Honestly, with age now, it’s becoming more and more of a problem. I’ve already had a modded (50/60Hz switch on the rear) SNES die on me, several very worn controllers, and certain games like Street Fighter 2 have always been a bit temperamental to boot.
It’s part of the reason my original SNES collection went into storage at my parents’ place several years ago, and I’m actually a bit apprehensive about digging it out. It has massive nostalgia and personal value, and probably some solid financial value too, but I know I’d be crushed if I dug it out, tried to load one of my old favourites or imported games: Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Ogre Battle, Super Metroid etc, and found something had failed.
That’s a large part of why I wanted one of the SNES Classic Minis since release. With all the Hakchi/mod development that’s happened since, I’ve basically been able to turn mine into a near-complete replacement for my purposes, with clean HDMI, tiny power draw, and fresh/barely-used official SNES controllers built with more modern manufacturing/plastics, and that are FAR newer age wise (10-15 years vs 35), which does make a big difference now the OG hardware is pushing 30 plus years old, and Wii/SNES Classic Era hardware is 10-15. I appreciate it's not QUITE as good as OG hardware or the MiSTer FPGA setups, but given the various latencies built into the processing chain etc, that slight input latency additional is as close as to be imperceptible, vs the OG, for someone like me, with the added bonus of not having to swap cartridges and risk further wear and tear.
From what I’ve read, Nintendo's built-in Canoe is very respectable latency-wise, and even the RetroArch cores optimised for the hardware are good enough for my usage, needless to say borderline unnoticeable without measuring equipment, given the latencies involved in the hardware and built into the games, and any additional latency certainly isn't really going to be detectable to someone like me. Even the fighting games on the system aren't built with razor-sharp input windows in the way modern fighting titles are, simply because back then it just wasn't realistic. The testing I've done also verifies that games just 'feel' right, and the fact the output to the OLED is clean, the CRT filter is 'good enough', and the controllers are OEM Nintendo... I have a very hard suspicion even the best/most discerning players would have a hard time telling the difference over OG, if they were blind A/B tested, with equivalent controllers.
It all just makes it very hard to justify dragging the original hardware and carts out of storage just to risk disappointment. Whilst there's still the risk of emulation bugs using the modded SNES Classic, there is far less risk of anything going wrong than on original hardware these days, much as that sounds insane; given the maturity of emulation for the SNES now, and with the sheer age, I think crashes, read/write errors and the like on OG hardware are probably a far bigger issue than they used to be. I even saw a report not that long ago suggesting some original SNES units may now run slightly out of spec as various components age (and had essentially naturally slightly overclocked themselves), which just adds to that general feeling that the original hardware probably shouldn’t be treated as indestructible or 'safe' anymore.
I do want to get the OG collection out, but given the age, I’m almost scared to do so. Part of me wants to sell it on as a collection to another serious collector who’d appreciate it as much as I do, because it’s a nice set of carts and I’m sure someone else would love it. But part of me just wants to leave that little bit of my childhood safely in storage, so I never have to find out something has gone wrong, or literally is gone.
I probably just need to suck it up and do it over summer, even if only to catalogue it properly.
Edit:
Seriously, what I probably need to do — and I’m coming round to this recently — is spend a few hours or an afternoon at my family’s house, dig the collection out, and at least catalogue it properly, even if I don’t sell anything.
At the moment it’s almost worse because it exists in my head as this vague box of nostalgia, value and possible disappointment/horror lol. I know roughly what’s in there, but not accurately enough in terms of condition. So even if I ultimately keep it all, I think I need to go through it, list the carts, check condition, take photos, and work out what I actually have; partly for cataloguing, partly for valuation, and potentially for insurance purposes, as some of those cartridges are reaching the point of having notable value.
Then I can make a sensible decision about whether to store, sell or actively use it, rather than leaving it as this slightly scary unknown in storage. It’s basically becoming a bigger boogeyman as time, risk and value increase, especially as I don’t know exactly where in my family’s house it’s currently sitting. I’m 99.9% sure they haven’t got rid of it or anything, as I vaguely remember them saying they’d transferred it to a stronger box and moved it to the loft a few years ago. But the fact I’ve not seen or used it in years makes it more nerve-wracking, especially as I know some of the more popular/rarer games are likely worth a decent amount now, even cartridge-only.
Edit 2:
And the sad part is, my concerns aren’t really unwarranted. I’m not exaggerating — I’ve already had a modded SNES die on me, and I loved that unit. It was EXTREMELY well looked after, and still failed. Being able to boot PAL games at 50Hz and then switch them to 60Hz was absolutely amazing for PAL games that hadn’t been well optimised.
I was genuinely gutted when it failed, and the SNES Classic Mini gives me a way to massively reduce the chance of going through that again. Plus, because I’ve backed up my Hakchi config/files, if the Classic itself ever dies, I can just get another genuine unit from the second-hand market and flash it again fairly easily. Whilst prices have gone up on genuine units in good/boxed condition, Nintendo produced enough of them that I should still be able to get one reliably for quite some time, rather than being stuck with knock off clones; there are still a LOT of them on the market, even if finding another one in similarly good condition might take a bit of patience. Given the situation, if I do get a failure, I don’t think that’ll be my biggest priority, and at least recovery will be possible
