Analogue Super Nt: Superlative Retro Gaming

Analogue Super Nt: Superlative Retro Gaming

- Will Greenwald

Calling Analogue a niche retro gaming company undersells what it does. The company’s first product, the Analogue Nt, was a game system that could play Nintendo Entertainment System games and output them at 1080p over HDMI. It also had a solid metal body and cost $500. The Super Nt isn’t metal, but it has a much more reasonable price and offers the best emulation-free SNES/Super Famicom gaming and 1080p upconversion you can get. This system is for a very specific type of retro game collector, for whom it undoubtedly earns our Editors’ Choice.

DESIGN

Although the Super Nt doesn’t have the solid aluminum body of the Analogue Nt or Mini Nt, it’s still a hefty little device. At 1.6 by 6.5 by 5.2 inches (HWD) and 17.6 ounces, it’s almost twice the size of the SNES Classic and over three times its weight. The Retro-Bit Super RetroTrio Plus and Hyperkin RetroN 5 weigh 21.9 and 31.4 ounces, but they’re also about two and three times larger than the Super Nt. Analogue wins the battle of the retro game consoles in terms of sheer density.

It isn’t a nearly perfect miniaturized version of a Super NES, like the SNES Classic is, but the Super Nt has an attractive design with classic notes that retro game fans will appreciate. Its slightly curved box shape hails back to the Super Famicom, the original Japanese version of the SNES that featured a much sleeker design than its more angular American counterpart. The similarities are even more apparent in the SF version with its light and dark-gray color scheme based on the Super Famicom. The Super Nt is also available in Classic (SNES-style light-gray with purple buttons), Black, and Transparent models.