Probably caused a lot of people who just wanted to play the tapes they has as a kid to not bother with original hardware. Having the rom is just as good as the cart, and with the mini you get a authentic feeling controller so it's as good as gold. No need for a full on tape dungeon to play them.

I think this is true too. I remember seeing a lot of 'starter' NES listings once these things were released. A lot of NES consoles with 2 controllers and a few stock games like Mario 3 and a few other commons probably from people who now had an easier solution to play older stuff. 
 

That and, aside from us weirdos and maybe a handful of VCR enthusiasts, who owns a CRT anymore? The minis you just hook up to an HDTV and go.

 

As recently as 2017 I was really pushing tube TVs for retro gaming on customers (even though we didn't sell them) and finally my co-workers were like, "Shut up gcrites80s, you're just pissing them off!" People were receptive in say 2014 though.

Well, to be fair, you can still hook up AV cables to most HD TVs - you didn't NEED a crt (although that has begun to change). I still think the all in one plug and play package appealed to a lot of people not to mention the product was hyped beyond belief on release.

Plus small, no need to blow in the cartridges, controllers were the same, no need to dick with a bunch of settings like a Raspberry Pi, etc.
 

The masses are about convenience. There is a reason the jump from VHS to DVD created massive sales, yet we didn’t see the same jump for Blu Ray and 4K UHD discs. People would rather have the streaming digital because it is convenient, even if inferior. The same thing happened with mp3s to CDs in the 2000s.

Oh god, I just realized that means I get to be a "Well, actually..." about both vinyl and CRTs now

I'm not so certain they have a real impact. They may have for a period, and may still for one, but in the total picture of it I think not. A great thing I can look back on with that would be Earthbound finally after years of whining by fanboys got popped up on the WiiU then the 3DSXL format handhelds as a digital game. When it first hit console as a cheap $10 download at the time I remember the loose game was running on a fairly high note I think around upwards of $150-200 range, but after it hit the system it took a hit and came more down toward I think $100-120. It rolled lower, stagnated on the whole at a lower point for many months, but in time it did creep back up again. Digital had an impact and the WiiU was a dumpster fire, so here you have a physical release with ROMs on it with the SNES classic, so maybe it will have or has had currently an impact but could it really last? I doubt it. Really it is a licensed Nintendo product and another avenue to play those games, a bit of an emulation cheat sure, but the games are on a chip again placed there by Nintendo decades after the first time it happened.

I don't know if there is much crossover between people who are willing to pay 3 figures for Earthbound and the kind of people who now refuse to buy Mario on a cartridge due to lack of HDMI on the original systems. I'd say that at least partially explains why Earthbound hasn't tanked.

Earthbound has deff gotten a couple chinks in it's price armor.  WiiU, 3DS, SnesC, all caused it to take a hit and it has never been able to reach that $200+ price point it could once command.

And that was from re-releasing on 3 niche systems.  What happens when it gets put on the SNES online service for a big system like Switch?  Everyone will be able to play Earthbound and stacks of other titles for the cost of a cup of coffee.

^^Yep ..

No and the NES/SNES classics aren't even being sold for exorbitant prices anymore even after they've been discontinued. They were the FOTM and now no one cares about them. Rememeber when people were selling them for $150-300 apiece and no one could find them in stores? Yup.

They 100% made a dent in the original hardware market. SNES and NES systems dont sell for near as much as they were

The core first party titles went down fairly significant. It happened the same month the classics came out. I follow this stuff pretty close dealing that I sell this stuff. The exact titles on the classics were the titles taking a hit and harder to move. 

Casual market buys systems and core titles. The market for that is the same market as the classic. Itll adjust. Game prices for everything else has stayed the same or gone up.

Yup. NES is cool overall but the NES classic didn't do that except for what you had mentioned. Bootlegs? Now thats just silly talk for high end NES games. If you weren't into it by now, you're not getting into it because of those prices. So most people who want a Samson i'd say already have it and most you see on the market are people getting out methinks.