There's some odd ducks in this set.
Switch Online subscribers will get their next hookup of games on February 19.
Western audiences will receive Pop 'n Twinbee, the sixth in the series of cute scrolling shooters, and Smash Tennis, a 1994-in-Europe tennis title, for the SNES library. Both games have never released in North America previously. The NES library update will include Shadow of the Ninja (1990, Natsume, action game) and Elimination Boat Duel (1991, Electro Brain, powerboat racing game).
The Japanese library will include Breath of Fire II (already available in the West) and Pop 'n Twinbee for the Super Famicom, and God Slayer (aka Crystalis) and unlocalized Sunsoft game Atlantis no Nazo for the Famicom.
What the hell?
Do they want the NES/SNES games to sell the online service or not? They couldn't throw in a DKC2 or something?
There's only a limit to the amount of games they can put out at a time if they want to make it last. Especially when they already launched the app with most of their major first party titles so the SNES is already covered for a large population of SNES fans. Nothing wrong with them focusing on some of the lesser known titles for now and saving the few remaining big guns for later.
I own the popular NES/SNES titles 16 different ways.
This is a subscription service so its not just about spreading out the releases, but keeping people engaged enough to want to keep paying for the service. The gems are really great, but they also need to throw something out that is more mainstream to balance it out.
I think of this stuff, and I'm going back to the Wii VC even with this, as a new format for old games. It's no different than when records went to CDs and then CDs went to downloads. Or VHS to DVD. Did people on iTunes want their favourite classic music to be dripped out in little spurts or did they want access to everything? They wanted access to everything if they could get it. There were things to work out with specific labels and artists and such but the idea was to get this stuff on the new format and get it there soon.
When you login to any sort of digital store or a streaming service I think the real expectation is that everything that CAN be on there IS on there. Let's remove Nintendo and video games in general from the equation. In the rest of the entertainment world they don't drip this stuff out. They try to get a big library of content to choose from as soon as they can. So Nintendo on day one of any VC like service should have 90% of their retro games up there and whatever third party games they can work out a deal on.
Plus, they're taking the time to add new features to old games, so there's more to it than just dumping ROMs.Unless I missed something, they haven't been adding in new features. Online play is handled on the emulator level, not per game. If you're referring to the SP versions, those are essentially save states placed at various areas of the games.
One thing I've been wondering is, how much money do third-parties get for putting their games on this service, and how does it compare to the VC? There's probably no way for us to know that I guess.
I was referring to the online play. Didn't realize it was on the emulator level.Plus, they're taking the time to add new features to old games, so there's more to it than just dumping ROMs.Unless I missed something, they haven't been adding in new features. Online play is handled on the emulator level, not per game. If you're referring to the SP versions, those are essentially save states placed at various areas of the games.