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Console Downloads Retro Roundup
Via GameSetWatch, 1up's look at recent virtual console releases on the Wii. The hub site's weekly retro roundup is going to make it a point to talk about Wii, 360, and PS3 downloadable games, with a focus on the old skool become new. They also will touch on old games rereleased on handheld systems, such as the fantastic FFIII. From the article: "Ecco the Dolphin - A curiously tranquil game that sees a normal dolphin embark on a quest to save his pod pals from a giant space vacuum, Ecco's nevertheless challenging -- besides oceanic hazards, our hero constantly faces the threat of suffocation should he stay underwater for too long. The idiosyncratic (read: sort of awkward) controls certainly don't make things any easier. All told, they make Ecco an acquired taste, and at the eight dollar standard rate for Genesis games this might be a tough sell. But we'll go ahead and give it the nod just for its boldness in straying from the beaten path. "
When most everyone else was busy playing with their PS2 and XBOX systems, my buddies and I discovered River City Ransom for the NES. This was several years before the game was re-announced and re-released for the GBA. We must have spent entire man-weeks in that game! Just because you are tired of the old games, doesn't mean that other people won't find them a lot of fun.
Bomberman '93 + 4 Wiimotes + 1 Gamecube controller == Instant party for 5 people. My Wii has logged more time into Bomberman than anything else except Twilight Princess so far. It's a blast! (I know I know...)
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Easy there old timer. I know how you feel about the classics and I can share your thoughts on how there is some real drek being pumped out of the industry these days. So don't bite my head off when I tell you that you are wrong... or at least a bit misguided. Gaming is far from dead.
Super Mario World and Ecco the Dolphin are classics and are better than many games today, but saying that companies are incapable of producing good games like "back in the day" is unfair. Twilight Princess is a really good game; the kind of thing that makes you want to play it just because it's combat is fun even though it has so many other things going for it. I want to beat the game so I can start it over again except that it would interfere with me playing the other good games that are out right now.
Yes, games today may have characters with well defined fingers and a majestic storyline. Is this so bad? I imagine that you were the type of person who got fed up with the industry in the '90s when they were doing tings like FMV and terrible 3D. I can understand as I've met many people like you, hell, I used to be someone like you. It wasn't until I learned to look for that gem in the rough that I finally learned how to appreciate the modern games as well as the classics.
Take off your rosy colored glasses for a second and remember that there was a lot of drek back in those days too. Super Hydlide? Alex Kidd in Enchanted Castle? Anything from LJN? Shaq Fu? Search your feelings Luke, you know it to be true.
Let me switch gears for a second with a true story. My aunt, who was responsible for introducing me to videogames back in '79 with the Bally Professional Arcade really was annoyed with games like Spy Hunter and Pitfall II for the 2600 because they had the nerve to try to include background music. By late 1985 when I showed her Super Mario Bros. for the first time, she had had enough of the industry. There were just too many gimmicks in these new games.
She was a true gamer back before video games were relegated entirely to the domain of teenage boys. The fact that she never gave a real classic like Super Mario Bros. a chance is appaling if you stop to think about it. Don't let this happen to you too.
Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go kill this giant enemy Gohma. Thanks to real time weapon changing I can flip it on it's back and strike the weak point for massive damage!
The thing is, on higher up consoles that are capable of high end graphics, people expect high end graphics. High end graphics cost a lot of money, and take a lot of time to make. That time cannot be used to enhance gameplay. SOME companies manage to balance both, but they are far and few in between.
Thats half the reason right there that Nintendo made a console that -forces- developers to give up on the fancy graphics. Hopefully it works, then we'll have games worth playing.
There's one thing I can think of when it comes to the virtual console (this was sometime around when I dumped $20 on my account to purchase The Legend of Zelda), that allowing these games for download have to be one of the closest things to having the proverbial 'money tree'.
Take Zelda alone. It's 500 points or $5.00. If there will be 4 million Wii's sold by 2007 (the estimate that Nintendo will have shipped 4 million units to North America, and that the likely hood that these will sell out is great). If 1-in-4 consoles download Zelda, or another VC game, that's $5 million that Nintendo just made. Sure, maybe it was a Sega game, but for simplicity, lets just say it all goes to Nintendo (because they're downloading Zelda, Mario, or whatever).
Now, that's a good amount of dough. But what's more impressive, is the fact that these games did not cost them significant amounts of money to produce! The code is already there. Emulation is far from a 'new' technology, it's fairly mature. I hardly doubt it takes a significant resources to 'flip' a game to the VC. Not that it takes none, but what, maybe $100,000 in labour? Maybe less? Eventually, I wouldn't doubt that the process of converting games becomes fairly automated.
After thinking about this, just from a Zelda perspective (and that there will be many downloads of this game, I wouldn't doubt reaching a 1 million mark fairly quickly), that the VC will probably be one of Nintendo's biggest cash cows with this new system. Sure, people and magazines can talk all day long about why system has the best 'launch titles', but the fact that the Wii has this emulation and plays GameCube, it works well (with the exception of the update fireware bug), and is easy to use, makes the Wii far more attractive it might be give credit for.
Though, with that said, I find $5 for a NES game to still be far to expensive. I'm willing to pay it for Zelda, but I cannot see paying that for anything else, except maybe Super Mario Word (SNES), which will probably cost around $8. I'd prefer to see $1 NES games, $3 SNES/Genesis, $5 N64. I think that would be more reasonable for these old games. They would get me to spend more money on VC games if they dropped the prices to that above, than they'll get from me with high prices. Other games I would spend money on would be, Dr Mario (NES), Baseball Stars (NES), Techmo Super Bowl (NES), and Golden Eye (N64). Maybe some RPG games, but not likely. If the prices where as inexpensive as above, I'd be buying racing games, Sonic games, nostalgic games like Conta, Blades of Steel, Double Dribble, Super Mario 2/3, Castlevania series, etc., etc.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell