The SNES Classic is just an NES Classic with a different shell

The SNES Classic will be be released this Friday in North America, and the hardware will likely sell out the moment stores open to the public. We’re big fans of the little system, but there was some question about what hardware Nintendo was using to power the mini consoles. Eurogamer opened up its unit to find ... an NES Classic.

“The fact that the SNES mini runs on the same hardware as its predecessor has a number of implications,” Eurogamer stated. “Among them, we can expect hackers to be looking to exploit the system in short order to add new games — exactly what happened with the NES mini. And secondly, the use of what is essentially the same technology makes it much easier for Nintendo to resume NES mini production.”

The mainboard is even notched to match the shell of the NES Classic, even though there’s no reason for that modification in the SNES Classic shell. Nintendo is selling what amounts to the same hardware with a different shell and different emulators and ROMs included.

This makes sense, especially since Nintendo is bringing back the NES Classic in 2018. There’s no real reason to change the system’s internals; most fans are much more interested in the included games than what’s powering them.