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?

Everything old is… scrubbed for new licenses?

Kotaku reports that the Wii VC re-release of Tecmo Bowl has had the real NFL player names “scrubbed” from the game since EA now owns the NFL license.

Is it just me, or is this kind of crazy and oddly revisionist?  I suppose it makes some sense, but it’s kind of stupid at the same time.  Should every game that ever came out before EA bought the NFL license be recalled and scrubbed for “infringing” content?  None of the players from the game are playing any more anyway.  Can’t we just let old games be old games?

The Wii60 Goes Mainstream

This isn’t going to be news to anyone likely to read this site, but Slate just posted an article by their resident “Gaming” writer, Chris Suellentrop, about the joys of casual gaming.  He owns a Wii and 360 and has apparently been playing more Texas Hold ‘Em than is traditionally considered healthy.

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