Wii Shop for Virtual Console now open for business *UPDATE*
Guess the banner picture from Gamespot says it all, don’t it? Ding-ding-ding! The shop is now open for business. Now, if we only had a Wii to shop with… Sonic the Hedgehog and SimCity, okay… What? No Top Gun for the NES? Konami!!! (QJ editor’s note: Nintendo did announce that more titles will be added later on, no need to rant.)
Okay, to briefly cover these price points, so people can get to credit card-checking after Launch Day:
- NES: 500pts = $ 5.00
- SNES/Genesis: 800pts = $ 8.00
- N64: 1,000pts = $ 10.00
- TurboGrafx-16: no games in VC yet, but 600pts = $ 6.00
And now for the fun part. We already know, from the CVG inty with Ninty, that the basic programming of the classic games are faithfully reproduced for the Virtual Console, that’s-so-old-school jaggies and all. Ninty did throw a most useful feature into the mix, however: auto-save states. The Gamespot editors quit a Sonic game into the Channel menu, and were able to pick up and play from where they left off.
Question! Will there also be manually-saved save states so we can, you know, abuse it to complete those Sonic special stages? (Oops! Didn’t get the Emerald that time… RELOAD STATE!)
Here are more GameSpot pictures of the Wii Shop channel browsing for, and downloading Virtual Console titles. Please note, as Gamespot noted, the Mario-themed download progress bar. Or is it progress BLOCK?
UPDATE: badam also found this YouTube video (from no less than Chris “b**ch about your component cables” Kohler of Wired Blogs) of the Wii downloading Zelda, complete with elevator music and all. It’s rather quick to download the NES title, though. Not much of a head-splitting headache for Mario. And we’re rewarded with video of The Legend of Zelda (NES) on the Wii. Chris says if you’re using a widescreen TV, you gotta swap it to 4:3 mode or the VC display will stretch to fill the screen.
End update
List of video games available on Wii Shop after launch at the full article.
Guess the banner picture from Gamespot says it all, don’t it? Ding-ding-ding! The shop is now open for business. Now, if we only had a Wii to shop with… Sonic the Hedgehog and SimCity, okay… What? No Top Gun for the NES? Konami!!! (QJ editor’s note: Nintendo did announce that more titles will be added later on, no need to rant.)
Okay, to briefly cover these price points, so people can get to credit card-checking after Launch Day:
- NES: 500pts = $ 5.00
- SNES/Genesis: 800pts = $ 8.00
- N64: 1,000pts = $ 10.00
- TurboGrafx-16: no games in VC yet, but 600pts = $ 6.00
And now for the fun part. We already know, from the CVG inty with Ninty, that the basic programming of the classic games are faithfully reproduced for the Virtual Console, that’s-so-old-school jaggies and all. Ninty did throw a most useful feature into the mix, however: auto-save states. The Gamespot editors quit a Sonic game into the Channel menu, and were able to pick up and play from where they left off.
Question! Will there also be manually-saved save states so we can, you know, abuse it to complete those Sonic special stages? (Oops! Didn’t get the Emerald that time… RELOAD STATE!)
Here are more GameSpot pictures of the Wii Shop channel browsing for, and downloading Virtual Console titles. Please note, as Gamespot noted, the Mario-themed download progress bar. Or is it progress BLOCK?
UPDATE: badam also found this YouTube video (from no less than Chris “b**ch about your component cables” Kohler of Wired Blogs) of the Wii downloading Zelda, complete with elevator music and all. It’s rather quick to download the NES title, though. Not much of a head-splitting headache for Mario. And we’re rewarded with video of The Legend of Zelda (NES) on the Wii. Chris says if you’re using a widescreen TV, you gotta swap it to 4:3 mode or the VC display will stretch to fill the screen.
End update
Here’s the list of confirmed-for-today and confirmed-upcoming Virtual Console titles Gamespot has for the Wii Shop. You may have seen these lists before, but this time, they’re divided into availability as well as platform. (checks the list, no NES Top Gun in NES-Upcoming. The rant continues. Konami!!!) Thanks for the tip on this one, badam!
NES-Available
- Mario Bros.
- The Legend of Zelda
- Donkey Kong
- Solomon’s Key
- Pinball
Soccer - Wario’s Woods
NES-Upcoming
- Donkey Kong Jr.
- Ice Hockey
- Tennis
- Urban Champion
- Baseball
SNES-Available
- F-Zero
- SimCity
Nintendo 64-Available
- Super Mario 64
Sega Genesis-Available
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Altered Beast
Sega Genesis-Upcoming
- Golden Axe
- Columns
- Ecco the Dolphin
- Gunstar Heroes
- Space Harrier II
- Toe Jam & Earl
- Ristar
- Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
TurboGrafx-16-Upcoming
- Bonk’s Adventure
- Super Star Soldier
- Victory Run
- Bomberman ’93
- Dungeon Explore
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