Topic: Game & Watch Gallery II Coming to North American eShop Next Week

[NWR_Neal]

For the first time since 2011, there will be simultaneous weeks with new Game Boy games on the eShop.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/30184

Game & Watch Gallery II is coming to the 3DS Virtual Console in North America next week, according to the eShop.

The game, initially released in the region on the Game Boy Color in 1998, came out in Europe on May 3. It came out in Japan on March 21, though it was a Game Boy release in that region.

Kirby's Block Ball came out this week on the North American 3DS Virtual Console. Before that, the last release was in March.

[FZeroBoyo]

Midst the groaning and whining for Wario Land, this is something I'll gladly get. Glad North America got it in a nice time frame compared to Europe.

[NWR_Neal]

I still really want Wario Land, but more than that, I want Game Boy VC games. This satiates me...for now.

[Chocobo_Rider]

So, is it possible that maybe we didn't need to be so dramatic about 3DS VC lately?

Voice it? Sure.  I'm just asking if, given how things turned out, the panic attached to the voicing still feels appropriate.  If so? Fine. I'm just asking.

[NWR_insanolord]

They went three months without a Game Boy game. I'd argue that easily warrants the response it got.

[joshnickerson]

I remember back in the early days of the Wii Virtual Console, people would bitch and complain because of the four games that were released that week, only three of them were above average.

Just sayin'...

[NWR_insanolord]

There needs to be a middle ground between releasing too many games and not releasing anything for months at a time.

[Chocobo_Rider]

@joshnickerson

+1

There needs to be a middle ground between releasing too many games and not releasing anything for months at a time.

But can't people just play the "too many" games over time? I mean, do they have expiration dates or something? Do any of us not have a small stack of Nintendo-platform backlogs? Should we really be stressing as if there will someday be no good games to play?  Have I asked too many tangentially related questions? 

[NWR_insanolord]

It's not the gamers who have the real problem with releasing them that quickly; it's Nintendo. If they release 2-3 VC games every week the market gets saturated, and most people will never go back and play previous releases. Sales are better for the vast majority of these older games (read: the ones without Mario or Zelda in the name) if they don't have to compete as much with other older games.

I'm not asking for several games a week. I'd just like for every week, or at least nearly every week, to have one 3DS Virtual Console release. There are hundreds of games available for the currently supported platforms, not to mention the others they could easily add support for, and I'd like them to get through a decent percentage of them.

[NWR_Neal]

I agree with JP here. As someone who was bearing a large torch over the absentee Game Boy games, I would be (and am) totally happy with one a week. I wish one of them would be Wario Land, but I can't complain when we're at least getting a Game Boy game each week.

What killed me the most during that three month stretch of no Game Boy games is that every other region was still getting Game Boy games with some regularity. It was that disparity that made me so annoyed. It wasn't just Japan having a Wii VC that dwarfs every other region. It was PAL regions getting VC releases of games I really wanted to play (Wario Land, Kid Icarus, etc.). Hopefully, North America will catch up, but it bums me out that we have to be catching up.

[Chocobo_Rider]

@Insano

Sorry. Can you clarify or elaborate on your first paragraph there?
I want to make sure I understand your point fully before I respond to it.

@Neal

OK. And does it need to be one every week or are you cool with an average of one per week?  Because, as I said, there's nothing stopping us from playing one game every week for a month if 4 are released at the start of the month.

Also, as far as the inequality between regions, no company can do it all.  They can't give everything to everyone at all times.  For years the European market was comparatively ignored by all video game companies.  Now, they have enjoyed about 15 months of favor from Nintendo.  So why get upset by it?

We had great treatment in the past, and I'm sure we'll get it again in the future.  It's fine to complain about the present as long as its tempered by that knowledge of the future and informed by that knowledge of the past.

And yea, obviously no other region will ever compete with the amount of games in Japan.  They make the games, translation time/costs... blah blah ... I don't need to explain, you know it already.

[NWR_Neal]

I live in North America. Thus, I want Nintendo of America's releases in my region to be awesome. When PAL regions are releasing more games, it bums me out. I'm aware we've had preferable treatment in the past, but that doesn't help me right now, and that honestly doesn't make me optimistic for the future.

I think there might be a comparison to sports teams somewhere in there (though it might be a stretch). Like, I love the Green Bay Packers. They won the Super Bowl two years ago. I wanted them to win it again last year. I want them to win it this year. Is it cool when long-suffering franchises win the Super Bowl? Sure, but I still only want my team to win.

And yes, I would be content with an average of one 3DS VC game a week. That's what we had, more or less, for 2011 and I was completely fine with it.

[NWR_insanolord]

@Insano

Sorry. Can you clarify or elaborate on your first paragraph there?
I want to make sure I understand your point fully before I respond to it.

Basically I was saying that Nintendo doesn't want to release multiple VC games in a given week because unless they're major titles it will hurt their sales. I'm pretty sure the reason they've spaced out the releases a lot more is an overcompensation due to the problems they faced when they were releasing several games a week early in the Wii's life. I personally wouldn't mind if they released that many, but I completely understand why Nintendo doesn't want to do that.

[MegaByte]

Given how awful their old shops are, I don't know if anything they learned there about release rates is valid. Anyway, we don't have any evidence that that was actually the case; they mostly kept release rates of all downloadable software the same; they've never tried to release larger quantities at once, so it was an assumption about how sales would work from the beginning.

[Ian Sane]

And yea, obviously no other region will ever compete with the amount of games in Japan.  They make the games, translation time/costs... blah blah ... I don't need to explain, you know it already.

There isn't any translation time or costs for VC games.  Game & Watch Gallery II was released for the North American Game Boy.  There is already a translated ROM and Nintendo just has to upload the damn thing.  The vast majority of VC games were translated decades ago.

I agree with Neal that matching Europe would be nice.  Why the **** is NOA now the dipshitty Nintendo branch that can't get their act together?  I just think Reggie's attitude is that as long as NOA makes the casual buck, who gives a **** if the longterm fans are pleased or not.  There is no reason to put extra effort into anything that is not a sure-thing mainstream hit.  RPGs and "old" games only appeal to hardcore fans.  Reggie ain't a videogame guy and it shows.  I remember when the DS launched he said the game he was most impressed by was some shitty Spider-Man title.  Well of course the business man who never plays videogames would be drawn to the established mainstream brand.

[Chocobo_Rider]

@Neal

Alright, well, it's fine to want those things.  It's fine to want them very badly.  But do you at least realize how selfish and unrealistic it is?

@Insano

Makes sense to me!

@Ian

But if there are 100 games, and 90 of them have been translated, we will never have as many as Japan.  See?

[NWR_Neal]

If parity with Nintendo of Europe is unrealistic and selfish to want, then I might as well just quit NWR.

[UncleBob]

"selfish" to want Nintendo to release games and sell them in exchange for monies?
"unrealistic" to ask that already-translated AND converted ROMs be uploaded on the computer in the US like in the EU and JP... as if there's some magical electronic barrier keeping them from dragging and dropping the files into the US eShop folders?

Wow.  And who was implying who was a drama queen?

[Chocobo_Rider]

It is selfish, almost by definition, to want more than others even if it is at their expense.

It is unrealistic to expect you will always get more than others.

[NWR_insanolord]

Except he doesn't want more than others, and at no point said that he did. All he (we) wants is to get the same treatment as Europe. This would require basically no effort on Nintendo's part, and we want to give them money for it, so I think it's ludicrous to call us selfish for that.

[Oblivion]

It is selfish, almost by definition, to want more than others even if it is at their expense.

It is unrealistic to expect you will always get more than others.

What expense? No one would be losing from them releasing those titles here in the States. We get the games we want, and Nintendo gets are money. What else is there?


And we don't want more than others. We want the same.


Is it just me, or do you like to criticize NWR and their staff for the hell of it?

[Chocobo_Rider]

... I still only want my team to win.

In this analogy, his "team" is the NA territory.  "Winning" is getting more games than EU.  So he's cool as long as other territories are getting less.  In other words, possibly at their expense.

He didn't say I want all teams to each win an equal amount.  He said he wants his team to win.  How can I be the only one who doesn't think that's realistic, let alone cool?

[Oblivion]

Is it just me, or do you like to criticize NWR and their staff for the hell of it?

[Chocobo_Rider]

So, I go to the effort of emphasizing the evidence I'm speaking from, and explaining it, and instead of just acknowledging it or furthering the discussion you fall back on (re)using a personal attack to dismiss it.

That's really rude.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Gallery 2 was a fun game, but as with many of the gameboy games released on eShop thus far it's a little too simple and basic for my tastes. I really do look forward to them releasing GBA games on the system.