Topic: Why I Plan on Re-Buying All My Old School Games on VC

[shrapnel09]

I am suprised to see how unpopular VC is with many of the nintendo fans on so many forums internet-wide. I think i may look at Virtual Console at a grander scale than most people.  You see i have this obsession with my old school games being perfect and lasting, granted i didnt have a ton of them (never happend to get into the metroid series or kirby) but the ones i did have ment a lot to me.

There are a few reasons why i would invest $300+ dollars in VC:

1) The most important thing for me regarding an old school game is the memories attatched with it, im 20 so i was pretty young when i was playing zelda and all the marios on the NES.  And when i play those games now i need them to be identical to what i played as a kid. I hated Super Mario All-Stars because of this, I loved Mario 1-3 but the updated graphics made it a totally different game to my eyes and it didnt match up to what i enjoyed as a child.  And i praise Nintendo for keeping all VC titles _exactly_ the way they where all those years ago.

2) Roms on computers never really could do this; visual quality was always off, sound was different in most cases, a completely different controller, sitting up to a computer screen... All this just turned me off from playing games i previously owned.  This may sound odd to you but that is just the way i looked at it.  I did however use roms and emulators to play games i rented or never played before cause they didnt really mean as much to me (smartball and megaman series).

3) Sense of Security; One of the bigger reasons is the fact that this is pure game data we are talking about, not breakable cartridges that can get worn down. and this is a system that is going to last (functionaly speaking), i dont know how many years my NES has left in it. Like i said i am thinking decades from now playing the same thing i did when i say 8, would i be able to with my original NES/Genesis? What about the controllers for the system? Many things go into an account. I hated the Controller on the N64 and im not using a garbage 64 emulator for it either.

4) Ultimate convenience;  This is a big factor to have almost every single Nintendo game made on one system. from having 5 different systems with a ton of wires and controlles everywhere to one system and one controller.  The fact that i can play some Majora's Mask then play a little Donkey Kong Country and after that finish my game of Zelda II: Adventures of Link and finish it all up by playing a few rounds of Sonic II without having to move! Its not being lazy its just shear convience to play everything one system and you will end up playing more games because of it.

5) Price; I dont know about you but i dont really mind the pricing system at all. Again considering there is probabaly only around 34 games that i originally had that will likely show up on VC and i calculated that up to be around $270.  I dont get why people are freaking out that NES games cost $5, sure for games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. it seems a tad steep, but i would gladly pay that much for any Zelda or Super Mario Bros. game. Not to mention this is over a span of like 3-5 years so its not that bad really.

Well thats the most of it, i will also be getting lots of games i liked a lot and didnt really own (bubble bobble for one) and i think there is about 20 of those that will likely show up on VC.  Call me crazy but that is how i look at it, a long term investment for pure quality of the exact original and will last as long as you can.

[Nick DiMola]

Personally, I would rather own a solid copy of the game. Plus, I am becoming somewhat of a collector and I enjoy grabbing up all the really old rare games from the NES/SNES/N64 generations. I'm sure there will be a few games here and there I will buy on the VC, but I'll stick to the carts.

[Switchblade Cross]

I am all for the virtual console, its an awsome idea, and I am sure it will be a great success.  My only concern is the longevity of the purchases.  My Wii finally stops working 15 years from now; the games are tied to the console, so do I loose my investment, or will Nintendo still allow me to re-download them, if they are even still available.  It's 2031 and I want to show my grand kids what games were like in my day, will I still be able to play them?

I can pop a cart into my 21 year old NES and play it fine.  Will i sill be able to play VC games on Wii in 20 years?

[MilkManX]

I love playing the VC games at 480p through Component connections. You couldnt get that on N64,TG16,Genny,Etc.

Mario 64 looks the best it ever has!

[BranDonk Kong]

Prices are too high. That's my only beef. If it was like $1 for NES, $2 for SNES, and $3-5 for N64 I'd be all for it.

[BlkPaladin]

Well Nintendo had a tough discision to make with the VC games. They had to balence the price the customer is willing to pay with the money developers want to get back for their investment. So they have to make a decision that may not be popular with everybody.

[Ceric]

Quote
Originally posted by: Brandogg
Prices are too high. That's my only beef. If it was like $1 for NES, $2 for SNES, and $3-5 for N64 I'd be all for it.

Thats just to cheap for the amount of entertainment your getting.

[Kairon]

Prices are NOT too high once you start looking at $60 XBox360 or PS3 purchases.

There are loads of quality content that will be on the VC that will entertain me for more hours and for less money than generic sci-fi shooter #38.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Striderprime00]

Quote
They had to balence the price the customer is willing to pay with the money developers want to get back for their investment.

I pretty sure the developers has gotten their money back many times over.  These games are really old and the cost to develop them were pretty cheap relative to today.  They are absolutely not losing any money by re-releasing them on VC.

I know that I will only buy a handful of games on VC at the current price, but I would definitely have brought more on impulse at a lower price.

It would have helped if Nintendo allowed a time limit demo on these games. That way, I wouldn't mind investing $5 - $10 on games i have never played before.  Risking $5- $10 on a game that I might not enjoy, is kinda uncool.  

[shrapnel09]

well its good to see there are some supporters out there, comments about using your NES 21 years from now im not sure i agree with, maybe i am being a little too paranoid, but i like to be prepared for the worst. The thing about NES pricing is that i would pay 8 bucks for the real good games like Mario 3 and about 2 dollars seems more appropriate short games like donkey kong.  Nintendo would then maximize their profit by being more flexable to the supply and demand curve.  But that is just me, and i think 10 bucks is a great deal for N64 games considering how much i hate the original controller and how crapy the most of the roms are.... Side note:

Good news! I have picked up a VC controller from walmart about an hour ago, feels great!
Pros:
*good overall feel, all buttons are pretty much easy to reach
*multiple Z buttons, at first i thought 3 was too many, but i can see how certain games use certain buttons more and you can easily adjust
*thumbstick feels much smoother and has more of a grip on it when compaired to the GC thumbstick

Cons:
*dont agree with cord placement/connecting it to wiimote, hopefully there will be an adapter to connect it straight to wii, i would prefer that.
*why is R and L buttons analog again? Seriously if its not going to work for GC games dont put it in there, unless there are Wii games that will use it.
*thumbsticks are a bit close together but there isnt much room to put them someplace else.

And i will be picking up a Wii Dec 6th!!! walmart will have atleast 3 by 8:00AM, so i will camp out at around midnight.

[BranDonk Kong]

The emulated VC games cost absolutely nothing to develop. They're just ROM dumps. If you were to buy any of these games in their actual cartridge form today, you wouldn't be paying $5 for NES, $8 for SNES, and $10 for N64. I'm just saying if Nintendo dropped the price on the VC games (not NEW VC games that will come out...sometime), they'd probably sell 10 times as many games. I'd be buying them left and right. In fact, I bet it would be more like 20-30 times as many VC game sales, since I'll probably never buy any of them, but I'd have no problem buying dozens of them for a much cheaper price. People (would) buy VC games mainly for nostalgia.

[BranDonk Kong]

You're also paying $60 for an XBox 360 game that probably took 40-50 people a year to make and is brand new. You're not buying a game that came out 22 years ago, on a system that's 4 (or 3 or 2) generations in the past, and hasn't been sold in retail stores for years.

[shrapnel09]

keep in mind it does cost money to keep the servers running and bandwidth used to transfer the data, so as long as a game is on there it is costing some money one way or another, not to mention its quite foolish to think that it cost absolutly nothing to put a game on VC; man hours, re-emulating it for the wii hardware, configuring the controlls for the Retro Controller..etc. there _is_ a cost while probably not very high.

like i said before if they want to make a decent profit they are better off not making a single price for all games, but adjust them due to the game's popularity, keep zelda at $5 and reduce donkey kong to $2.  I believe this is called ellastic demand, change the price a little and you get results.  

[Shecky]

would you pay $5 for NES Pinball?

[BranDonk Kong]

NES, SNES, and N64 emulators already existed (and were made by Nintendo) for the Gamecube. I'm sure they're using the exact same software for the Wii. Sega made they're own Genesis emulator for all the home consoles as well, and I'm sure they're using the same one there too. Configuring controls? That probably took all of 2 minutes. They don't emulate each game separately - they just emulate each console, (almost) perfectly, so just about any game they throw at it is automatically going to work. Servers shmervers. It doesn't cost anything to watch a video on nintendo.com, these game files are tiny (aside from N64, which are anywhere from 4MB to 64MB) - and you only NEED to download these games once. It probably cost Nintendo more for someone to visit nintendo.com and click on 3 or 4 pages, and maybe watch a couple trailers, than it does for someone to download F-Zero.

[lastexit]

Nintendo doesn't care how many copies of a VC game they sell.  If they sell one copy for $5 that's just as good (better really) as selling 5 times as many for $1.  This is business.

You can't have tiered pricing because then you are forced to pass judgement on the quality and value of each game. Third-parties in particular don't want Nintendo saying "Eh, Ecco the Dolphin was overrated, 2 bucks on VC."

Lastly, the prices are quite good in comparison to what you can buy for $5.  Please, go outside, tell me you can get for a dollar.  Now, return to your VC and tell me that you should be able to buy River City Ransom for $1 on VC?  

The business model is the same as with ringtones.  Many sales will be to people looking for something very specific who will pay whatever the cost is.  The bulk of revenue will come from dedicated customers who purchase 3-4 games a month on VC each and every month.  That is still much less than one new Wii game.

VC is what will carry the console through dry patches on the release schedule.  Look for a surprise VC game to be sprung out of nowhere once the kinks are worked out of the online angle.

[segagamer12]

>>These games are really old and the cost to develop them were pretty cheap relative to today<<


I dont knwo about that, many old school devs, Midway, Atari, Activison, claim costs are relative today as they have always been.


Also yo cant say for sure every single one of these games ahs been paid for, several of these games infact flopped upon initial release and this is likely a way to try and recoup old looses, I know for sure Sega has some old debs to recoup)


Plus you are forgetting that they are offering Free online play and wiiconnect24 and other online services that are costing them out the ass and they need to cover those costs as well.


Plus if you are ionto collecting old games at all you will find that the really good NES, SNEs and Genesis games can cost as high as 20 dollars or more. Turbo Grafix games are rare as hell and can cost a bit for the good oens too.


N64 games range from 10 to 15 dolalrs every where I find them and even higher for the Mario stuff. 10 for Mario 64 is s good deal and anything less than fiffty for Mario RPG is a rare thing, check ebay its a friggin hard game to get a hold of for a reasonable price.

I personally LOVE the VC it makes collecting old gamee so much cheaper and easier. I just wish there was a way to save them onto carts and plug them into my odl systems. that would rock.

[IceCold]

The prices are fine. If you don't want to buy the bad games, then don't. The best games of each console are more than worth the price.

As someone mentioned, Nintendo had to get the perfect balance for the price to maximise profit, and so they chose these prices. Not only that, but they also had to account for new games. If the VC games were too cheap, it's very likely that many people would just buy those games, and not pay attention to the new Wii games. Software tie in ratio is king.

[shrapnel09]

Quote
Originally posted by: Shecky
would you pay $5 for NES Pinball?

if you are refering to me then no, i already told you that nintendo should charge the crappy games less and the more better games more.  However if NES pinball was something i played all the time as a kid and it had some kind of meaning to me worth keeping, then yes i would pay $5 for it.  However im sure most of us dont feel the same way and NES pinball shouldnt even be on there unless its going for $1-2, just for the sake of saying "hey the wii has some really cheap old school games that anyone can buy".

actually if i had to change the price plan I would have done it like this:
NES - $3
N64 - $12

Even though that looks better on paper, Nintendo wouldnt necessarly lose money on this, i.e. two NES games that sold for $3 is more than one that sold for $5, however we honestly dont know the profits Nintendo are making per VC game, and yes it takes time to emulate N64/Genesis games and the like and that development time costs money, the emulation needs to be near perfect bug free, same sound quality, etc... not to mention improved framerates for the wii hardware, so no it wasnt all done at one time awhile ago.  Plus the fact that each game has an instruction guide that comes with it that needs to be written out and tested for any glitches and all that.  Also the licensing issues for the developers of future games (you think they are going to get goldeneye for free?).. and the list goes on.

I dont like it when you say "oh its an old game so it only takes minutes and costs nothing" I'm sure there is very little you really know about how these types of things work in the buisness world, there are many many things that go into account here that you wouldnt think of.

[NWR_pap64]

Quote
Originally posted by: Brandogg
Prices are too high. That's my only beef. If it was like $1 for NES, $2 for SNES, and $3-5 for N64 I'd be all for it.

Same here. The price is right for the N64 games, but everything else is too expensive, especially when:
- Some of these games are not worth it
- All of them can be gotten for free online

However, I think the main appeal of the VC is that you can have ALL the games YOU want on one console, it will always be there and is all neatly organized. Plus, it would be LEGALLY supporting the classics (for the extreme loyalists and such).

My main beef is that Nintendo has been handling the VC somewhat poorly. A poor selection of games at launch, delayed updates and delayed releases of the greater games.

I hope Nintendo sets this thing out, I'm guessing this is mainly because its still launch and there are still bugs to work out.

[segagamer12]

>>- All of them can be gotten for free online<<

not legally.


have any of you peopel complaining about the prices even tried looking for old NES or SNES games? they never ever go for this cheap except the crappy games. Nintendo did thier homework I think the prices are absolutley perfect. If its too much for you to pay then dont pay it. I prmise you that a lot of these games wont ever be found for as cheap as they go for on VC.


Virtual Console is primarily for collectors and people who grew up with these games, they will buy what games they played for nastalgia sake alone.

In general when shopping used games here is how the prices usually go, for NES yo pay between five and eight dollars for regular games, up to ten dollars for the good stuff even those that arent rare, and more for rare games.


So far Mario Bros is theonly NES game released on VC that is rare. a Cart copy of that game isnt as low as five dollars anywhere I have seen it, hell the Atari 2600 versions was five dollars.

Genesis and SNES games start at six to eight dollars for the crap and go up from there.

MOST N64 games yo find worth buying will be eight, ten or twelve dolalrs and the really good ones 20-30 even still today. Try getting Mario 64 for ten dollars ata used game store or on ebay. Sometimes you will get lucky but not often.

As a collector myself these prices are more than barelbley they are perfect. Heck look at NES Zelda, that game usually goes for ten dollars on its own.

[Shecky]

Quote
Originally posted by: shrapnel09

Quote
Originally posted by: Shecky
would you pay $5 for NES Pinball?

if you are refering to me then no, i already told you that nintendo should charge the crappy games less and the more better games more.  However if NES pinball was something i played all the time as a kid and it had some kind of meaning to me worth keeping, then yes i would pay $5 for it.  However im sure most of us dont feel the same way and NES pinball shouldnt even be on there unless its going for $1-2, just for the sake of saying "hey the wii has some really cheap old school games that anyone can buy".

The comment was not directed at you, just a general inquiry.  Also, I agree that there should be probably two price points for each system (ie: $2 NES games, $5 NES games, $4 SNES, $8 SNES....)  The one glaring negative with this model is that it can leave different impressions on people (only consider $5 NES games, those are the good ones .... or let me buy a bunch of these $2 games and ignore those expensive $5 ones, etc)  Nintendo still has one option available though, subsidizing your account with free points.

[BranDonk Kong]

I'm not budging, the price is too high, especially given the alternatives to buying VC games.

[Spak-Spang]

I completely agree with this original post.

I think there is so much positive going on with the virtual console that it is very nice...and I think people that are complaining are just complaining for no reason.

Simply put, the system is well thought out, and will allow people to collect and play the games they once loved again legally, or play games they missed and have totally new experiences.

Sure games like Pinball may not be worth 5 dollars to you.  But if someone fell in love with that game as a kid, it may be worth buying again.  And that is the thing, its personal and you don't have to buy everything.

About the prices, they may seem high, but there are still development costs, server costs, and more to get the games playing on the virtual console.  As well the virtual console is what Nintendo is using to keep the online content free for us gamers.  We don't have to pay $59.99 a year to play online games.  Insead it if we want to buy virtual console games we can, and we are also supporting Nintendo's online system.  That seems completely fair.

I won't be buying every classic game I once owned.  But I will buy the ones I loved and the ones I want my friends and family to replay with me...or games I would one day like to introduce to my niece when she gets older.

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: segagamer12
>>- All of them can be gotten for free online<<

not legally.

It's only illegal if you get caught, which you won't be.

In fact, I could probably download a pile of roms then try to turn myself in to a police station and see if I could actually get arrested for it but they'd probably turn me away saying I hadn't committed a crime.

However, the real reason to pay the fee for a virtual console game is so you can have the convenience and multiplayer in the comfort of your own living room.

$10 to play 4 player SSB on wavebirds? SOLD!