of competing consoles and an unregulated, uncontrolled publishing model meant that there were too many machines and too many mediocre games. Some pundits in the US even suggested that video games were just a fad and that the bubble had burst.

Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System. Released in Japan in the summer of 1983, and in the US two years later, it was stocky, toy-like and not exactly over-powered. However, the product brilliantly combined the industrial design genius behind the Game & Watch handheld devices with the creativity of game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and the sheer consumer marketing genius of then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi. Instead of allowing a free-for-all for third-party software support, Yamauchi placed strict quality control measures on would-be game publishers, tying them into restrictive licensing agreements. The result was a console with excellent homegrown titles and very little shovel ware. It was a gigantic hit.

Now, Nintendo has released a miniturised version of its classic machine, complete with 30 favourite titles from the era. The teeny console, a beautifully accurate replica of the original, comes with an HDMI cable, a USB lead to plug it into a power source, and a smaller version of the brilliant NES controller, which set the tone for joypad design for the next 30 years. Sadly, there’s no facility to download extra games, or to plug in original carts – this is basically the console version of a Greatest Hits compilation album; just one that’s been beautifully packaged and extremely well curated.

What you get is a diverse and compelling range of titles that seem to combine historical importance with modern relevance and playability. The first three Super Mario Bros titles, as well as arcade conversions Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Bubble Bobble are all obvious inclusions. You also get truly agenda-setting platform adventures like Castlevania and Metroid (both enormously influential on the current era of indie developers), and seminal action role-playing games like the original Legend of Zelda and StarTropics. There are beat-’em-ups (Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon II), there are cute diversions (Kid Icarus, Kirby’s Adventure), and there are genre innovators (Excitebike, Ice Climber). Many of the games have two-player options, and these are accessible to Mini NES owners via a second controller (sold seperately). As a history lesson for scholars of game design, this is a genuinely educational product, providing firsthand experience with the birth of the console as a mass, mainstream entertainment product.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to access these games. You could download an emulator for your PC or Mac, then hunt for ROMs that will allow you to play for free (apps like OpenEmu and Retroarch are certainly making this easier, as is the Raspberry Pi). However, you’ll need a certain amount of technical acumen to get everything running smoothly, and then there are often performance and interface anomalies when old games built for one environment are accessed on a completely different platform.

Alternatively, there are third-party consoles that emulate classic hardware, often supporting a whole range of machines. The Retron 5 for example lets you plug in Mega Drive, SNES, NES, Mega Drive and Game Boy carts, playing all via a custom controller or their original joypads. Again, however, the performance can vary depending on games, and it relies on you tracking down the original cartridges, which can be expensive and unreliable. You could of course, also hit eBay and buy yourself an original NES machine – but then you’ll need a CRT television to plug it into, or a scan line generator to modify the image for your LCD/LED display. It’s all quite expensive and not at all without risk.

But with the Mini NES, you’re getting 30 titles in a reliable package, which plugs straight into your current television. An options menu lets you select between a CRT Filter (which simulates the softer, chunkier visuals of old), a 4:3 ratio display, or a “Pixel Perfect” replica of the original screen output. There’s also a built-in save system, which allows you to suspend any of the games and come back to them where you left off – a neat addition, especially for some of the longer platformers and role-playing adventures.

What the Mini NES wonderfully brings home though, is the sheer joy of these early games. The twinkling sprites, the rich idiosyncratic character design, the vibrant scrolling worlds, the absolute aesthetic brilliance of the era’s artists who were able to tease depth and detail from the most minimal toolsets. The rainbow colours on the bubbles in Balloon Flight; the gothic pillars and torn curtains of Castlevania, the apocalyptic ruins of Konami’s Super Contra. These are timeless scenes, timeless moments, in the tapestry of game design. They still thrill, they still tug you in with their charm and imagination.

Predictably, stocks are already depleted and the Mini NES is attracting vastly inflated prices on eBay. Hopefully, manufacturing will catch up with demand sometimes soon – because at £50, this lovely machine is effectively an interactive coffee table book; it is a visual celebration of console gaming’s birth, its past, its beautiful innocence.

It is also superbly timed. That Nintendo should release this thing now, in 2016, a year blighted with miserable news, is fortuitous and somehow beautiful. Plug in the Mini NES and you re-discover something bright and unsullied, something joyous; if you’re of a certain age, you will be transported, along scan lines and scrolling sprite fields, to something in your own past. Families gathered around great hulking television sets, box-like pads in hand, chunky characters stalking the screen; colours like neon Lego blocks; everything hinted at, rather than given, everything pristine and new.

The whole of interactive entertainment history laying ahead. The possibilities unimaginable.

