Wii-kly Shopping List (Part 2): Introducing the Virtual Console Arcade

by: Cyril - posted: 3/25/2009 8:57:00 PM

What's this ... a second Wii-kly Shopping List posting in a week?  For months I have been complaining that Nintendo seems to be ignoring the Virtual Console.  While they routinely post two or three WiiWare games, most weeks the Virtual Console only gets one game of questionable quality.  This week it felt like things were starting to change.  Out of nowhere we got not one, but two Virtual Console titles (Bomberman and Detana TwinBee).  And that's not all.  At his GDC keynote address, Satoru Iwata announced that starting today Nintendo would be introducing a brand new "system" and four more Virtual Console games.

The "system" in question is the Virtual Console Arcade, which will recreate some of the world's best old school arcade games.  How old?  Of the four games introduced (Galpus, Mappy, The Tower of Druaga and Star Force), the most recent entries seem to come from 1984.  None of these games have been released on the competing Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network, however they have appeared in classic game compilations.  Along with these four titles, Virtual Console fans can look forward to Sega's Space Harrier and Solvalou from Namco.

This is definitely a step in the right direction and I can only hope that they'll seriously consider a few other forgotten consoles (Atari Jaguar, Sega CD, etc.).  The first batch of games look promising, but I do hope that they will feature a few more contemporary titles.  Couple this with the news that you will FINALLY be able to play games off of your SD card, and I would say that this has been a real good day for fans of the Virtual Console.  Look for my full reviews of all four of these recently added games in this week's episode of the Retro Round-Up this Friday.

Virtual Console:

• Galpus (Namco Bandai/600 Points)
• Mappy (Namco Bandai/500 Points)
• The Tower of Druaga(Namco Bandai/500 Points)
• Star Force (Tecmo/500 Points)