Money can be exchanged for goods and services

Attention game industry, we already have a standard for which we can purchase items: money.  Let’s use it, shall we?

Obviously, we all know about Xbox Live Points, which inexplicably have a conversion rate of 80 points to every $1.  There’s just no reason to have such a stupid conversion rate except to slightly obscure the true price of downloadable items.

Nintendo/Wii Points are slightly better, but only because they have a sensible conversion rate of 100 points to every $1.  At least when you buy something there’s not a weird conversion that you have to pull off in your head to figure out how much it is.  Now we learn, however, that instead of just using the same pool of Nintendo points for DSi downloads, you will have to keep completely separate accounts for both.

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Bionic Idiocy

With Bionic Commando: Rearmed’s release imminent this week, there was bound to be some interest in the original game.  You would think that the Nintendo Wii’s virtual console would be the perfect place for it, and considering that Rearmed isn’t making it to the Wii, the original Bionic Commando would be the perfect release this week to go along with the 360/PS3/PC release of Rearmed.  Apparently, you’d be wrong.  For some strange reason that Capcom doesn’t go into, Nintendo blocked the release of Bionic Commando on the Virtual Console.  Kotaku speculates that it could be the “Nazi thing” or the “exploding head”, but honestly… those couldn’t really be the reasons, could they?  Nintendo has had far worse on their systems in a far more realistic fashion than what the old 8-bit system could offer (the Resident Evil’s and Call of Duty games spring immediately to mind).  So what in the world is Nintendo’s problem here?

June PSA

If you haven’t played River City Ransom before, buy it.  Then marvel that a 1989 NES game was this advanced.

Virtual Console = Money Saver?

Kotaku links to a post at Vintage Computing comparing all of the current Virtual Console releases to their “real world” cartridge values. The verdict that the author makes is that the VC is actually cheaper than if you were to buy the actual cartridges, except potentially in the case of NES games. It’s a fair comparison, but I think there are still other factors to consider:

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Ridiculous Wii Design Decision #800

I’d stop complaining about terrible Wii design decisions, but they just keep popping up.  My girlfriend got Elebits, one of her favorite Wii games, for the holidays, and spent quite some time playing around with it on my brother’s console.  No worries, we figure - we can just copy the save files onto our SD card and continue the game at home.  Lo and behold: for some insane and inexplicable reason, Elebits save files can’t be copied to an SD card!  For what possible reason?  Who knows!  I understand that random VC games have similar problems.  Ridiculous.

Bomberman Live(s)

This is why I often like what Microsoft is providing with the XBox Live Arcade over the Wii Virtual Console.  Say hello to 8-player online Bomberman Live.

Sure, the VC does get a lot of great, classic games.  The VC even got one of the better, “classic” Bomberman games.  That’s great, but it’s no HD Bomberman with 8-player online support.  Assuming it pans out, this will be an awesome update to a classic game.  Rather than making us pay for the same old classic game, the XBLA often actually gives us some extra added value for our money.   Of course, there’s no word on how much this will cost, but hopefully (and perhaps most likely) it’ll be no more than $10.  The extra $4 over the VC Bomberman would be well worth it if the online play works as well as it should.

XBLA also has a remake of the original Prince of Persia coming out.  My original favorite version of the game was the SNES one, so when I originally heard PoP was coming to XBLA as well, I figured I’d probably have to wait for the SNES version on the VC.   I was wrong on that one too.  Check out a videos for the enhanced “Prince of Persia: Classic” here.

I have no problem with what the VC is doing in theory.  I think it’s great that we can get nearly 100% accurate reproductions of older games, but given that XBLA is giving us updated versions of some of the same games within roughly the same price range, isn’t there any room for the VC to give us both the “classic” version of a game alongside an updated one?

A Glimmer of Hope

Five months of data doesn’t really count as much of a trend, but I’m pleased to see that Virtual Console sales are slowing a bit - the VC sold 1.5M games in the first two months it was out, but only 1.8M in the last three.  This isn’t exactly a monumental drop-off, but for those of us who hope that people will stop paying for such expensive (yet very old) titles, it’s a glimmer of hope.

Again, I’d be very interested in seeing some more VC-related statistics.  What’s the average number of VC titles purchased per person?  Are a few hundred thousand hardcore fans driving the entire platform?

LotMN Coming to VC

I’m glad to hear that Legend of the Mystical Ninja is coming to the Virtual Console - I was just thinking about it, in fact.  Depending on the price, I may very well pick it up, since I didn’t get to play much of it on the SNES.

I feel like you have to walk a narrow tightrope in VC releases to find games good enough to buy but not so great that you already bought them.  If you had to pick 3 games to appear on the VC (or XBLA, for that matter), what would they be? 

Blatant Money Grab of the Day?

Apparently, Konami is releasing the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (#1) for 600 points as part of their “Ultra Games” series.  As someone who has played the game, I can tell you that the odds of it being worth 500 points are relatively slim.  It’s mind-numbingly difficult, graphically dated, and controls erratically. 

I suspect someone at Konami decided to capitalize on the new movie release and figured that they can get some extra money off of it.  In fact, the only reason I see it being released at all is because of the film.  Otherwise, Turtles in Time should be rushed more than anything.

Obscure Chinese Novels Are Not Gaming Gold

I’m going to come out and say it: Romance of the 3 Kingdoms represents everything that’s wrong with the Virtual Console.  When they announced the VC, I had visions of easy access to every game in the Nintendo library.  Instead, they’ve been dribbling out Double Dungeons.

But the problem isn’t just the meager release schedule.  It’s the meager release schedule combined with the fact that the releases are games that just about everyone already owns.  If Nintendo is only going to release a handful of games a month, I don’t need an 8th copy of Ocarina of Time.  I need a first copy of Little Nemo (I rented).

Does anyone know exactly what is required to release a VC game?  I had assumed that all Nintendo needed to do was put out an emulated copy of a title, taking maybe a day or two but not really involving much effort.  Otherwise, why would they not release all their games in big batches?