It was only a matter of time before someone busted open the NES Classic Edition, and it has happened in an unexpected fashion. Earlier last month, the elusive novelty console was hacked to allow other NES games to be run using the actual NES Classic Edition user interface, but this time the bells and whistles have been traded in for variety.
Similar in function to a Raspberry Pi emulation setup, the NES Classic Edition can be made to run RetroArch. This is a popular emulator that can run games from several systems. Using that software, the device can run Game Boy, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games. It isn’t perfect, as some games don’t run particularly well and downloading ROMs is its own legal can of worms, but it’s an impressive display of technical engineering that should make the maker scene pretty proud of itself.
This is interesting, as news like this usually prompts Nintendo to take some kind of action in follow-up hardware. Rumors of a similar product featuring Super Nintendo games have been floating around for a while. If that does happen, the copy protection might be more intense.
Source: Digital Trends