Nintendo’s Virtual Console – the Wii’s trump card

As big a fan as I am of Xbox live and Market Place, I must state that it has delivered quite a menail number of downloadable games as I would have expected at this point. I know that MS is relying on third parties to deliver the goods, but for crying out loud its been 8 months since the 360 has launched and there are maybe 20 titles (i think less) available for download (not counting game demos).

We have been hearing over and over that SFII will be available and be playable over XBL, but we still have yet to see that materialize. I wonder how much longer we will be waiting for SFII before we actually see it.

I cannot wait to see what kind of library will be available for download on launch day for the Wii Virtual Console. Since emulation software should already be built in for all the nintendo consoles, all that should be required are the ROM downloads. Of course it would be nice to see if they could rework some classics for network play...imagine playing classic 2 player contra with a friend that lives across the country.

I also hope they rework the lightgun games from the nes and snes for use with the Wii lightgun controller.

So it will be very exciting to see what all content is made available for the VC on luanch day and continue to watch its library and popularity grow as the machine matures into the killer next gen (or should i say not so next gen) system.

I totally agree.

Not looking forward to virtual console at all really...give me metriod prime 3, zelda:ttp, mario gaxaly, sonic wild fire, final fantasy, fire emblem, red steal, and maybe even wii sports and im good for a bit...I say bring on the new I have played the old. I admit it would be nice to have that feeling of playing the nes again but if feel i will only be able to stand playing for a short period of time b4 i get drawn back to this gen

"Of course it would be nice to see if they could rework some classics for network play...imagine playing classic 2 player contra with a friend that lives across the country."

YES!!
that'd be fantastic!
That's a great idea. Same could go for any multiplayer game. Bomberman, SF, Sensi etc.

The thing I find interesting about the virtual console concept is the one that was rpeorted the other day. Where they can make small games. short fun things a bit like the alien Hominid flash game or maybe even old arcade games.
Did anyone ever play that game that was like a pencil and paper version of quake? That's the sort of thing I imagine we'll be seeing.

I think the more I hear about it though, the more I'm starting to think that Wii is in need of a harddisk. Sure old roms won't take up much space but demos and new downloadable games will.

My only concern about this is where are you going to store all this stuff? They have the 512mb flash memory but can you upgrade this, buy more memory cards? But then it would still be annoying having to flick between lots of different memory cards...

You need a big fat HDD for this...

I wouldn't think you'd need more than 5 GB unless you intend to download every single game which nintendo offers for download, there is a possibility that they could even stream the games over the internet. Even N64 games don't go over 64 MB. There's two usb 2.0 slots which could offer an external hard drive for use or there's WiFi and bluetooth which you could use to connect hard drives. Anyway 1 GB SD card only costs about £20 right now, if you know where to look so by the time the Wii is released you should be able to get 2 GB for about that price.

Can you plug more SD cards into it then?

yes, If I remember correctly, it may have to SD slots? but then again, the amount of times I do remember correctly is few.

But yeah, combine an SD card with a jump drive (or whatever you others call the keyring USB drives) and you should be okay for most things...maybe not too many demos, but how often are you actually going to keep demos on the machine once you've played them?

Sd cards are pretty cheap now.
2gb cards don't cost that much. I've been tempted to buy a new one for my camera
but
a small Harddisk would work out cheaper and easier.

it'll most likely be like cell phone games... or even liek xbox live arcade... you pay for a game and its yours. even if you delete it from your hard drive (or flashmem or SD card or whatever) its still yours as the sunsciption info is stored on the server so you can redownload at any time. This way all the games you buy will be yours to play at will but you dotn necesarily have to have them all in local mem at all times.

This is realy the only way i see this working for them. The good thing for ninty is that 90% of all the games people want are smaller than even a trailer on xboxLive. Perhaps some sort of streaming of all content with no local save woudl work as well but soem people might not like the ocasional "loading..." screen when an n64 game is DLing.

I don't see any problem with a 512 mb memory to store my stuff. If it is, Nintendo already said the Wii will support almost every USB memory device known to man. Have a problem with storage? Plug in a 100 gb USB hard drive... problem solved.

Love the VC idea. I'm looking forward to discovering all those games I used to gaze at longlingly on store shelves but couldn't afford as a kid. Add imports to that list and I'll be very busy.

Indeed I'll be investing in a good large external HD for mine. Kind of tired of card, except for the portability.

The 360 will be my main gaming platform, but the Wii is looking like a good choice for times when you fancy someting a little differnet.

how the downloadable games will work, is going to be interesting to look at, for once i have high hopes for Nintendo.

Yeah I'll bag a 360 for a second choice console whne not on the Wii.

Thing is few games are grabbing me on 360 so far. Lost Planet, Dead Rising and online Burnout are my main reasons to buy at the mo.

Have to keep my Xbox though, I just don't trust MS half hearted compatibility issues for 360. Either do it properly or no at all.

I doubt Nintendo will have these kind of stupid problem with Wii, that's why the are the true geniuses of the industry.

It has the capacity to be a huge failure - I can certainly see the draw of all these retro game, but has many a gamer that has dabbled with retro will tell you, the past isn't all it's cracked up to me.

Sure there are a few gems that stand the passage of time, but 95% of all those old gems turn out to be ill-recalled turds when played today.

I can see there being a large spike of interest with each new Wii gamer, followed by a vary rapid fall-off in interest.

It's money for old rope for the publishers, and it won't take long gamers too long to drop that rope and return to "proper" games.