Nintendo classic SNES console

The original Super Nintendo Entertainment System, launched in 1990, sold 50 million units worldwide.

The SNES Classic follows the NES Classic, which went on sale late last year but abruptly discontinued in April - much to the frustration of fans.

Nintendo said limited resources were to blame, but insisted it would not make the same error with the SNES.As well as the classic titles, Nintendo will also bundle in a game from the SNES era that was never actually released - Star Fox 2. The console will cost $79 in US, and £79.99 in the UK.

Other firms are also looking to capitalise on yesteryear gaming success.

Sega, whose Megadrive console competed fiercely with the SNES in the Nineties, recently said it would re-release a huge library of games as part of a Netflix-style scheme. The games have advertising unless a user pays a one-off $1.99 fee.

For some time, fans of old games have been creating game ROMs - read-only memory - that emulated the old titles so they could be played on a modern PC or other device.

However, ROMs are often fraught with bugs, and as games increased in sophistication became harder to reproduce. They were also, of course, illegal - though there are few cases of game companies going after ROM fanatics, although some websites distributing the software have faced legal action.