Topic: This Week in Nintendo Downloads - June 16, 2011

[NWR_MattB]

The eShop receives its first official update, while the Wii sees two new games and a demo. 

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/26849

With the opening of the eShop last week, Nintendo has decided to move Nintendo Download to Thursdays. That means from now on, the Wii Shop Channel, DSiWare Store, and Nintendo eShop will all update on Thursdays, with new titles going live at 9 a.m. Pacific time on the same day.

This week's update brings a slew of new titles, including Mega Man 5 for Virtual Console and Donkey Kong for the Nintendo eShop.

Mega Man 5, originally for the NES, is the first Virtual Console game Wii has received since late May. This is the sixth game in the series to arrive on the service, and those who want to play as the Blue Bomber once again can pick up the game for 500 Nintendo Points.

The Wii Shop Channel has yet another new game this week. Developed by Sandlot Games, Snail Mail appears to be a hybrid racing and action game. It contains over 50 levels in Postal mode, as well as a Challenge mode and a Time Trials mode. You can check out a video of the game here.

Rounding out this week's new content is a demo of BIT.TRIP FLUX on the Wii Shop Channel, available for free for a limited time.

On the handheld side of things, the eShop sees a new retro title in the form of Donkey Kong for Game Boy. In this updated version of the classic arcade game, Donkey Kong has once again kidnapped Pauline and it is up to Mario to save her from distress.

The Nintendo DSiWare Store also sees four new titles, which include Gold Fever, Zimo: Mahjong Fanatic, Hidden Photo, and Beach Party Craze.

[KDR_11k]

Man, looks like it's not emulating the SGB for Donkey Kong. That was THE SGB launch title! Also the fools who took the screenshots and trailer only took them from the first three levels, making it look like this was just an arcade port. It's so much more than that! On the upside it's only 4€.

[UncleBob]

Maybe they chose those screen shots so they wouldn't spoil the surprise?

[Crimm]

I wish the downloads format hadn't changed. Now to find the kernels of stupid I have to go to their website...

[Enner]

I would be neat if all possible Mega Man entries came out on the Virtual Console. What's left? 6, 7, Megaman & Bass, X4 and X3?


Also, this new press release style is giving out less information than before, most important being the pricing.

[MegaByte]

Maybe they chose those screen shots so they wouldn't spoil the surprise?

Surprise! Nobody's buying it.

[Tansunn]

@KDR_11k - Sometimes I wonder if Nintendo remembers the Super Game Boy ever existed.  GBC, GBA and the GB Player add-on for GCN didn't support their custom color schemes or enhancements either.  Sucks, too, because I'd love to be able to customize my color palettes again like I could with the SGB.

@Enner - X4 was a PlayStation game, that's never coming to Virtual Console.  Personally I'd say just get the Mega Man Anniversary Collection and the Mega Man X Collection.  You can get the two combined for $40 used on Amazon while it'd cost $30 for the NES games alone on Virtual Console, assuming they were all available.

[NWR_Neal]

The display for DK '94 shows a 1981 release date. What the hell?

[UltimatePartyBear]

Don't correct them until I get a chance to buy it at the cheap ancient-arcade-games price instead of the premium best-games-on-system price.

[MegaByte]

Man, looks like it's not emulating the SGB for Donkey Kong. That was THE SGB launch title!

Nintendo already said they weren't going to do it, but that's pretty inexcusable.

[Bman87301]

I would be neat if all possible Mega Man entries came out on the Virtual Console. What's left? 6, 7, Megaman & Bass, X4 and X3?

I think you may have meant X2 instead of X4, since X2 still has yet to come to VC (and X4 was a PSX game).

I wouldn't hold my breath for Megaman & Bass since it never got an English SNES release (only GBA)... If we do get it, it'll be the unreadable Japanese version anyway.

6, 7, X2, X3 are very likely on the horizon...  and possibly Megaman Soccer as well.

[Ian Sane]

I'm pretty sure the VC is handled by Nintendo employees that are pretty low on the totem pole.  They also are likely people that don't give a **** and never knew what it was they were supposed to give a **** about in the first place.  Do you know why they say the release date is 1981?  Because it's just called "Donkey Kong" and the original Donkey Kong came out in 1981 and if you never knew to look beyond that you would get the date wrong.

In SSB Melee they listed Metroid as having been released in 1989 instead of 1987.  The reason for it is obvious.  A re-release of Metroid with different packaging came out in 1989.  If you don't know Metroid and don't know what to look for you could stumble upon the info for that release and put it in the game without knowing it was wrong.

Regarding Nintendo not emulating the SGB, I imagine to do that they would have to emulate the SNES and then emulate the SGB.  While that is totally doable and probably not that hard to do, it's extra work and when it comes to the VC Nintendo is not at all interested in extra work.  Hell, maybe the people in charge of the VC don't even know what the SGB is.  You think a random non-gamer knows what the SGB is?  You set him to work and only tell him about the GBC and he'll never think to bother with the SGB.

SGB support would be throwing a bone towards the purists and would have zero effect on everyone else.  Nintendo only cares what the majority want and the amount of people that will buy this anyway probably dwarfs those that wouldn't buy it because of the SGB issue.  That sucks but that is totally how Nintendo rolls.

When it comes to re-releases of old titles assume those who are calling the shots know WAY less than you do.  Videogame companies consider re-releases as quick cash dumps and attention to detail is of no concern.

[MegaByte]

Regarding Nintendo not emulating the SGB, I imagine to do that they would have to emulate the SNES and then emulate the SGB.  While that is totally doable and probably not that hard to do, it's extra work and when it comes to the VC Nintendo is not at all interested in extra work.  Hell, maybe the people in charge of the VC don't even know what the SGB is.  You think a random non-gamer knows what the SGB is?  You set him to work and only tell him about the GBC and he'll never think to bother with the SGB.

You'd lose the sound features, but just emulating the colors and borders is simple and doesn't require anything SNES-related. Homebrew emulators have been doing it for FIFTEEN years.
Somebody at Nintendo hacked the NES Donkey Kong ROM to add the missing pie factory level -- and then only released it on special Wii consoles in Europe. Surely somebody could have implemented this.

[Mop it up]

6, 7, X2, X3 are very likely on the horizon...  and possibly Megaman Soccer as well.

From what I understand it, Mega Man X2 and X3 used specialized chips that are not currently supported by the Wii emulator, so they would have to do some extra work to get those titles running. If that's true, I don't see them being released any time soon, if at all.

[Enner]

@Enner - X4 was a PlayStation game, that's never coming to Virtual Console.  Personally I'd say just get the Mega Man Anniversary Collection and the Mega Man X Collection.  You can get the two combined for $40 used on Amazon while it'd cost $30 for the NES games alone on Virtual Console, assuming they were all available.

I would be neat if all possible Mega Man entries came out on the Virtual Console. What's left? 6, 7, Megaman & Bass, X4 and X3?

I think you may have meant X2 instead of X4, since X2 still has yet to come to VC (and X4 was a PSX game).

I wouldn't hold my breath for Megaman & Bass since it never got an English SNES release (only GBA)... If we do get it, it'll be the unreadable Japanese version anyway.

6, 7, X2, X3 are very likely on the horizon...  and possibly Megaman Soccer as well.

Oops, didn't catch that typo. I did mean to type X2, not X4.

I would've snagged the Mega Man collections if was interested in having them all to play. I'm just curious to see if Capcom will make all their possible Mega Man games available on Virtual Console. Am I remembering correctly that the Game Boy ones are coming to the 3DS? If I'm wrong, I hope we'll see those Game Boy Mega Man games coming out on the 3DS Virtual Console too.

[yoshi1001]

I'd at least like to be able to use the GBC GB palettes.

[Bman87301]

From what I understand it, Mega Man X2 and X3 used specialized chips that are not currently supported by the Wii emulator, so they would have to do some extra work to get those titles running. If that's true, I don't see them being released any time soon, if at all.

Yeah, that issue had crossed my mind too... But don't get confused-- there isn't any kind of universal 'Wii emulator'. Each VC game is its own application, meaning the emulation is done its own software custom-made for that particular ROM.

The complications that have been holding back games like Starfox and StuntRace-FX are based on the fact that these games relied on those chips sets for most of their graphics.

X2 and 3 on the other hand, mainly used traditional sprites-- only using those chips for minimal special effects, so programming for that is far less complex and isn't  likely to be much of an issue.

[maximage]

I can't find "hidden photo" on my 3DS eShop....
anybody know why?

[Seacor]

I can't find "hidden photo" on my 3DS eShop....
anybody know why?

I checked and the following titles are not in the eShop:
   
Gold Fever (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Zimo: Mahjong Fanatic (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Hidden Photo (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Beach Party Craze (Nintendo eShop,Nintendo DSiWare)

[readnbead]

dsiware games are not available in the eshop for me either...

[Tansunn]

X2 and 3 on the other hand, mainly used traditional sprites-- only using those chips for minimal special effects, so programming for that is far less complex and isn't  likely to be much of an issue.

You can't really call the final bosses of the games "minimal special effects". 

I can't find "hidden photo" on my 3DS eShop....
anybody know why?

I checked and the following titles are not in the eShop:
   
Gold Fever (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Zimo: Mahjong Fanatic (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Hidden Photo (Nintendo eShop, Nintendo DSiWare)
Beach Party Craze (Nintendo eShop,Nintendo DSiWare)

That's strange.  I just did a search for "hidden" and "Hidden Photo" was the first result, with "Hot and Cold: A 3D Hidden Object Adventure" being the second.

[readnbead]

The dsiware just showed up in the past hour or so. The question is, a glitch or a weekly thing?

[Mop it up]

Woo, now I've finally played all of the Bit.Trip series of games... without buying a single one!