Gametropolis

Virtual Console Wishlist Part One: N64

I’ve been playing a lot of retro titles recently. After digging out my old SNES & N64, and rescuing my Game Boy and Mega Drive collection from my sister I decided to make my bedroom a little more console-friendly and get around to reliving some of those old classics I used to adore growing up.

Playing through them I couldn’t help but think about the current situation with the Wii’s Virtual Console service.  When it was first launched alongside the Wii Christmas 2006, the Virtual Console had a great initial line-up. I think I went straight for Mario 64 and Sim City with my first bunch of Wii points, swiftly followed by Golden Axe, Sonic (Green Hill zone’s music has just popped up on my iPod, incidentally!) and Mario World a few weeks later. My VC collection has grown and grown since then, sitting at a retro-tastic 35 titles, with an equal number of games I loved back in the day and some I never got the chance to play on the original consoles.

But I haven’t purchased a VC title for nearly six months, a situation echoed by some of my online gaming pals. There are still plenty of games I haven’t yet got around to buying but my enthusiasm has waned considerably in the last year. There has been a worrying lack of big titles being released recently, which surprises me, given the huge back-catalogue available to be re-released.

I know there are some tricky copyright and licensing issues that need to be circumvented and these will probably put paid to the chances of us ever seeing classics like Goldeneye or Aladdin. But there are still hundreds that really deserve a chance to find a new audience.

I thought I’d use the next few blog entries to share a few of my picks with you all.

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