Those buttons are on the console and not the controller? So you have to look up to the television to see what you're doing while bending. Another questionable decision and still doesn't justify the short cords. You have to give people options, especially in these times. Wé get to decide if we want to play close or far away from the television. You can also play close with short cords. Most people are frustrated about this and it is worrying that such a big company like Nintendo with years of experience in the gaming industry was not able to foresee this and make a cheap and longer cord. 

I think they went short because of the ability to plug it into Wii controller. Still a semi bad move in my book.

Ick! Too damn short! No thanks.

I only plan on buying one of these to use with Wii U games for novelty reasons. A short cord doesn't matter to me, but if I actually wanted to buy the NES Mini then this would be a problem for me.

No, you don't have to bend while doing that, I supose a Menu would pop up pressing reset, that's all, and I supose that button is not on the gamepad because that would break the original design by adding one button that wasn't there before.

The short gamepad wire can be solved by a long HDMI which maybe the console includes.

Just buy an extension cable for the controllers. Problem solved.

That's quite short, I can see it being an issue to some people.

Is the same connector as the wii controller, the Mini Nes is probably compatible with the Wii Classic controller.

There are extension cables for wii that I imagine should work just fine with the console and they are like 5$

Just one meter long?Goddamit, you need to be standing 1 meter away from the tv to play this.

^ That works. Now Ninty, include it in every controller package :P

And you'll also need a longer micro usb cable to charge the device.