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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Still Nintendo could make even more money if they had TWO Virtual Consoles, one for the consoles and one for the portables. It's total rip-off bullsh!t BUT I think the endless GBA ports (as well as the DS launching with a port as the only first party game and selling regardless) shows that people will gladly (by that I mean stupidly) buy a game they already own again just to play it on a portable. After all many games that appeared on the GBA, that are thus playable on the DS, are available on the VC. Nintendo doesn't seem worried that Super Mario Bros on the VC is going to hurt GBA Super Mario Bros sales or vice versa.
And I've never met anyone until now that found playing Gameboy games on a TV a weak experience. Why would anyone think that? No rinky dink screen, no battery concerns, no comfort problems. Seems like the luxurious way to play Gameboy games.
"More like Master System."
The Genesis is actually backwards compatible with the SMS. The adapter was really just a cartridge slot. All the actual hardware was in the Genesis itself so it probably is not very hard at all for them to release SMS games.
I think it's a weak experience. 4 shades of gray on a square pixelated screen with beep boop sound playing a watered down NES game is pretty weak IMO. Put it on a portable and it's not as bad. Just my opinion of course, but then there's no gameboy games on VC, so someone else out there thinks it isn't a great idea either. If you're referring to GBA games, the GBA line isn't quite discontinued yet. They won't be putting Gamecube games on VC any time soon either. I think the idea is to sell classic games you can't get any more. GBA will be around for a while, even after they stop manufacturing them, and you can still play them on the DS.
Regardless of what (if anything) they plan to do with portable VC, I would hope that they only charge you once for the game. They could work something where you can "check out" the game from your Wii to one portable system at a time or some DRM goofery like that. Which of course introduces headaches like, "my portable system broke/got stolen, and now my game is checked out forever." But it's either that or buy another copy for the portable, so I'll hope for the former along with some lenient support folks who can make it all better pretty quickly.
As for the master system, as I understand it, the power base converter just used the Genesis's sound chip (a z-80) as the main cpu (which was the SMS cpu), along with the controller inputs, power and video out. So I think there was some extra stuff going on there besides a cartridge adapter. I'm curious if the PBC had it's own sound chip, as the SMS used a Yamaha YM2413 FM chip for sound, and I'm not sure the Genesis had one on board. The SMS hardware was however identical to the Game Gear (with a slightly higher resolution on the SMS). But yeah, there's no reason for them not to release SMS games regardless.