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New NES Classic Edition Details Include Display Modes, Game Manuals

You'll have three choices for how to display the Classic Edition's games.

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Ahead of its release in November, Nintendo has shared new details about the NES Classic Edition and provided us with an opportunity to try one out for ourselves.

The Classic Edition presents users with three different display modes. The first displays the game in the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio; a CRT mode offers the look a classic tube TV, scanlines and all; and Pixel Perfect mode shows the game screen as a square (rather than a 4:3 rectangle), causing each pixel to be a perfect square. Nintendo's press release claims this provides "the most accurate representation of the games as they were originally designed." This seems debatable, as it assumes developers ignored the way games were actually displayed on screens.

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Now Playing: NES Classic System Impressions

Also of note is the way the system handles game manuals. Whereas Virtual Console games include the manuals themselves, the Classic Edition takes something of a shortcut, instead presenting you with a QR code. This can then be scanned by your phone or tablet to view the manual on that device.

Each of the Classic Edition's 30 games provides space for four save states, allowing you to lock in your progress at any moment and return to it as much as you want. Accessing this (or the game-select screen) requires you to use buttons located on the front of the system itself, rather than the controller.

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You can check out our impressions of the console, which packages together 30 NES games into a standalone, $60 system, in the video above. It launches on November 11.

Nintendo first announced the system earlier this year. It lacks internet functionality or any way to load more games onto it, so the 30 it comes with--see them all here--are all you'll have access to.

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