Fun Fact: The only thing the Nintendo “Seal of Approval” guaranteed was that the company creating the game was an official licensee of Nintendo and that the game worked on the NES.
That’s why you don’t see the “Seal of Approval” on Tengen NES games.
Crap. I had a post but the hamsters ate it. Its point was that out of the list of games in Wikipedia for Wii titles, I’ve got an interest in roughly 20, and a quarter of that list are games that I’d get for the 360 instead of the Wii, like Far Cry, Manhunt, or Madden.
Honestly, I think that the big problem is that nostalgia really dominates our perception of Nintendo. The first crop of Nintendo-developed games are “supposed” to be instant classics. Nintendo set the bar pretty damned high.
Back to the topic, though, the Virtual Console should have had every damned title they currently have access to at launch. That’s still inexcusable.
And what a lot of us are saying is that they’ve hit that mark with Zelda, Wii Sports and Mario Galaxy. And we’re also saying there are plenty of goods are great fun, but not classics that will be remembered forever.
But again, that’s unreasonable. It takes time to work the license rights. It takes time to translate the game to work on the Wii hardware. And if everything was dumped on the service at once, third parties would be pissed (and rightly so). Can you imagine trying to sell a largely unknown (but possibly great) game that has to compete with Nintendo’s entire back catalog?
I’m getting a Wii relatively soon. I’m sure my girlfriend might want Zelda, so I’ll get it and give you my impression on it. Wii Sports hasn’t bowled me over really, but I am looking forward to Mario Galaxy.
It’s not unreasonable. I might be completely wrong, but they were doing licensing battles back when the Wii was still the Revolution. They’ve got the games that are licensed now. Release them. I don’t care about games competing with others that they released 20 years ago. If the Wii’s new offerings can’t compete with a 20 year old game, then the new game shouldn’t even be released. Again, yes, it’s a big catalog of games, but they shouldn’t make the decision for us that if they released them all, we’d be overwhelmed. Let me be overwhelmed. I want to make the decision. Besides, paying a little bit for nostalgia doesn’t impact the desire for the new game (assuming you’re not spending 300 bucks on nostalgia).
No no, you misunderstand. I mean why would third parties release their games on the Virtual Console if they have no hope of competing with Nintendo games on the Virtual Console.
I loved The Legend of Kage on the NES and when I found it on the VC, I bought it right away. But why would Taito release a relatively niche NES game if it had to compete with every other Nintendo-published game ever?
It’s business, that’s all I’m saying.
Exactly. If Nintendo immediately put up every single NES game they possibly could on the VC, how many copies of Urban Champion do you think they would have sold? Heck, how many TurboGrafix-16 games do you think they would have sold?
Doing a few releases a week also gives them the opportunity to build up hype when they’re about to have another big release in a series, which is why Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. 3 dropped just a week before their Wii iterations were released. It also lets them do stuff like the imports week they did a while ago, which brought much-needed attention to the glory that is Sin & Punishment.
And this lets them talk about the Virtual Console for the entire life of the Wii. If they just dumped everything immediately, there would never be any event that would allow them to advertise the thing, and XBox Live Arcade and PSN would get all the attention.
Yeah, I have the Wii game Boogie, and it comes with a mic.
Nintendo already owns the rights to the things that would conceivably be released on the Virtual Console. Not only that, but I guess getting something for a 20 year old game is better than getting nothing.
It’s not like they can’t do something like what Microsoft does and have periodic new little game releases for download.
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They do not own the rights to all of the games. They only own the rights to games published by Nintendo.
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WiiWare (original downloaded games on the Wii) launches on May 12.
Not ALL the games, but they had to secure rights to Donkey Kong country because it was made be Rare, who is now owned by Microsoft. In any case, everything they do have should be released.
Not going to go into deep analysis here… but the line between “good game” and “hit or miss depending on what floats your boat” gets drawn underneath No More Heroes on that GameRankings list… I’d be willing to kick up Trauma Center and Fire Emblem and call it an even ten good games that are out so far. Also, three of the top five are available in 90% (or more) similar versions for the systems that many of us already owned.
That isn’t true. Nintendo owns the rights to Donkey Kong Country because it features a Nintendo character, but Rare owns the rights to all other Rare-developed games.
Nintendo never got rid of their Seal of Quality (not Approval). It’s still there, although it now reads just “Official Nintendo Seal.” As Justin_Bailey pointed out, the Seal does not represent whether or not a game is good- just that Nintendo has either made or licensed the game for use on its systems.
Right. I was joking about the seal - the point was merely that it’s pretty unreasonable to blame Nintendo because developers aren’t doing a good job of porting their games over to the Wii.
Blaming them implies that they should be doing something about it - as if Apple deserves the blame for a Mac game that doesn’t work.
I must have misremembered the Rare/Microsoft/Nintendo problem, then. I do know that Bond games are in EA’s domain (right?).
Rare owns Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. However, Activision owns the rights to Bond games in general, meaning they have to agree to release it too (Goldeneye, not PD, since that isn’t a Bond license.)
Apparently there was a failed project recently to remaster Goldeneye for the Xbox Live Arcade, but… there were too many conflicting developer/licenser/publisher/profiteer interests to be considered for it to get off the ground successfully, tho some of the first level was rendered rather nicely.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=183250
Of course, the reporters with all the screenshots are using this to sell some little-known paper rag, so… the it may take awhile for everything to appear on the internet 
Ah…we were so close too…
I’m holding out for SNK Baseball before i buy a Wii. Heck, it may be the Wii 2 by then.