With such a wealth of classic titles at their disposal, Nintendo have actually been quite slow to bring more games to the Wii U’s Virtual Console over the last few years, but that’s set to change, and change fast, with the addition of Nintendo DS and Nintendo 64 support.
Leading the charge on Nintendo DS is Mario Kart DS and WarioWare Touched, while Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64 bring two of the best platformers of all time from the N64 for the Wii U. One of the things that Nintendo have had to deal with is the control schemes of the consoles, but thankfully, you’ll be able to alter the button layouts from a number of presets, to find what suits you best.
All games will be hitting the eShop tonight at a slightly pricey feeling £8.99/€9.99, but for the N64 games you will at least be able to upgrade from the Wii Virtual Console to the Wii U for £1.79/€1.99, just as you can for NES and SNES games. Also, if you get three of the games in this initial wave, the fourth will be free.
There’s plenty more on the way, too. Paper Mario and Yoshi’s Island DS will be on the way soon, while the Virtual Console plans for Wii games are also expanding, with Pandora’s Tower and Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies on the way on April 16th and April 30th respectively. Both Wii games will be £17.99/€19.99, with a 25% discount for one week after release.
Expect this kind of drip feed of new additions to continue for a long, long time.
spacedelete
great and people bash Sony and MS for their remasters and ports but at least they are slightly improved resolution and framerate. these Wii U classic games are straight up ports with no improvements and they are overpriced at that.
Kennykazey
Are you referring to N64, DS, Wii or Virtual Console in general?
Higher res Wii and DS games would be awesome. For the rest, I’m not sure what improvements could be made.
I don’t see the prices as too high when you consider the cost of physical copies. A little on the steep end, sure. The games are usually good enough to be well worth it though. This isn’t some mobile shovelware we’re talking about here. It would be nice if Nintendo held more sales though.
Stefan L
The latest spate of remasters and re-releases are all for games from last generation though, and comes off the back of neither PS4 nor 360 being able to play those games natively, for the same reason that we saw a smaller number of upscaled games and collections on PS3 from PS2, and stuff.
But Nintendo aren’t double dipping on such recent content. For Wii games, if you have a Wii disc, you can pop it into the Wii U and it will play, though they are now adding the ability to buy those games via the eShop. Considering that some things like Metroid Prime Trilogy are quite rare, that’s only a good thing.
But when it comes to the broader back catalogue, that’s more along the lines of being able to buy Final Fantasy VII or GTA: San Andreas from the PSN store and play them on your PS3 without any graphical improvements. In fact, San Andreas was only added to the EU store today. The Wii U VC prices might be a little high for my tastes, but Nintendo know how capitalism works, so I’m sure they’ve priced them well for others.
Really, what it comes down to is that people feel that remasters are constantly arriving on shelves, but are outweighing the new releases. Here, I feel that while VC games are being gradually added a few at a time, in a very deliberate manner, Nintendo are still doing a good job with a steady stream of new games. Taking into account that it’s just the one company leading the charge on their own platform, there’s a new game every couple of months, and that’s really good going.
Kennykazey
I agree wholeheartedly Stefan. :-)
Kennykazey
Mario 64 and Pandoras Tower for me.
Would have been awesome if MK DS had online.
It’s good to see them tackling controls in a comprehensive way. Now just give me Mario Party 3 please.
Dominic Leighton
Same for me! Missed Pandora’s Tower originally so all set to give it go, particularly with gamepad support.
Nintendave
Snap. Mario64 is one of my favourite games and I completely missed Pandoras Tower on Wii. Looking up the controls, it sounds like Pandoras Tower will feature Gamepad support, which is great as I don’t have any Wii remotes :)
Kennykazey
It’ll support the Gamepad, but I’ve heard it controls better with a Wiimote. Time will tell.
I hope Nintendo will release The Last Story and Xenoblade as well. But chances for the latter is looking mighty slim given the 3DS port.
Nintendave
Would be great to see those games ported across. Played a decent chunk of Xenoblade but never finished it and I never played Last Story. There is a noticeable lack of RPGs on the Wii U and this would fill the gap nicely.
freezebug2
Absolute gold, SuperMario64 cannot be played enough on any amount of console iterations.
Yoshi’s Island and Warioland were the creme de la creme of handheld goodness back in the day.
Top stuff ;)
TSBonyman
That’s kinda cool, N64 was the last Nintendo console i owned so there’s probably a few games i would like to revisit.
PARKER94!
For the price of an N64 on Ebay, you would be better off buying one of them and getting the physical copies of most games. Then you have the true retro feel also, and build a small collection.
freezebug2
It’s having the available inputs on the telly though, with people having so many consoles, boxes and gadgets plugged in these days openings for newcomers are sparse….most of us can’t be arsed unplugging something to make space and then alternating ;)
Lyts1985
N64 games are a very welcome addition but if it’s anything like the Wii VC it’ll be a very select few.
What id really like to see is GameCube games! I’d love to have an excuse to play Super Mario Sunshine and Eternal Darkness again :-)
Kennykazey
You can already play Gamecube games on Wii U with Nintendont. But you may need an old Wii to rip the discs onto a memory card. It works flawlessly, I’m currently using it for playing Mario Sunshine with the Gamecube adapter for Smash.
Lyts1985
Really? That’s interesting. Was under the impression GC games were an outright “no”. Will have to look into that as I’ve still got all my old games
Kennykazey
The Wii U has a built-in Wii for backwards compatibility. And that Wii still has a built-in Gamecube for the same reasons, it’s some Christopher Nolan-tier stuff really.
You’ll need homebrew to access it, and your games on an SD card or USB, but it’s a fantastic secret functionality that even supports Pro controllers and lets you run games in widescreen.