Will the Wii U Virtual Console Ever Match the Wii's? - Article
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 30 September 2014 / 17,321 Views
Nintendo’s Wii U online store, the eShop, is home to current releases, indie titles, and classic games of yesteryear. The store is updated with new entries weekly, but when it comes to the state of the Wii U Virtual Console specifically, the quantity and variety is sorely lacking for a system that has been on the market for almost two years now, particularly when compared to the content that its older sibling, the Wii, offered in the same timeframe.
When the Wii’s Virtual Console opened shop, Nintendo provided a very respectable amount of classic games to build up the library. For a good part of its life, the Wii’s Virtual Console was the recipient of three classic games a week, and not only ROMs spanning all previous Nintendo home consoles (sans GameCube), but games from several classic systems including the Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, and TurboGrafx-16. Later, the Virtual Console was host to Neo Geo games of yore and even a few arcade-perfect ROMs as well. Over the span of its life, the Wii Virtual Console accrued over 400 titles from a variety of different platforms.
Thus far, the Wii U Virtual Console contains classics from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, and more recently, the Game Boy Advance, which is indeed a welcome addition. N64 titles, while still currently absent, are also coming, and there have been rumors that GameCube games will eventually find their way to the service as well. While that’s certainly encouraging, Nintendo hasn’t been aggressive in bringing games from other company’s platforms the way they did with the Wii’s Virtual Console.
Clearly, contracts must be renegotiated for games to be brought to a new platform, but if Nintendo really wants people to transfer content from the Wii to the Wii U, effectively moving all of their Virtual Console library over to the new system, they must first have those games available on the eShop in order to take advantage of having them playable on the Gamepad for off-TV play. Otherwise, there is little incentive to perform a system transfer other than to have both libraries reside on a single console – an action which has its benefits, but also means that the two consoles cannot be used independently of one another.
Many people would much prefer to keep the classic Genesis or TurboGrafx ROMs they’ve collected on their Wii separate from their Wii U. This gives people the ability to have their original Wii be home to a host of retro gaming:8-bit and 16-bit games from a variety of classic consoles, several arcade ROMs, N64 titles, full GameCube backwards compatibility, and of course, Wii games themselves.
Regarding non-Nintendo consoles, maybe licensing costs are just not worth the return they’d see. There have been several titles featured on the Wii Virtual Console that were later removed, possibly for similar reasons, including all of the R-Type games, the entire Commodore 64 library, and even Nintendo’s own Donkey Kong Country series. Strangely, there were also many classics that never made their way to the service at all, most notably three of Nintendo’s own highly regarded Super Nintendo epics:Starfox, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, and Earthbound, which has actually already made its way to Wii U’s Virtual Console.
Let’s just hope that Nintendo is intent on the Wii U Virtual Console matching, nay, exceeding the sheer quantity of wonderful retro content available on its predecessor, which was one of the system's most underrated features.
