Although most of Nintendo's consoles, at least outside of Japan, are pretty hideous design-wise, I will give them credit that they are built like tanks. I've never heard of a SNES or N64 breaking. I've seen kids throw them across rooms and they play as if nothing happened. Nintendo designed these to be like toys, so they look like hideous Fisher Price playthings but they handle like them too. Usually if you buy a 1990s Nintendo console you have it for a long time. If you have kids I'd just get the real thing.