A Look Back at Virtual Console - Scott The Woz

Hello everyone, Scott here! I started a petition to force unemployment checks to be given out as 3DS eShop cards, that way no one will have an excuse not to have fun being unemployed! *angry shouting in

back

ground* THAT is the happiest angry mob I have ever seen! Now, why wouldn't they be? They can access the Virtual Console and purchase Mole Mania. I am a simple man. I love this. Not these. Video game

console

s are great, I love them, but it's unnecessarily complicated to have like 12 different systems. As time goes on, it becomes much more convenient to have all your games, both old and new, on one system.

Having a bunch of old systems plugged in at once is my favorite t-shirt right now, and leaving them all unplugged and in the closet makes you less likely to mess with them, you have to take everything out and find all the cables that come with it just to give you Realize that you're pulling out a Sega CD just to play Double Switch. It is a disaster! I love games on these older systems. I want to play them, but having more than three systems connected at once can be ridiculous, and leaving old

console

s in the closet makes gaming more complicated.

Now, different video game consoles have their own charm. Playing games made for the system on the console it originated on just feels natural in some cases, and you become a little attached to those old plastic boxes. But what if I told you that you can play your old favorite games on your new system? Having legacy content on new systems is very good. Sure, you'll probably play more of the new titles made specifically for that system, but the dream is simply to be able to play the older games without having to dig out an old console. It's very convenient to have these older titles available to play on the system you play the most.

That even if you don't play the older titles much, just having them available makes it easier for me to sleep at night. Old games on new platforms isn't something they came up with uh, um, I don't know, like four days ago, it's been around for over three decades. We can trace the re-releases

back

to old arcade games released on the NES and then remakes of NES games released on the SNES. SNES games were repackaged on the PS1. Compilations of all different types of old PS2 games. But with the original Xbox, the whole concept of re-releasing old games changed with the introduction of Xbox Live Arcade.

You would have to insert an Xbox Live Arcade disc, but then you could download smaller titles. Things like Feeding Frenzy! And dig dig. OH! Yes, classic games were available for download on Xbox. And although this feature of the console was not the most well-known, the idea went completely crazy as soon as the next generation consoles came out, especially with the Wii. It had a lot of classic downloadable games; all under the title of “Virtual Console”, a

virtual

way to play older consoles. The success on Wii was such that Nintendo continued the brand on Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and that's it.

I have many memories of the Virtual Console and the three systems it appeared on. So let's take a

look

at the service and the ups, downs and Urban Champions for $5.00 that came with it. At E3 2005, Nintendo unveiled its next system, the Nintendo Revolution, when people thought it was going to be incredibly powerful and the final name wouldn't make me lose control. One of the main aspects of the system detailed at the event was its compatibility with GameCube games. Yes, you can use both GameCube games that incorporated the feature into the logo. I'm really surprised that others haven't gone for this design.

But it was not only going to be backward compatible with GameCube games, but also with all games; NES, SNES and N64 games digitally downloadable through a "

virtual

console", as they say. This was a major deal. Nintendo home consoles didn't really have backwards compatibility back then. In reality, they only did it with their portable devices. Sure, you could play some old Game Boy games on the TV with some of them and some games were re-released, but generally you had to keep your old systems to play your old games. This way, you could play all the new Nintendo games, play your old GameCube discs, and download titles from all the other systems.

You didn't need those old pieces of shit anymore. It was great The Virtual Console was detailed in more detail at E3 2006 Right around that time, Nintendo officially announced that the real name of the revolution was You've got to be fucking kidding me. All of these older games could be played with the "Retro-Motes", apparently the maiden name of the Wii Classic controller. I loved the E3 2006 UI for the Virtual Console. Being able to see 3D renders of the box art was a nice touch. When the Wii launched on November 19, 2006, you could go to the Wii Shop Channel and download 12 titles in total on the NES, SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis.

Yes, even Sega got in on the fun with Ultra Beast and Sonic. the Hedgehog, the launch line had some of the biggest games you'd probably want, like Mario 64 and Zelda, but they also launched it with Wario's Woods and soccer. Wario's Woods is an impulse buy at Walmart at best, Nintendo strategy with Virtual Console re-release The games were always interesting, to say the least, as Nintendo did not release another Virtual Console game after launch until two weeks later, and it was just Donkey Kong Jr. At least the Virtual Console had plenty of third-party support, so it definitely helped fix things just two days after the Wii launched.

TurboGrafX 16 titles appeared in the store. Genesis titles were constantly being added, and Nintendo was just sitting there releasing ice hockey and tennis back to back. But then, on Christmas Day 2006, Nintendo finally re-released Super Mario Brothers. It's crazy It wasn't available at launch, but it paid for an incredibly clever release on Christmas Day if you didn't download Super Mario Brothers on your Wii, which was punishable by death in some countries as time went on, added more Neo Geo systems. Sega Master System, even Commodore 64 Virtual Console Arcade was added in 2009, which was supposed to be a place for old school arcade games to roam freely and instead was barely supported.

The NES games got the most love of the 90 released here And then at the bottom of the line was N64 with only 21 games total. I've sneezed more games than that before the Virtual Console was ridiculously active from 2006 to 2008. But after that Nintendo already released most of its big titles in late 2008. So it was up to third parties to pick up the pace afterwards. , for some reason, from spring 2012 to summer 2013. SNK released 25, many of them Neo Geo games. Long after the Wii U launched, some games were delisted over time, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES SimCity on the SNES.

ALL Commodore 64 games disappeared in 2013. Final Fight games, Yoshi's Cookie, some of the Street Fighters, Donkey Kong Country games disappeared in 2012 and then reappeared in 2015 for some zombie reason, since As time went on the Wiis Virtual Console was running out of steam with some D-lists and fewer games added, but that didn't detract from the overall experience of having all of these systems represented on the Wii; It was magical, not only were people able to relive childhood memories playing their favorite. NES and SNES Games But many could create new memories by playing these classic games for the first time.

I mean how it was the perfect platform for NES games. You

look

at the Wii remote and give it a little bit of this (Going) (Going). ) (On the way) (Almost there) Boom NES controller, you have all the buttons there and it feels close enough to work Well, since the Wii remote didn't have enough buttons for many of the other platforms offered, you would have to use the The Wii Classic Controller or the GameCube Controller, the Classic Controller was pretty good for SNES games, but a little cramped for something like the N64, and then they re-released the Pro Classic Controller, which was much more appropriate for 3D gaming.

The GameCube controller is very similar. Brilliant. for 3d. Ho-hum for 2D torture is to consider playing a SNES game on this thing. Buttons are everywhere and you can't change the button layout for most VC games. I think you could do that with Virtual Console arcade titles. But I never downloaded them. Any of those most games are pretty faithful to their original releases. You'll do anything crazy like apply filters or whatever. But some of them added a bit of online play to Super Street Fighter 2 on the Sega Genesis. I still get chills every time I hear that you can exit a game and come back right where you left off with most titles except n64 and Neo Geo games.

I always felt worried when doing this, you don't specifically press the save button or whatever, you just leave it. the game and I hope to God when you come back continue where you left off. Some problematic things, like brand names or flashing lights, were dimmed or removed entirely. Some features were added, such as being able to save your Pokémon photos to the Wii. message board But overall, if you were playing a virtual console game and you were playing the original version, the games look pretty good. Sure, the NES games seemed a little boring, but they look as organic as if you were playing them on an original console.

If you look at the NES emulation now, it's stupidly sharp and colorful. But in my opinion, it seems a little more artificial. It doesn't look like it came from an original NES. Do not misunderstand. This looks much better, but it seems more natural. The prices for the games were pretty fair, but they were pretty standard across the entire console catalog. NES games usually cost 500 Wii Points, or five bones, SNES and Genesis cost 8, N64 10, Turbo Graphics 16 was what they fancied that morning. At least they kept things consistent and memorable, it was easy for me to know exactly how much it would cost again, but still, Mario 3 and Soccer were exactly the same price.

Oh. They were now offering some games that were never released in North America, which was awesome. However, they were more expensive than regular games because they were labeled as imported. What the hell are you talking about? You're not importing anything. It's a digital file! Now, I really wanted to have Virtual Console games in 2009, but the term Wi-Fi was completely foreign to my family at the time I had to do it... SO MUCH that damn research when I was 12 and I found the USB Wi connector -Nintendo Fi. I told my parents that was the ticket to downloading Wario's Woods, DAMN.

We went to Circuit City and left with this. I knew for a fact it wasn't what I wanted, but whatever it was, it was a third-party Ethernet adapter for the Wii. We didn't get a Wi-Fi router until a couple of months later, so I had to clumsily connect my Wii via an Ethernet cable every time I wanted to connect. But it worked! I bought Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3, Punch-Out, Kid Icarus, Megaman 1 and 2, Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country, there were so many great games that I played again on the Wii Virtual Console or played for the first time.

But the Wii only covered home console games, which was only half of Nintendo's catalog. The Nintendo DSi came out in late 2008 and featured its own online store similar to the Wii Shop Channel, but it did not have a Virtual Console. It always seemed strange to me. They got rid of Game Boy Advance compatibility with this DS model. So I thought this would have been a perfect time to force us to buy those games digitally along with the Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Well, we ended up having to wait until 2011 to do that. The Nintendo 3DS came out in March and later in June the Nintendo eShop launched, finally bringing the Virtual Console to a handheld.

The Game Boy and Game Boy Color games were eventually re-released if they were a lot of fun, mainly because the 3DS had no games at the time. So I was happy to play Super Mario Land and Link's Awakening. The games were blown up a bit and I looked at them. dead. Blurry for my taste. Now you can hold down Select while the game was starting up to minimize the image and it looked much sharper and you also cut out this fun Gameboy border. You can even use the 3D slider to sync the screen and make it feel more realistic.

Is really nice. tap Also, if you hold LR and press Y, you can switch between black and white or the original green of the first Gameboy model. There is now a much more responsible saving function. But you still can't assign the buttons as you want because of the fashion. Gameboy games use B and A, you have to clear them system-wide to comfortably play something like a Mario game. Sega Game Gear games were finally added in March2012 (Silence) Oh yeah, I never saw anyone even remotely concerned about this addition. I like that the Game Gear games were here, but no one was talking about them.

The NES games were added in February 2012 starting with the original Super Mario Brothers and I'll admit it here: the release of Super Mario Brothers on the 3ds Virtual Console was the first time I beat the game. Fortunately, with NES games you can use X as another button. for B, which main game is much more fun? What's weird? Does pressing X in Gameboy games bring up the Virtual Console menu with NES? That's not the case, finally yes, NES games came to the 3DS. Oh wait, sorry, the new 3DS models started in March 2016. Apparently the CPU of the original 3DS just couldn't handle SNES games.

That's embarrassing. I don't know, this was something that I felt like if they tried a little harder they could probably run SNES games on the original 3DS models. But they just gave up and went with the new 3DS, just my main problem with SNES games. on 3DS, although it was when they came out in 2016, I've kind of lost interest in the 3DS Virtual Console at the moment and haven't downloaded any SNES games through the system so far, so first impressions are nice, yeah the games They don't look too much. hot but when you go into settings and turn on pixel perfect mode, oh my god, the games look so good.

They look great on the 3DS screen because they aren't trying to scale up the game or anything. They show it in the original resolution and it looks beautiful on a 3ds screen. Now this is a fair lineup for the 3ds virtual console, but one of the systems is strangely missing. Because the 3DS simply WAS NOT. I need sales expectations in July 2011. The price was reduced from 250 bones to a measly 170 to show their appreciation. people who bought the 3DS instead of paying their mortgage offered early adopters 20 free Virtual Console games 10 new 10 Game Boy Advance These were given to ambassadors for free before anyone else could buy them now NES games They were all available Finally in the eShop the Game Boy Advance games were only available to early adopters or as Nintendo called them ambassadors, unfortunately I chose the 3DS at the top right when the price changed so I never got these games .

The only thing I never understood was many. People would ask Nintendo why GBA games weren't available on the 3DS Virtual Console and they would always say, oh, it's hard to get GBA to work properly on the 3DS BUT THEY ALREADY PUT GBA GAMES ON THE 3DS. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! I was mainly behind the original Gameboy titles for 3DS. I hate those things, they cost about 4 dollars a piece, 3 dollars for the simplest sets. I already played a lot of NES games on the Wii, so I don't really buy many on the 3DS. Game Boy was much more interesting to revisit. because in many cases this was the first time these games were re-released Mega Man & Dr.

Wily's Revenge, the Mario Land games, especially Mario Land 2 Donkey Kong 94 Link's Awakening, the original Gameboy Tetris was released, which was awesome, and it was later. removed from the list... But hey, I got it. The Game Boy Pokémon games were finally released in 2016 and went on to make the Game Boy Color games in 2017 and then Pokémon Crystal in 2018. Just think about that, a Game Boy Color Virtual Console game came out in 2018. Although I didn't buy a lot of NES stuff on 3DS They brought some Japanese exclusive games for the first time, at reasonable prices The Mysterious Murasame made castle and Summer Carnival '92 Recca finally came out of Japan Only on 3DS, not on Wii or Wii U only 3DS ...Well, moving on to Wii U, the system launched in November 2012, but there was no Virtual Console in sight.

You can launch Wii Mode on Wii U to access standard Wii elements, and here you can download and play Virtual Console games. But they were only available in Wii mode. You couldn't play them with the Wii U gamepad or the pro controller or anything like that. It was basically playing Wii Virtual Console games on a Wii on a Wii U. Finally, in January 2013, Nintendo announced a traditional Virtual Console for the system if you transfer content from your Wii to the Wii U. You could upgrade your Wii Virtual Console games Wii U versions at reduced prices once they became available.

They have this promotion going on for the family when the 30th anniversary rolls around. Where every month for a while in 2013 They offered an NES or SNES game for 30 cents. That was a really cool way to get my bank to call me about suspicious activity on my account because the most it cost was 30 cents. The balloon fight was the first. It launched in January and they offered one game a month as part of the promotion. But this was just a soft launch, the official launch of the Wii U Virtual Console was on April 26, 2013 and no one cared about the magic of these games being playable on modern systems. was gone.

These were all games that were released through the Wii Virtual Console. There was nothing new here. The Wii U Virtual Console games were a bit more robust. You had a much more responsible safe space, like in the 3ds, and you could change the layout of the buttons to your liking, which was fantastic. You could open the manual and flip through it on the Wii U gamepad. And play the entire game on the gamepad in general. That was a nice feature, but it didn't help that they were still the same games we played on the Wii U.

The Wii Virtual Console and still nowhere near all of them. Nintendo was just going to slowly release its Virtual Console games over and over again like a Link to the Past, it's cool. But we already have it in wheat, so bring it back to the market. Wii U in 2014 wasn't as exciting or as important as Nintendo wanted it to be. There was also the problem of the Wii U Virtual Console systems. What systems? Only NES and SNES games were available at launch and then Game Boy Advance games a year later than Game Boy Advance games were ordered on the Wii U.

I think it's fair to say that most ran the GameCube or N64 or Game Boy Advance games were available. to buy on 3DS, but NO, Nintendo really threw a curveball with that one. Nintendo 64 finally followed in 2015 along with DS games. That was pretty good. It was great to finally be able to play DS games on the TV. Even if they weren't as fun to play on the TV? It just feels a little awkward, they give you a bunch of different display methods but you have to manually change them for every game you play and sometimes none of them feel all that natural.

Wii games became available for digital purchase in early 2015, sometimes called Virtual Console titles, right? But yes, they offered Wii games in digital format. Well. I can now play these games on my Wii U. Sure, it's nice to have an option to download a game, but it's not very exciting. And finally, the latest system to be offered on the Wii U Virtual Console... TurboGrafx, what the fuck. Most of the TurboGrafx-16 games that came out for the Wii U... Came out after the launch of the Nintendo Switch. Now the SNES and GBA games looked phenomenal on the Wii U.

Actually, these games cleaned up incredibly well and looked beautiful over HDMI. So what the hell happened here? NES and N64 games look like GARBAGE. They are faded, too dark, blurry and not at all pleasant to look at! I know I kind of praised the Wii Virtual Console and how the NES games looked with it, but keep in mind that the Wii was not an HD system and was from 2006. I liked how the organic games looked, but I expected that they did it. be sharper, clearer and more colorful on the Wii U. The DS games look good, I really don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the emulation.

It's more the fact that I don't think DS games age that well visually. Now, the way you got some interesting releases from VC, EarthBound is finally re-released. That was a big one and it skipped the Wii Virtual Console even after a name wada appeared at e3 2005. The idea of ​​a single device that transports us back to the first Excitebike, EarthBound. It should make us feel young again. But it ultimately came out for two dollars more than the standard SNES games. Well, but not only that Earthbound Beginnings finally premiered outside of Japan. That was a whopping $2 more awesome than the standard NES game Duck Hunt and a few other NES games as weapons were first re-released in the Virtual Console versions using the Wii Remote's pointer.

There were some good things, but they were few and far between. And when they started releasing more interesting games, many people, including me, simply lost interest. They had a major problem with the timing of the release of these games. We already played most of these games on the Wii, they weren't exciting anymore. But they were still drip-fed over a four-year period. For some reason, Mario 3 was announced for a Virtual Console released in August 2013 and came out in April 2014. How the hell did Mario 3 get delayed? They never released Yoshi's cookie. They said they were going to release it and they never did.

Well that was all. The Virtual Console brand ended with Wii U. I understand getting rid of the name just because it doesn't mean much anymore. That doesn't mean classic games aren't classic games. that are sold on modern Nintendo systems Of course they are Nintendo offers older games as full releases or as a bonus for signing up for their online service. Third-party companies release their old games through the Nintendo Classic Games app or on their own. across collections are just simple releases from the eShop. However, I think it's fair to say that I miss the Virtual Console even considering all of its problems.

Oh yeah, getting collections of mostly old games makes you end up paying less for all of them. I really loved it. the uniformity of the Virtual Console games, the fact that they all had similar icons in their menu, made it feel much more like they were real games apart from your actual collection. It was a much simpler method of releasing older games than how they are released now. You have to buy builds with a bunch of them that you might not even want or they're too expensive or they're part of a subscription service and because of that, games are released incredibly slowly because it's probably more complicated than games licensed for that console.

Virtual are easy. to understand and it was fun to discover old games you may not have played or rediscover old favorites, however I'm inclined to say that the service peaked with the Wii on almost every console you could have wanted offered with the 3DS and the WiiU. Always automatic missions. Why did Genesis and Master System never come to Wii U? Why did it take so long to get n64 or even turbo graphics 16? Why didn't GameCube games ever come out? If you lied to me that Nintendo was not trying hard enough with the Wii U Virtual Console and in some cases also the 3DS and we see that continuing today with the Nintendo switch They spend an entire year just re-releasing NES games while with the In the three latest systems, they resold the same NES games.

And that's why... Nobody cares anymore! Nostalgia for NES games has completely stalled! There's still some great NES stuff out there, but the amount of love for the system isn't growing as much as it was in 2006. Games from the N64, GameCube, and Wii era are the big nostalgia moneymakers right now. People who grew up with those systems are old enough to want to play them again. But NES games are much easier to re-release! That's why we mainly receive them. I miss the Wii Virtual Console era because it didn't seem like Nintendo was making excuses about what they'll re-release and what they won't, and now it seems like they're saying, "Oh, GameCube games are so hard to re-release." Here's Wrecking Crew, you'll like it!" Still, even if the service got worse with each console it came out on, I'm going to miss the Virtual Console.

Even if Yoshi's Cookie never came to Wii U. Am I the only one who cares? that? GENERAL POPULATION! Do you give a damn that Yoshi's Cookie never came to the Wii U Virtual Console? General Population: NO Scott: You heard it here first folks!