Nintendo paves way for Old-School games via Virtual Console

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, in a keynote address yesterday at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, revealed further plans for Virtual Console, an online download service as “the video game version of Apple’s iTunes music store.” by providing an emulator for classic games developed by Nintendo, Sega, NEC/Hudson, and third-parties. Past consoles specifically supported by the Virtual Console service include the NES/Famicom, Super NES/Famicom, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and NEC TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine. Plans for the emulation of additional classic platforms, such as Nintendo’s Game Boy, Virtual Boy and Game Boy Advance, is already being made. He also divulged that developers will have the option, through Virtual Console, to directly sell new Revolution games rather than relying on disc-based media for distribution.

Despite this being an obvious move to boost Nintendo’s new game console, Revolution, it is actually a cool development, considering that there’s a good number of current gamers that would love a little trip down memory lane and savor the games that introduced them to the couch, ahem, world of gaming. Although Mr. Iwata confirmed that not all of the past games will be featured on this service, he assured that ‘the best of them will’.
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, in a keynote address yesterday at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, revealed further plans for Virtual Console, an online download service as “the video game version of Apple’s iTunes music store.” by providing an emulator for classic games developed by Nintendo, Sega, NEC/Hudson, and third-parties. Past consoles specifically supported by the Virtual Console service include the NES/Famicom, Super NES/Famicom, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and NEC TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine. Plans for the emulation of additional classic platforms, such as Nintendo’s Game Boy, Virtual Boy and Game Boy Advance, is already being made. He also divulged that developers will have the option, through Virtual Console, to directly sell new Revolution games rather than relying on disc-based media for distribution.

Despite this being an obvious move to boost Nintendo’s new game console, Revolution, it is actually a cool development, considering that there’s a good number of current gamers that would love a little trip down memory lane and savor the games that introduced them to the couch, ahem, world of gaming. Although Mr. Iwata confirmed that not all of the past games will be featured on this service, he assured that ‘the best of them will’.