Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 79: 10 Shitty Years of Virtual Console

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

Chris Kohler joins Jeremy and Bob to revisit a topic from the earliest days of Retronauts: Virtual Console. Boy, what a difference 10 years makes! Remember when we were optimistic about that? Also includes some NES Classic Edition spitballing or whatever. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This weekend of Retronauts, an episode 10 years in the making. Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode 7 years in the making. this time of Retronauts. I'm your host, Jeremy Parrish. And this episode is kind of a companion piece to the Retronaut's 10th anniversary episode we did recently. And the upcoming Wii anniversary episode, also 10 years. Yeah, you're saving me some time.

Yes, this kind of ties everything together. It's the 10th anniversary of virtual console episode, or as we're calling it, 10 shitty years of virtual console. Yay. So, of course, it's classic retronauts here. It's me. It's Chris Kohler. It's Bob Mackey.

And we're going to complain about virtual console. You guys, I'm sorry, introduce yourself so people can have a voice to associate with the words. I'm Bob Mackey. If you put all those 10 years together, there was probably one good year. Smash them all together, condense them. I'm Chris Kohler. I'm Wyard's games editor and the original virtual console hater, the OG. That's true.

Your column was called Virtual Consolation Prize. It certainly was. It certainly was. From the very beginning. Although we... That first week, right? Mario Brothers, right? That was first week? Oh, my God.

What was the first week? I guess we'll get into it. I'm sorry. We'll get into it. But yeah, it was a real mess. Wow. I mean, the first week that it happened... Okay.

Anyway. We got to start somewhere. Yeah, so let's go to the way back machine. Back to October, November, November 2006. Oh, God. I have to warn myself to not go to grad school. It's not too late. You should loop yourself.

So the Nintendo Wii has just launched, and with it comes the virtual console. And about the same time, I had the dumb idea to make a podcast about old games. And by an amazing coincidence, these things dovetailed nicely. I think it was a coincidence. I don't think I had any masterful scheme in mind. I was just like, duh, okay, lucky. You can actually go back in time. I think episode four or five was about, like, virtual console services.

You can hear the anticipation and excitement about the possibilities of these things. They were slaverings. Yeah. Right. We had so much, there was so much potential. So many ideas that could have happened, and they didn't. But for a while, virtual console was okay. For like the first year or two, they were releasing like five new games a week.

And, you know, when the system, the Wii launched with virtual console, there were about, it was like 18 games all at once. So it was kind of like this buffet at the beginning. You could play Zelda and you could play virtual console games. and there were some other games, but they weren't very good. But you had all of this stuff, like these classic games to go along with Twilight Princess, and that was a pretty good sales pitch for Wii. And if, you know, virtual console had continued

at that five games a week pace, imagine how many games would be out there. Yeah, it would be incredible. But I don't think the long tail turned out to be quite as fluffy as they expected. It was longer and stringier. Nintendo was more into the short head than the long. long tail as it turns out.

Yes, yes, yes. And they didn't want to take advantage of ways that they could sell that long tail of products, which we'll get into. Do you think... Virtual console was only a disappointment compared to its... Every other... ...imagible potential. Oh, yes, oh, right.

And everything else that everybody ever did, yeah. Do you think the Famicom and NES minis for the Game Boy Advance was sort of like the Nintendo testing the waters, see if there was a market for this? Do you feel that way? I don't even think it was testing the waters, because I don't think at the time that those cartridges came out like in 2003, 2004, the idea of like a

virtual marketplace for video games on consoles really existed. Steam didn't exist. I just meant the idea of like buying an old game again, you know, for a system. Yeah, so I've talked about this before but if you look at Nintendo's history, there was a history of kind of

churning out old games and I actually think they sort of stumbled into the appeal of classic games by accident with Animal Crossing Because you could just unlock and play games for free in Animal Crossing, and people really liked it. But they made them impossible to get. Like, they were so hard to collect.

I mean, they built in all these NES games into the Animal Crossing, and the data was located on your disc. But it was so hard to get them all. I remember, I mean, we always talk about the shop in Akihabara called Friends, that we all know and love. And I remember going there, and they would have signs up that say, if you bring us your memory card in Animal Crossing, we will hack your save file to open up all of the Famicom games.

If that's something that you want. I was working on a software, et cetera, and a friend of mine did that with a GameShark. He unlocked all the Famicom games or the NES games on my card, including the two you couldn't get legitimately. I think that was Punch Out and Zelda? Yeah, Punch Out or Zelda, Punch Out, or Mario Bros? I'm not sure which ones they were.

Punch Out was one of them. But that became a big draw. Yeah, I think... And then the Famicom mini line of the one game per cartridge on the Game Boy Advance was very popular in Japan. I mean, the release here was crappy, obviously, as the NES classic series. We got a watered-down version of that whole series.

We didn't get accurate. Like, yeah, the appeal of the Famicom minis was that they were in beautiful little reproductions of the boxes. There was a lineup of like 30 games. We got, you know, half that many games, and they were just in kind of like standard Game Boy boxes with the black box artwork on them. It was really...

And it was just a subset of what had come out in Japan. So they didn't actually make any sort of an effort to do a similar line but in the U.S. They didn't go after the games that were popular here and release those. So where does the E-reader fit

in the God's plan? Well, I feel like, you know, they stumbled on to this thing by accident with Animal Crossing. It became popular. They were like, how can we sell this? So they said, what if we sold them for $5 a piece

as paper cards that you read through a scanner? And that was done. and all the games that were on E-Reader were, like, super simplistic, you know, early Black Box, like, simplest kind of NES ROM. Yeah. You know, if you had to scan a game 10 times, that was a pain in the ass, but if you had to scan a game that was four times that big, you were, like, doing 40 swipes.

No. Nintendo tried to fight emulation by yelling at you if you used an emulator. Like, that was their whole plan. It was like, it is illegal to play our copyrighted Nintendo games. on an emulator. It's like, okay, sell me Super Mario Bros. No. You'll actually never punish you for playing these games either.

There's Super Mario Brothers Deluxe for Game Boy Color, please buy that. Right, and that's what they wanted to do. They wanted to bring back these games in ways that they felt that they should bring them back that meant upgrading them or whatever, which of course was Nintendo's right. But it started, the Famicom Mini and Animal Crossing was the first syndicator to Nintendo as a business that, yeah, actually, it's not just crazy people out there who like to play these old games. Like, there really is a business in selling people old games. And then, you know, when the Wii was able to connect to the internet and download files, well, great. Like, now there's a method

by which we can do this. And so Nintendo, from the very beginning when they announced the, I believe when they announced the revolution at E3 and started talking about it, even before they had shown the controller, they announced virtual console. And they followed that up by saying that Genesis and turbographic games would also come to the Wii. And then it became of an old game paradise because it wasn't just Nintendo's platforms. It was like, oh, geez, like every old video game of any distinction might actually be downloadable on the Wii. How exciting. Yeah, there was a lot of anticipation, like we've said before.

And it really was this kind of evolution of Nintendo's sort of grasp of its own intellectual properties and the Nostal. appeal of its brand. Because, you know, in Japan, they pushed the 20th anniversary of the Famicom pretty hard in 2003, and the Famicom mini series for Game Boy Advance was part of that. And they released like, you know, a special Game Boy

Advance SP that had the Famicom colors, and there was like a rare giveaway that was in gold. And, you know, they, that was the point at which Nintendo suddenly was like, well, we're making all these new games, but people really like the old ones. And

I mean, you could make an argument that that was the point at which, like, the Japanese games industry started to sort of, I don't know, like come to a stand still in some respects and refuse to march forward. I don't think that's entirely fair, but, you know, it was kind of the cusp of like people realizing there's a lot of appeal in looking back. And so virtual console was, in theory, the ultimate expression of that, because here was your current console, and here was the ability to buy any classic game you wanted, just by going online and spending $5 or $8 or whatever, and downloading it immediately and being able to play it and using like a variety of great controllers that perfectly or effectively recreate the

experience. And virtual console on Wii was pretty good, and just never kind of, it tapered off. It didn't work out. Well, the bummer, you know, that we often talked about on the show was that virtual console in Japan launched with the biggest of the big games. I forget what the Japanese launch lineup was, but it's like they led with Mario and Zelda and Contra and all of the games that you really, really wanted to play. Whereas in the United States, the mentality was from day one, let's screw them. Let's leach as much money as we possibly can from our players by the method of let's release the games they don't want. So they'll buy those games, then later on for an extra little sort of PR kick, we'll release the games that are sitting around done, but we'll release them later on.

So this thing did not launch with Super Mario Brothers in the U.S. Not launched with Super Mario World, not launched with a link to the past. All games that were available day one in Japan, done, finished, launched with, in the U.S. Donkey Kong, F0, The Legend of Zelda, okay, Mario Brothers, bleh, pinball, double thumbs down. Oh, come on. Well, pinball, though. It's all right. It's a fine game.

SimCity. All right, Soccer, Barf, Solomon's Key, and Wario's Woods. They literally picked out the most boring games in the window of launch lineup games that they could have released, and that's what they shipped with Virtual Console. Then it was just this indication that the, I feel like the mentality that was within Nintendo of America and then what the hardcore whales wanted, because I was the virtual console whale, you know? that there was not a meeting of the minds

as far as like what they were going to do with this service. And we were going to get this weird, like, delayed drip feed of games. I wonder how much of it is related to the fact that we only got a fraction of the games that came out in Japan because keep in mind that during the classic era up through the N64, which is what virtual console covered, most games for Nintendo for consoles were being developed in Japan

and some of them were Japan only releases some of them were by publishers that no longer have a presence in the US like it was kind of inevitable from day one that we wouldn't be getting the same quality

and the same number of games and actually the fact that they started releasing import games was kind of a pleasant surprise that was something I never thought Nintendo would do So I feel like Yeah, I feel like they Drip fed us

Almost as a matter of necessity Because they had a wider catalog of games They could lean on for For Japan, yeah I also feel like there was a problem with the messaging In that it reached us nerds But the Normos made have not known about this Like I'm just curious as to how many people

Never click that virtual console icon Because I feel like I think it's been mentioned before on the show But if they had like Super Mario Brothers on your Wii And you clicked on it'd be like You can buy more games if you just go to this thing. And I feel like the demand would be in greater supply if they let people know, like, this is a function of your system.

Right. So if like the game shipped or the system shipped with Super Mario Brothers pre-installed and when you launched it, it would always say like more great classic games are available on virtual console. I mean, I was reading one up and I was reading game sites and I knew about this. But if you're just the casual person who wanted this new we thing, you could not know about this. It was magical thinking. It was like if we put these games on here, people will buy them. Actually, no, that's not how that works at all. And, I mean, I think Sony definitely had that problem

because they couldn't, the cross-media bar on the PlayStation 3 was this sort of like... Disaster? Boardroom-conceived, you know, disaster that impresses Japanese executives but doesn't allow you to sell things to people. Whereas Microsoft, with the ability to constantly refash the Xbox 360s menu and sell things to you on those menu screens,

I mean, that's why you saw that explosion in digital content on the Xbox 360. So Nintendo and Sony were really lagging behind. And I think you see that now in the way that they designed the shops on the 3DS and the Wii U. But the problem is that's like those systems, they're trying to solve problems that they had with the Wii in 2006. You know, now they're not talking, now they're not thinking about the revenue generators of today. But anyway, that's getting a little too far. But, yeah, I mean, once we sort of got used to the fact that America was just going to sort of arbitrarily lag behind Japan as far as releases went, and, you know, some releases started getting out there, at least when they came out, they were good. Like, the emulation on the NES games was excellent.

And in fact, the Wii, right, could actually output at those native resolutions of those games. I've mentioned this in other venues, but I really regret when Wii you came out, you had the option to take all. your Wii purchases over to Wii U. Oh, yeah. I really regret moving my hundreds of virtual console games from Wii to Wii because you're emulating like the Wii. There's like the Wii shell on Wii, and the system is not capable of outputting at 240P.

So you're not getting like true resolution output. If I had stuck things on Wii, like just stuck with that, I would have all these hundreds of games that I could play through component cables on CRT television and upscale them to like really great quality and it would have been amazing but I didn't understand that at the time so I wasted a whole lot of money and

it's a huge regret. I'm not as interested in that kind of authenticity but I can never get rid of my Wii U because there's probably like a thousand dollars worth the virtual console purchases on it at this point. Well I mean it's not even the authenticity it's the like the quality of the experience. Yeah.

You know if you play through component cables on a CRT you're going to get like lagless play. It's going to be perfect. It's going to look like it should. And most importantly, it's going to control and feel like it should.

And there's just lag that becomes introduced when you play it on an HDTV and especially, you know, like there's input lag and stuff with the Wii U controller and so forth. So it degrades the experience. Yeah, real, real kick in the ass, wasn't it? It's still better than Wii U

NES emulation. Yeah, the, I mean, and again, we're rushing ahead a bit, but the downgrade in some cases moving from the Wii to the Wii U was not exactly what I expected. Not exactly what I had hoped for. Yeah, not really how it should have worked out. But we should kind of talk about the way it began, which was November 19, 2006, when the Wii launched. You had available NES games, Super NES games, N-64 games, and Genesis games.

Very few of the latter, but they were there. and like I said, I think it was like 18 games total that you could play. And then two days later, weirdly enough, a couple of turbographics games showed up. And for the first two years, those were the five systems that Nintendo really cultivated. And they were releasing, again, like four to five games each week. They would usually, like, give you a good game and some mediocre games and a really bad game. So it'd be like one week you'd get Super Metroid and Urban Champion and three other games. something like that, you know.

But I think they did a really good job of reaching out to third parties at the beginning and getting a huge variety of games from a huge number of publishers. They actually, like, had the willpower to, like, they were going to everybody who had, you know, games potentially that could be on this service and saying, hey, what can we do to get your games on this service? Yeah, it was an active... With mixed results. Some publishers were gung-ho, some were a little bit more reticent.

Remember that Square was a, or Square Enix at the time, was a late entrant. I remember there was an interview in which somebody was talking to somebody at Square about virtual console, and they said, well, we don't have the source code for those old games anymore, and we'd have to, you know, and it's like, no, you're not recompiling them from source, you moron, you don't even know what this is. I did an interview where I asked about virtual console, and they were like, well, it's really difficult because, you know, people don't know how to spend money through the

internet, and they may think that using their credit cards is not safe. I'm like, okay, my Amazon account stretches back a decade, but sure. Right, right, right. So there were definitely some barriers, but eventually even Square, you know, got with it and put Final Fantasy,

I believe, one through six on the Japanese store, and then one, two, three, act raiser. Yep, yep. Chrono trigger? Wait, oh yeah, chrono trigger. on Wii. So even in cases where Square

was selling the DS version of Chrono Trigger, like they even released the original on the Wii. God, I need that on my 3DS. Oh, man. And, you know, again, speaking of the sort of downgrades, Square is they are putting stuff on virtual console Wii U in Japan. In Japan, yep. And it's not coming here.

Isn't Chrono Trigger on 3DS in Japan? It's... Oh, is it? No, I don't know. Is it? It might be. I seem to remember something like that. Really?

I thought they were just... There's something they did that was really heartbreaking. No, it's not on 3DS because Square is not involved in this so far in this Super Nintendo games on 3DS thing. That's that's Nintendo Capcom, Konami,

and... Jalico? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nintendo Capcom, Konami, but not Square. Um, oh. Hatsume? Maybe.

Maybe. Maybe. Anyway. Anyway. Um, yeah, still totally mind-blown. that these games that would be perfect for the Wii U GamePad, extensive role-playing games

for some reason are just sitting on the Japanese store and they're not here. And the thing is, I think it's because across the board at Nintendo, they don't really care about virtual console anymore. They stopped caring about virtual console when they introduced Wiiware. I think they felt like virtual console

was like the training wheels for doing like original digital content. And we absolutely saw that happen. As soon as Nintendo introduced Wiiware, virtual console got cut back and it got cut back to like almost it was I remember like the first week when nothing came out and it was like well great you did it everyone you've got a couple hundred games on this service and that must represent the entire history of it there's nothing else to put on the service anymore congratulations I remember in something like 2008 Nintendo had a job opening for basically what sounded like the person who was going to manage releases for their virtual services like on week and and I thought, I should apply for this job. I wonder, like, if I had gone there, would I have been able to say virtual console?

Nope. Or would I be crying myself to sleep every night? They just kept using the same dartboard. It was cheaper. But they, you know, even after, sorry, after turbographics came out, like I said, it was about two years before they introduced anything new, but they did continue rolling out new systems

for another several years. NeoGeo in October of 2008, Master System in March 2008 Commodore 64 That was the weird one Because that was the unique To the U.S. and Europe version Clearly they were trying to think

Okay well how do we expand this So that we can You know capitalize on the nostalgia Of people who aren't necessarily You know Japanese video game fans It was a noble effort It was a weird effort It just it never felt quite like

that was the way things were supposed to work. Yeah. It's nice that I could buy Boulder Dash and play the original Boulder Dash, but yeah, just C64 games on a console, that's strange. All of these games have been delisted, by the way, for a long time. I'm looking at a list, there's some

strange, I mean, I understand, like, Ninja Turtle's being delisted, but, like, Final Fight is delisted, and SimCity for the S&S is delisted. Well, it's just on Wii. Yeah, there's some, yeah, some of the stuff on Wii got delisted, but then it's available, Final Fight is available on 3DS and the Wii.

Oh, so that's why. something licensing-wise going on. I mean, honestly, like, how long do you think Nintendo's going to leave that Wii e-shop open? Like, that thing is going to close soon. I was still buying things even with my Wii U. I had to, like, downgrade my Wi-Fi security to activate the store via my Wii to download Chrono Trigger in the Wii shell. And again, that was a real, I mean, God, I can't believe that the Wii U was not built

with at least some idea in mind that it would at least run all these old games. as well at. I mean, really, like, when I first saw the Wii U, it's like, oh, great, now I can finally play all my Wii games on this really cool little screen because it's backward compatible. Oh, no, Wii games cannot put to that screen. Oh, virtual console games cannot put to that screen. Like, that was going to be the perfect use case. And it's like, really? You can't even do that. You have to boot into the Wii menu and it can't access the screen. I think it can now, but you have to use another controller outside of the screen. So it, it, the, yes, it can display the games.

on the screen, but you cannot use the control pad. So what's the point? Even though if you download to the Wii retail games that you can download on the Wii U, if those use the classic controller, apparently you can use the controls on the game pad to play those apparently. So it's

like they have the magic solution to let you play virtual console games on the game pad with the controllers, but they're just not doing it, I guess? Yeah. That's great. But then they can resell us the games and have us pay an upgrade fee or a downgrade fee in the case of NES games.

Zoom. So that we can play them on the game pad, but then it's only a subset. Now, they did, they actually did, it will give Nintendo credit over the past few years, they actually did release a few games on the Wii U that were not available on

the Wii, but it's not a lot. I'm not going to read all of them, but I mean, obviously I'm There are a few good ones. I am super happy, like, legit, like, come on, they went back, they found the prototype of Earthbound for the NES of the

original mother, and they took their prototype, and they released it on the weed. That's wonderful. That's unbelievable, yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Nintendo. You finally get it. Sort of. A little bit. Like, perfect. That's awesome. They released Earthbound.

They released Mother. Capcom, as we kind of said, got really into virtual console. So Gargoyle's Quest 2, mighty final fight. Those those came out. They actually released the Adventures of Bayou Billy

once they figured out how to use the Wii Remote as a light gun. Oh, did they? I missed out on that. Yeah, Adventures of Bayou Billy. Wow, that totally passed me by. I know.

I know crazy. Super Nintendo got Breath of Fire, Castlevania Dracula X, Demons Crest, Earthbound, Mega Man 7 and X3. Some of these games are like really hard to find, very expensive. Mega Man X3. The cartridge sells for like $300 now because Super

NES collectors are monsters. Yeah. But it's clear that it seems like the onus is now on the publishers to go to Nintendo and bang down their door and let them get their games onto virtual console. Although, how do you explain Konami? Konami wants to do it, apparently. They're like, well, we don't care about new video games,

but the old ones, those are easy. They'll sell you the old ones. Yeah. Whatever, except Contra. You know, maybe not caring about new video. Yeah, okay, something is clearly up with Contra that has never appeared on virtual console, even though Super C has.

There's got to be some kind of rights issue. They put Contra in Contra 4. Yeah. I have a similar Yoshi's Island conspiracy theory where something is up and no one will ever know, but that game will never be playable again. There are no Super FX games on any virtual console. That's right.

That's right. So they never were able to either, I mean, you can emulate it, so I don't know what the problem is. Yeah, I reached out to Dylan Cuthbert on Twitter and was like, do you know what's up with that? He was like, well, it's not a rights issue, so. It's an effort issue, maybe, I don't know.

It could be. But it's like you figure Yoshi's Island would be the game that would get them to expend it. It looks like Star Fox. Yeah, nobody's really going to buy 10 frames a second Star Fox and virtual console, right? But like, Yoshi's Island, that represents a big money-making opportunity. Yeah, it's a very important game. And so there must have been some reason why they weren't able to make that happen. But they did make a lot of things happen.

I mean, in that period of three years where they were actually trying, like they released sin and punishment here with English subtitles that were added. You know, the imports, I think, was a really cool thing. Dracula X. Dracula X. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was, you know, the library of turbographic CD games. Like, it's sad that it's sort of hidden in the Wii menu and that you can't play them on the game pad entirely.

But, like, you know, even now, you can literally load up your Wii U. and you can go to virtual console and you can play Ease 1 and 2. Oh, yeah, that's the first time I played those games. Yeah, you can play Fighting Street, the original Street Fighter. You know, you can download that onto your Wii U through the Wii menu, basically.

It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, if you are willing to look at Wii Virtual Console in aggregate, we were complaining about it on Retronauts for years because on the weekly drip feed, it was frustrating. But in aggregate, like if you look at all the games that have come out for that system across all the platforms. It's something like, what, 400-odd games and maybe more than that.

And some of them are like things that really deserve to be explored and discovered. Some of them are games that are extremely hard to find, extremely expensive. Some of them are games that had never come to the U.S. before. It's a valuable service. It's frustrating that it's locked now behind, you know, it's either tied to a dead system, and if you buy a Wii now, it doesn't actually go online. Right. Or through like kind of a sub-menu of the Wii U.

And, you know, I've transferred the rights to all those games to Wii, but downloading them is such a pain in the ass that I still haven't actually downloaded them. And I need to spend just a couple of days sometime and do nothing but download Wii virtual console game after we virtual console games. And everything was just, there was no looking forward to the future with the Wii because as soon as you feel out the free. The fridge. That was me, by the way. That was you. That was me.

That was me. That was me. To me. Me complaining about virtual console and the horrible response, you know, sorry, Perrin, the horrible response of if you have too much food in your fridge, you have to throw out some food before you can get more food. And then Nintendo eventually abandoned this and they worked on getting the SD card menu working. And so then it was like, oh, okay, sweet.

Got all these games in my SD card. I just transferred all the rights over to my Wii U. So I'll take the SD card and I'll pop it. No, no, no, no, no. I'll pop it into the SD card reader on the WiiU. Then I go into the Wii menu and all of my games that are on the SD card pop up in the SD card menu. It's like, oh, look at this. All my games, they're here.

I'll try to play one. You do not have the rights to play this game. Had to literally read download, delete them all, and then re-download every single freaking game from that. That interface, that shop interface when you're trying to redownload stuff, it's like trying to buy 99 antidotes in Final Fantasy 1. Watching the animation play every time. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Going through four clicks to do it

and then literally just sitting there watching it download. What is my zip code? What is my county? Yeah, complete and utter downgrade ridiculousness. And then, of course, we kind of figured, it's like, okay, well, okay, yeah, sure. So they dripped games out, and then they kind of stopped doing a lot of games in 2010.

but now the Wii U is out, they can take what they had and they can build on it. Oh, no, they're gonna drip feed out the same games again, starting from Super Mario Brothers and working their way down. But you get, we're supposed to be excited.

But you get a save point now. Yeah, saves no longer in the honor system. You can actually save scum on the Wii U. Yeah. And like, I get it, they test these games. Like, I really want to be clear. I think in the beginning, I think when we're looking at these just being like, oh, well, you just, you know, you just dump the ROM.

It's like, no, they actually do, they test these games. They make sure that there's nothing in there that is going to cause a rights problem, like company logos and stuff like that. Like, they do edits, they do tweaks. They kind of tweak the emulator that each game is packaged with to make sure the game actually works. They really do test each one like a product. I don't necessarily think that's the way.

to go with these products, especially in an age when you can just update it after the fact. And then also really looking at what Sony was doing with P.S1 Archives in Japan was the gold standard. After a few years of PlayStation 3 being available in Japan, they had, I think they got up to like a thousand games. Was it that many? They just, oh my God, PS1 archives in Japan, they just dumped. so many games onto that platform. Just game after, just entire libraries of publishers would be dumped on there. And it was just, it was the, you know, glory days.

Sony, of course, in America barely gave a crap. You know, so it was really disresricted to PS1, you know, owners in Japan. Although you could, you could log on to the Japanese shop. But that was, if you look at PS1 archives and you just look at how many games got released, it's astonishing. And that's what I wanted virtual console to be, just a huge, dumping of stuff, but it, alas, it was not to be. Now, the other thing is I was playing like Final Fantasy 5 on a PlayStation Vita, and apparently it just crashes during the ending.

So, so you get, you know, you pick your poison. You really commit to getting that crash, though. Yeah. It's your reward for powering through. Right. I don't know. Yeah, so there's one other console, well, actually two other consoles that were, or systems or platforms, let's say platforms available on virtual console that we haven't mentioned. One was in Japan only, and that was MSX.

Oh, yeah. Also on the Wii U. Also on Wii. Yep. Actually, it's also on, no, it's not, never mind. And that, I mean, that just seems like a no-brainer to me to bring those to the U.S. Like, there's nothing you need to do. Yeah, most of those games.

It's like MSX Contra. There's, I mean, there's good MSX games that are on the Wii U right now. Again, rare games you can't play elsewhere. Games like Nemesis. It would be cool to play those. Yeah. Like it's this kind of weird little splinter family of Gradius. They don't need to be translated.

There's no rights issues. It's just, it's, Konami owns the whole thing. If there was any rights issues, they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't put it on the Wii you in the first place. It's just very frustrating. Yeah. And then there was virtual console arcade. Which was weird because that was like a key point at Satoro Iwada's GDC-2009 speech.

I was sitting right there like in the front, like watching him talk about all this stuff. They showed off Spirit Tracks for DS, I think, at that one. And then he like went into this big spiel about virtual console arcade and how they'd gotten all these partners and they were going to release so many games. It ended up being like 20 games maybe. And it was mostly Band Dynamco. Yeah. or techmo. It was like,

we put Ninja Guidon on here. It's the crappy Ninja Guideon you don't like. We finally got RIGAR on virtual console, but it's not the good NES one. It's the arcade game. Yeah, it was like, I remember them showing the Blizzard Activision logo, and I thought, wow, that's going to be cool.

They'll get stuff like RPM Racing and Blackthorn and who knows what else. No. They didn't do anything, actually. No, I mean, that was really, that was just like, that was when virtual console was just about to end, basically.

It was really weird. It was like this new initiative that they launched very publicly. Like those GDC speeches that Iwada gave always were like momentous events. I mean, that was the year that, a few years before that, they handed out free copies of brain age to every attendee. Wow. And that game became, yeah, that game became enormous for Nintendo. So you kind of expected that sort of momentous event to happen, but virtual console was not momentous. it was more like ominous.

It was a portent that foretold the virtual console's doom. I think you guys are talking, I mean, I agree with you in every respect, but I think you're actually seeing this from a different perspective than I did because you guys got your whys like at launch, I'm going to take it, right? Yes, I'll talk about that in the Wii episode. Okay. I didn't get a Wii or I couldn't get a Wii until I think like February of 2008. So there was no, I mean, the way.

would eventually come, but when I got it, it was like, wow, there's, like, all of these games for me. So I guess it depends on when you got your Wii, when the disappointment set in. But for me, it was like, oh, there's so much here. And I was like, oh, there's not going to be very much more for me. Yeah, I guess, I mean, that's totally fair. And I guess if you bought a Wii in 2010, you were like, oh, it's a corticopia. But there was nothing to look forward to. Right.

So early adopters always get screwed. Yeah. I mean, no, it's just, it just feels like it petered out. And maybe Chris is right, and maybe once we wear a period, they were like, oh, there's more potential here with new games as opposed to old ones. It could also just be that, you know, once all of the major first party titles and all the big games were out, they started to look at sales and said, you know, people keep buying Super Mario Brothers and Ocarine of Time and nothing else. So why are we doing this? Why are we going to the trouble to track down, like, D4 and, you know, like, what? whatever holding company has all Ajalico and Data East stuff.

It's this huge castle and didn't everything have to be, didn't everything have to be ESRB rated all over? I think that they, yes. So it was a very, it was a, it was a, it was a very, it was a, it was a process. And so that's what drives you towards short head versus long tail. It drives you to a hit-driven market, which you can do, but it's not going to be as exciting.

So, of course, yeah, they just want to make sure that the hit. are out there. The other problem with this is that the weird, weird, weird, it was obviously a mistake then. It's clearly a mistake now. The flat pricing by platform for these games. Like, I'm sorry, Super Mario Brothers is worth $5. Urban Champion is not worth $5. I would take $5 from Nintendo to play Urban Champion. Yeah. Like, Earthbound is worth $10. But, like, you Not every Super Famicom game is worth the eight that they were charging. We also had the digital currency issue where it was like you would buy them in increments and you would always have like a dollar left over. Oh, yeah, because it was we had to spend Wii points.

It was in that era, it was in that era where they didn't want people spending real money transactions. I think I still have like $2 in like Wii bucks that I, just sitting in an account somewhere. Sure, sure. But like if they had just, I mean, how they could have made more money, I think, a lot more money if baseball was 99 cents. but they just had an aversion to that. Do you think it's because this was a... All my children are loved equally. It's weird to say this now,

but this was a very confident and successful era for Nintendo. Yeah. I don't think this Nintendo would have released Earthbound and Earthbound beginnings. The Nintendo of today definitely would because it's like we need all the fans we can get, but back then it's like, well, we're the kings.

We're going to do the thing that makes the most money at all times. Do you think that was a result of their success? There was something messed up with Earthbound because remember in the Japanese version of Super Smash Brothers, for the Wii. They had a virtual console demos. You're right.

And one of them was Mother 2. So they clearly meant to do it. And then it just didn't happen. I kind of have a feeling there was something messed up that they had to basically fix before that that could happen. Yeah. Fortunately, Iwada was able to fix it as he did for everything. Yeah, just to get your blood boiling a little bit.

MSX games, available on the Wii U in Japan. Salamander, Gradius 2, Gradius, Circus Charlie. Okay, nobody hears about that. Gofer, go for No Yabo, Twinby, J.R. Kung, a whole lot of Konami shooters. Akumajo, Dracula, the first, you know, vampire, vampire killer on the, on the MSX, Antarctic Adventure, Contra. Yeah, just other stuff.

Is Metal Gear on there, Middle Gear 2? You know what? They did not do those games. I wonder if, I almost feel like they, they feel like those are worth too much money to just put them onto virtual console? I don't know.

They put them in the Metal Gear HD collection. And they're not really, you can still play them now though, right? Yeah, on Dita. I played through the original Metal Gear on Vita. Right, right, right. Yeah, I don't know.

They're not available, but I would assume that maybe they could actually do that. I don't know. They should. At this point, they probably won't. Yeah, no. Metal Gear was that? Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.

Metal Gear? Metal Gear? Metal Gear. Yeah. So we've talked a bit about, you know, the virtual console, especially on Wii, but there are three different virtual consoles, and each one is kind of distinct. Like, Wii is probably the most uniform. It has the most systems, but all of them just basically have like a really boring standard,

that ugly Wii menu with the little 19, or, you know, circa 2001 Apple buttons, big things you can press with your Wii remote. It's only been with the later systems that they've started to diverge a bit more. And I think the first time we really saw, I guess, platforms being treated truly differently, was with the, I want to say, Game Gear on 3DS. Oh, yeah. Because, like, they never really talked about who did the nuts and bolts work on Wii Virtual Console. platforms. I know it was different because for whatever reason, a lot of TurboGraphics games

won't output at 240P. It's like stretched 640 by 480, and you can't put them out in the proper original aspect mode and data like pixel mode. So clearly that was done by someone else other than the main stuff. And in 64 games would actually up-res instead of being 320 by 240, they actually played on Wii as 640 by 480. So everything looked a little smoother, had better frame rates. When I recorded and posted some footage of RGB capture of an N64 version of Mario 64, people were like, your system's messed up. The frame rate's so bad. I'm like,

no, actually, this is what Mario 64 looked like. Yeah, we just didn't know it better. Sorry, I hate to tell you. It's look a little framing. But when Game Gear came to virtual console on 3DS, and that was very short-lived RIP, it was developed by M2, the cool people who do all the awesome Sega stuff like the Sega 3D ages for 3DS. And instead of just giving you like the ability to play the games, they gave you an abundance of options. You could play the games stretched to full screen size.

You could play the games at proper pixel one-to-one size with a game gear frame around it, and not only could you play it with a Game Gear frame around it, but you could make the Game Gear frame any of the four colors that Game Gear shipped in in Japan. You could also emulate the screen ghosting and blur and distortion for a truly accurate eye-destroying experience if you wanted to.

And like that platform on virtual console was so much better than anything that had come before. Like it really made you stop and say, wait a minute, why on a Nintendo handheld is the best virtual console actually the Sega system? What's up with that? And then, you know, following that,

you started to see more particulars paid to the individual platforms released. Like the turbographic stuff on 3DS now. There is some turbographic stuff in the U.S., isn't it? There's some turbographic stuff on the U.S. It just started. It's just a couple of games. Maybe it was the Wii you I was thinking of.

Oh, was PC Engine on the 3DS in Japan? No, it was something I played. I don't know. Anyway, the point is, like, the interface design is, like, really, really different than any other virtual console. It's like kind of a more contemporary flat graphic design with lots of reds and really nice,

accessible buttons. Maybe that was on 3DS. I can't remember. It's been a while, but I just remember it was a few months back, and I was taken aback when I saw it. I was like, oh, that's really different. Oh, yeah, there was a very brief

dalliance flirtation with PC engine on 3DS in Japan, Gradius of the Kung Fu, Alien Crush, and R type. Yeah. How about that? Even in Japan, these are, like, fleeting moments. Every single time Nintendo talks about virtual console on one of its new, you know,

machines. It's like, it's, they're Lucy holding the football and I'm good old dumbass Charlie Brown and like, sure, you're like, let me kick it this time. Like with 3DS, it was like, oh, we're going to do all the game, black and white Game Boy games. Like, oh, hot damn, that's going to be great. And stopped, not doing it anymore. It's like, oh, Trip World, which we could have, which was out in Japan, which we could have easily put a- There was a European version of Trip World. Right. There's no difference in like Pal and TSC on Game Boy. I think. could have brought that to the U.S. Doesn't need to be translated, but they just... There's no words in that game.

Didn't. Yeah. Well, with the new 3DS, they're like, we finally have the power to emulate Super Nintendo games by this thing. That's an extra feature. And that's been kind of lackluster too. Yeah. I mean, that's just been a couple of...

They announced every game for it that they're going to release and they've released those games. They haven't announced any plans. I mean, geez, like... I actually just upgraded back to a new 3DS XL after, you know, swearing by the smaller one. Mm-hmm. Because the smaller one is not comfortable for playing Super Nias action games. I found my hands cramping too much.

So I gave in and I bought the Super Mario World model. It's terrible. I'm such an idiot. But yeah, like the Super NES on 3DS, to me that's great. I want more games. I know. Where's Super Metroid? Where's KronoTriguer?

Yeah. But it's a start. I mean, honestly, I don't, I feel like very clearly this Super Nintendo on a new 3DS thing. It's like they're getting in, they're making a quick buck, and they're getting out. Like, this is not a long-term thing. Like, they're obviously switching over to the switch as a, that's clearly their new platform. It's not going to be compatible with 3DS.

So that's really what we've got to look to for the future of virtual console. Yeah. And, you know, virtual console at first was really distinct between platforms, by which I mean the Wii virtual console was one thing. and then the 3DS virtual console showed up and it was totally different. You had Game Boy games. Eventually, like the next year,

they rolled out Game Boy Color. Yep. You had Game Gear. There were, of course, the 3D classics. There were, like, those eight games co-developed by Areca that were released. And I consider those virtual console because they kind of are,

like, you can't play, you can't get Excite Bike for Virtual Console on 3DS, but you can get the 3D Excite Bike. Right, right. And you can't buy Urban Champion, Not that you'd want to, but there is 3D Airbnb Champion. Yeah, that was cute. I mean, they thought, like, oh, we'll take old classic games and give them 3D graphics.

Yeah, it turned out to be really difficult. No one wanted that at all. Yeah, it was, right, right, right. It was, yeah, it was a nice attempt. Yep. And, of course, there are the Ambassador games. Yeah, I was going to say, does that fit? Yeah.

The 10 Game Boy Advance games that you can play on 3DS if you owned a 3DS before Nintendo said, oh, God, we have to sell this system. So how, what year was that that they did the, Was that 2011? If you bought the 3DS in the first six months, then you have access to 10 Game Boy Advance games. The way those work, though, it feels like a hack where it's like you can't actually close your, I mean, you can close your 3DS, nothing's going to sleep.

No, it puts it in Game Boy Advance mode. Yeah. Yeah. It's using the DS hardware that's built into the 3DS, which has Game Boy Advance hardware built into it. So it's like basically locking you out of all your. your 3DS features. Sure, but... And that's not what Nintendo wants your experience to be.

No. They don't want you to play your 3DS and have it, like, all the basic fundamentals, like, sleep on clothes and street passing deactivated. So that was like a little gimmee that they put out there as a thank you. But, yeah, that was never, I don't think, ever seen as a, like, a serious business proposition. I didn't think so either. Which is ridiculous. They could have, man, they could have made sleep on clothes hardware

functionality, right? Like, they could have, they could have just, like, built something in where, like, if you close your 3DS, it suspends what's going on processor-wise. And then they could have, I mean, man, I can't, I still can't believe that this thing has the ability to just play Game Boy Advance Games. They have the ability to serve up those Game Boy Advance Games on the digital shop, and they didn't just say, hey, publishers, feeding frenzy. At the very least.

Put all your Game Boy Advance games on the 3DS. Since they clearly don't mind fragmenting their platform with new 3DS and Super NES games, like they could have at least built that in as a feature of the new 3DS. And who knows, maybe they did, and maybe they just haven't rolled it out. And maybe that's... If there's another switch delay, they're going to be like, well... Switch isn't happening until September, but here's some Game Boy Advance Games. Well, they put the Game Boy Advance Games on the Wii U.

Yeah. Because, I don't know why, but that's why. They put the Game Boy Advance Games on the Wii, and that's where you can play them now. And quite frankly, it's a good experience. It is. It is. It is actually fun to play Game Boy Advance Games on the Wii. Another platform done by M2.

Yep, yeah. And it's high quality. Like, it's actually the best... a virtual console platform on WiiU by far. So now we're just in this really weird holding pattern with virtual console because any plans that Nintendo has across the board for new initiatives are on the switch. Right. Right.

If there are any plans at all. That's the thing. Wii U and 3DS is just, we're just sort of chugging along right now. Just there's not going to be any big new initiatives for those consoles. So the question is what, if anything, is Nintendo? planning on the Switch. Yeah, we'll get into the future in a little bit. I still haven't stopped complaining about...

Oh, okay, okay. Because, like I said, at first it was very distinct between Wii and 3DS, but then they rolled out the NES games. Yep. And there was no cross-buy. No. For some reason, you had to buy these games all over again. And they knew, because you had a Nintendo ID on the 3DS.

They're like, oh, we can't confirm. And it was the same ID that you had on the Wii U. You guys can send me little Mario statues for the points that I redeem based on code specific to these games. Many of these games I'm getting points for after buying them through your shop. And yet you can't confirm that I have bought these games. That seems a little weird. Yeah. So, yeah, that was frustrating.

Like when NES games first showed up on 3DS as ambassador titles, along with the 10 Game Boy Advance games, Oh, right. There were 10 NES games. Oh, yeah. And, like, it's easy to forget about that because, you know, then they just started releasing those NES games. So that stopped being a special thing. It was like, we got some free games, but they're no longer unique. Whereas the GBA stuff is like, there's a little bit of pride attached, I think, to having those 10 games.

Like, yeah, I can play all the Metroid games on my 3DS. Thank you. Or, well, once Super Metroid comes. Is that? Super Metroid's not on 3DS. Wait, I think it is. Oh, is it? Okay.

Yeah. So, yeah, I can play all the Metroid games. Except zero. mission, but whatever. Anyway, like, the point is, the point is that you have the ability to play all of these games and it was cool. And then NES came along as retail and they just messed it up. They stopped with Game Boy and they started with NES. And instead of mining the Game Boy library for better stuff, they just started releasing the exact same games again and making you pay for them all of them. But I mean, pretty much all the first party Game Boy stuff came out. So what is there for them to do that doesn't involve chasing down third parties, which they clearly don't have incentive to do? That's, that's the thing. I mean, it's like, you're right. Yeah, all the first party stuff is out there and they have no will to, again, I really feel like it's, if you as a third party, if there is a, if there is a desire with you, Nintendo will say, oh yeah, we'll let you do this. But they have, they are not going out there and hunting stuff down. I mean, the, the Game Boy stuff we got was actually,

some of it was kind of cool. Like, we got, yeah. Oh, we got one of the Castlevania games, but not both. That's stupid. Are you just looking at your library? I have all the stuff, though. Oh, okay. Like, we got Avenging Spirit. That game's really expensive. We got Bionic Commando?

That's a great version of Bionic Commando. They're never going to release the... Actually, they gave us both Bionic Commandos for Game Boy. We're never going to get the NES game for whatever reason. Like, Shante's on there. Shante, that game's hard to find and expensive. Yeah. So there is some cool stuff on here, Maru's mission.

But for the most part, yeah, it's a big missed opportunity. There's even little gaps. little spaces in my lineup where I left a space because eventually we're going to get Castlevania 2, Belmont's Revenge, right? I guess not. That's the shame because that's the only good one.

As of this recording, it's been almost a year since the last Game Boy release and those were all the Pokemon games. Yeah, they essentially brought it back so they could bring out Pokemon again. Yep. Yeah, many tears. So many.

So. Boy, this is like a gloomy episode. There's no... Well, again, I mean, you know, when good stuff happened, it was great. I mean, we mentioned Rondo of Blood. We mentioned, you know, imports. We mentioned the fact that, like, you know, Super Mario Brothers 2, the Lost Levels was finally released here,

you know, in its original Famicom form for the first time. All, I mean, there were so many, you know, so many turbographics games, there were thousands of dollars, Legend of Hero Toneman, the Dynastic Hero, and Erzong, you know, that stuff came out. It was just really, there was a lot of great stuff that came out, but it was like they brought out all the major stuff and then they just didn't have the willpower to move forward

and really not and not bringing that stuff out so we played on the Wii U game pad is like, I don't know, I mean Nintendo's, Nintendo brought out the Wii U and they were like, you can play Batman Arkham City on the Wii U game pad, you can play Mass Effect 3 on the Wii game pad. It's like, why do I have the feeling that it would have been more compelling if you had simply made this, as Ryan Payton said with me on an 8-4 podcast once, made it a Nintendo Paradise

and made it a fundamental nature of this system to just play the full library of old Nintendo content. Yeah, well, wouldn't that be great? Yeah, it wouldn't. There have been a few good things that happened, though. They finally figured out how to get Zapper games to work. Yeah. 2015.

That was something that they promoted before the Wii launch. They did. I remember seeing that in a kiosk in their E3 booth before the, like 2006, before the Wii launch. There was a kiosk. that just ran unplayable demos of games, right? And they had like a light gun in there, but it was like a, if I remember, if I remember, if I remember right,

it's the Wii, yeah, the Wii Zapper. Yeah. But it was like set up to play, like, pretend to play Duck Hunt. And that never happened. That's right. It wasn't until Wii U, 2015, that they finally put out like three Zapper games. They put out Duck Hunt at first. And then, of course, they totally, I mean, remember this when.

They did a good job with Wild Gunman. Well, they did a good job with Wild Gunman, except for they didn't release it on the right day. But you have to give them points for trying. Nah, ish, like Wild Gunman, it was done, it was out in, it came out in Europe, I believe, right in advance of, um, the day in 2015 when Marty McFly arrives in the future, in Back to the Future, Part 2, um, and plays, of course, Wild Gunman. And so, of course, in the, in the sort of ultimate example of Nintendo's America, don't give him anything until six months down the line strategy, quote unquote strategy. they didn't release Wild Gunman that day. That's right.

I forgot it was just in Europe. Yeah. Yep. Okay. And we also got Hogan's Alley. We haven't gotten Gumshoe. You know, and I hope we never do. Oh, come on.

That's such a weird, interesting game. Yeah, it's true. It's really unique. That's the kind of thing that virtual console is made for. Like, maybe not $5, but spend a couple bucks. See, Gumshoe. Like, here's a really kooky game that Gunpei Yokoi made to do something different. with a light gun.

It's not just a target game. That's right. It's a platform adventure. It's crazy. And I, again, that is assuming that you would spend a couple of bucks to get Gumshoe, you know, coming back to this idea of, I hope whatever Nintendo does in the future, there is at least variable pricing on these games. That seems unlikely. Oh, God. All right.

Anyway, so I think that's about it. Oh, there was, no, no, nothing. I got nothing. All right. So, we've talked about a lot of bummers here, but I want to ask you, what was the biggest bummer about virtual console? Well, I mean, I've already said it on multiple episodes. I can come up with something else if you want, but it really is for Miyoshi's Island. I've said it before, but I feel like it is a very important part of Nintendo history, a phenomenal game made by very important and great people.

and the fact that we have the Game Boy Advance port of it, but not the original, is kind of disgraceful to me. And I don't use that word lightly. So I think that's really, I mean, there are lots of games I would rather play, but the fact that so much of the core Nintendo developed libraries available, but this isn't, I feel like, like Chris said, they should take the initiative to make it happen. Yeah.

I mean, it is a cost they don't want to pay. But I feel like this could be. not a good example, but I'm like, it's not going to be easy to do, but if like people that weren't working at Nintendo could have figured it out, I feel like you guys, it shouldn't be the most difficult thing you've ever done, figuring out how to emulate a Super Vex chip or how to get that game working for the Super Nintendo.

Yeah. I mean, like, teenagers in the 90s did it. So knock yourselves out. I played it emulated. That's how most people kind of have to play it these days unless they buy the card and that's right. That's right. I guess just the move to the Wii you and everything that came along with it from learning that everything was going to be kind of exiled on the Wii menu, that wasn't going to work on the screen, that they were going to start releasing updates of games, but that they were going to really drip feed them.

And then that entire consoles would just not be supported anymore. Like there would be no upgrades for Genesis. There would be no upgrades until very recently for TurboGraphics 16. And all the TurboGraphic CD games wouldn't get upgraded. it was just like, crap. Like I had invested, you know, I'd put a whole lot of money into these digital purchases. And I was excited to bring them along to the next Nintendo platform. Yeah, okay.

Well, you took mine. But, okay, so I will specifically say the death of Sega support altogether. Yeah. Like, that was, to me, that was really sort of a moment at which it was like, you know, the Berlin Wall coming down. You could buy the. Right. a massive Sega Genesis

and even Master System library on a Nintendo console. That was really great. And then Game Gear came along and then they just stopped. Then they just... And that's... It's really heartbreaking.

There should be Genesis games on Wii U. You could get... They translated and they did what I wished that somebody would do on virtual console which is to take an old game that never came here that needed a translation and they hacked a translation into the ROM and they released Monster World 4

here in America on virtual console in English. And that's crazy. How exciting. I wish that people had done this with Final Fantasy 5 or something like, oh my God, Sagan Nensetsu 3. Seriously. What up? Yeah, what the hell.

That was what I was hoping. I was really hoping that they'd build the base of the stuff that was easier. And I understand it's not easy, but the stuff that was easier to get out that was basically done. And then they'd start actually working on using the miracle of digital distribution when the cost of goods is zero to actually start, like, doing some things that didn't happen back in the past. And, but it felt a Sega to do it, essentially, you know?

And it's like, huh, man, wish Nintendo was putting some of that bigillions of dollars they were making on the Wii and, like, putting some of that towards virtual console. Because in the end, they promised us that, you know, you can trust them about as far as you can throw them. But they, they stood up in front of people and they said this was something that they were committing to. and they committed to it until 2010, and then they were just like,

you know what, let's just kill this entire business. So, yeah, though, the one thing I will say, though, to kind of, as a corollary of the lack of Sega support, is that I really like what Sega has come up with as a replacement, which is the 3D Ages co-developed by M2. Yeah. Because they're not just churning out the same old game. Like, okay, it's Sonic the Hedgehog again.

But they add to it. it. And there's a curation element to it that virtual console is lacking. Virtual console is kind of just like, here, just shovel up the stuff. There you go, you're done. Whereas with the 3D ages,

it really feels like people who love these games, even if they don't necessarily deserve to be loved in the case of Altered Beast. Echo the Dolphin. Echo the Dolphin. Somebody out there loves you, Echo. It's not me. They love the history of these games. Maybe not

the games themselves, but they think this is a piece of history and it's worth doing right. And so you have, like the moment I fell in love with this series was with a super hang-on where, yes, you can play the game with your controls if you want, but you can also get it in a one-to-one pixel mode where it's kind of windowed. And the window around it is the elaborate motorcycle-shaped arcade cabinet. You can see the periphery of that. And then you can turn on the gyro controls just like you would have on that rare and cool arcade cabinet that was shaped like a motorcycle where you drove your way through the game by tilting your body. Obviously, you can't have that element of physicality with the 3DS, but what you can do is you can tilt the system to steer and you can see the cabinet border around the one-to-one pixel screen shifting and rotating as you turn the.

the gyro. That's amazing. It's such a great, loving detail that did not need to be given to that game, but M2 did. Probably did not make a lot of money doing that, but they were like, this is, you know, this is part of Sega's arcade heritage. It is a game that was released, and very few people have had the real experience, but we can give it to you in this kind of like simulated form. And if you're willing to like throw yourself into it, you can kind of begin to see what the arcade experience would have been like if you'd ever been lucky enough to come across a super hang-on motorcycle-shaped cabinet. And that's, like, that is an amazing experience that you just never see people do with classic

games. And, meanwhile, you have Nintendo who's like, here's Yoshi's Touch and Go for Wii U. Yeah. I mean, even the, even the DS games on 3DS, at least they give you a lot of options for display, but there is that extra touch of love. that the 3D Ages has, that I would really love to see more developers do. No one's going to because it's ridiculous.

Like, I can't believe Sega funded this, and I can't believe that a developer like M2 exists that's like, we have to get this perfect. We have to just absolutely nail not only the pixels and the sound effects and the distortions and shortcomings and flaws, but also the experience of playing. They also have every game should be like that. They hacked the spin dash into Sonic 1 optionally.

They're not afraid to make the games a little better. Not as extravagant as a building a case. But you don't have to play it with a spin dash. Yeah, it's optional. You can turn it off. You can play it as authentically as you want. And that is what M2 is all about is authenticity. And some of those options.

And even it's like the impression, the sensation of authenticity, even if it's not the real brand. And I do, I really feel like if M2 can last another 20 years, you know what I mean, and really work at it and absolutely put their. best people to this task, they might figure out a way to make Sonic the Hedgehog a good game. Oh, boy. You should have been on the last episode. That was Sonic the Hedgehog.

But some of those options they have are so minute and granular. It's like you have to read the manual to know what they do. It's like, what does this even mean? It's like you're also giving me a choice between which Genesis system I want the sound to be emulating. Like this one, that one, it's like, I can't hear a difference, but it's there for people who care. You know, but you know what?

When you play the game, if you press start, and you just play the game, it's great, right? So it's your choice if you really want to dive into that sort of stuff. So I have to admit that I don't really do that much virtual console shopping anymore, not just because I've been kind of burned on it, but also because I've really become interested in, like, finding the original systems and getting those to play as, as, like, actually, I was going to say as closely, you know, to the original experience as possible,

but actually better, like, to get the most out of them. And to me, that's more interesting and more satisfying than virtual console ever was. but I do love the super NES games on 3DS. Like that's something I've always wanted is 16-bit games that I can play in a handheld, and that aren't crap. Like, yes, you can go by like the little clone consoles that play Super NES or Genesis games, but don't. Don't do that.

It's bad. Whereas the 3DS, new 3DS, Super NES virtual console is very nice. So that's happy. But there is good about virtual console, even if we're a bunch of gloomy gusses here. I apologize. for that. I mean, virtual console came out like 10 years after

I was an internet addict downloading every game, playing every ROM, playing Japanese games I would never touch, and I would still buy virtual console games because investing money and then would actually make me want to play through the whole thing instead of just playing with it for like a minute and moving on. So I play a lot of old games that I could easily

emulate, but I was more motivated to play through them on a TV than, you know, just on an emulator on my computer. And I always find that's the case for me. Like, the closer I can get to playing a game in its original iteration, the happier it makes me, except when it's portable. And that's just, like, great to be able to play a game in a tiny little handheld version instead of being tied to a TV. I love that.

But, yeah, I'm curious. What do you think is maybe, like, name the three best and most essential games on virtual console, in your opinion? Oh, boy. I would say definitely Earthbound would be one of them. Monster World 4 would be another. Earthbound beginnings is not fun to play, but it's an interesting timepiece, I think. You're not going so much with best,

but games that are most valuable on virtual console. Yeah, like I'm trying to think of things that, just like momentous releases like that. And I do think we were talking about those turbographic CD releases. I feel like there's a real value in that because I think God help you if you can ever find that hardware that functions in the wild, the turbographic CD, I think that's kind of

a lost cause at this point, am I right? Like, those CD drives are... I mean, you can get them recapped and they'll be fixed up. I recently bought a PC engine duo R that was like recapped and RGB modded. It was a lot of money, but it'll work for a long time. Most people won't do that, though. So if you want to play Easebook 1 and 2,

like these games I feel that are kind of lost the time are available for the time being, at least of this recording. So I feel like there's a value in that library where obviously I think most of us missed those games the first time around and I was excited to play through them for the first time. So, okay, so those are the most

like essential virtual console-specific releases. What would you say are just like the three best games on there? Well, Earthbound, of course. And I agree. I mean, I played through Earthbound on Wii U virtual console and kind of the older I get

the more I like it. And I actually went back to my fanzine and looked at my review of Earthbound and I didn't say it was bad or anything. I just said that, like, at the time being 15, like, I didn't like the graphics. You know, I was like, come on, my Super Nintendo can do graphics better than this. These graphics are bad. I didn't like the inventory system, you know, because they didn't like having to, like, throw things out.

Yeah. And I think I got really, you know, obsessed over not liking those two things and said, well, maybe it's not a great game. But then, like, the next issue of my fanzine, I was like, you know, I'm really starting to come around in this earth-backer. thing. And then playing it on the Wii you was just like, this is really, this is a wonderful game. Yeah. I'd say, this is so stereotypical of me. I can't get away from the SNES.

And I'm sure there's other stuff that's worthwhile, but I think of like that Super Metroid Crono Trigger probably are the first three games I would download for any system if they were available. It's just like two good RPGs and like one of the best action adventure games of all time. If Yoshi's Island was available, I would say that above all, but it will never be. So,

I still carry that torch. I, man, I just want, I just want Secret of Mana to come out on the Wii U officially so I can play it on the game. Or 3DS would actually be good too, but I wouldn't mind just playing it on the Wii U gamepad because I don't want to take up the TV for all the time. It's going to keep me to sit there and grind magic levels, but like I really enjoy playing RPGs on, especially grinding in RPGs like on the game pad or on a portable system while we're doing other stuff. and I can just sort of mindlessly press buttons to level up magic. I've been, man, I've been waiting for that game to come out on Wii U, and it's just, it's ticking me off.

I love Secret of Mana. Okay, so all its flaws, I embrace it. Earthbound and... I mean, it's out in Japan. Okay. Yeah, great. Which I was going to go buy a Japanese Wii U, but they're never going to drop the price of these things.

Like, they're... Can you get them used cheaply? You can't get them used cheaply. You can get them used, but the used price is still like it's way over $200 bucks. I know. And it's not going to go down soon because they're going to stop manufacturing them soon.

What else did I really sink a lot of time into an virtual console? Act Razor. I play through all of Act Razor again on the Wii Virtual Console. It's a great game. What did I really play a lot of? And I mean, you know, Zelda Link to the past.

I mean, come on. You know, that's an easy one, and that always gets re-released, you know, everywhere. But still, there was a point at which Super Mario World was the best game on the Wii U. like across everything like after when they were in that

like ridiculous drought and they couldn't get any Pickman 3 wasn't out yet and just nothing was happening for like three quarters of a year it's like well it's got Super Mario World sit down and play the crap out of this

I did buy that during that drought yeah it was I guess it was 150 or something because I had already purchased it of course so yeah so do we want to talk about our gloomy predictions of the future Okay, but can I give my favorites? No, yeah, gosh. I'm sorry, we forgot to ask you.

That's okay. Yeah, well, it's my fault. Jeremy, what are your favorite games? Well, first, let me give you the essential picks, the games you need to buy because, holy crap, they're on virtual console. You guys already said both-bound, so Mega Man X-3, Shante, and Castlevania Rondo of Blood. Sure. Those are all great games.

Shante's a little rough, but you can see where the series got its start, and it really does feel like the last great eight-fit game. At least it did until Shuffle Night. So, yeah, I would recommend those three. And then just like games that I have to own, definitely Super Metroid,

definitely Mega Man 2, and Final Fantasy 3, by which I mean six. Yeah. That one needs to come to 3DS also. Wow, that would be great. So, yes.

So great games, stereotypical games. We love Super NES. Hooray. Chris, what was your question going to be? The future. Oh, gloomy predictions. Yeah, these notes are so old. It still says NX, not Switch.

Oh, man. I added Switch in there. Oh, you downloaded it. I downloaded it earlier notes. Let's pull some NX. Sorry, I mean Switch. Speculation out of our butts. That's my note.

Well, we should make a note of the fact before we start talking about Switch that Nintendo has, of course, released the NES Classic Edition. Right. which is the self-contained Atari flashback style thing which has 30 games

28 of which are available on Wii's virtual console and the other two are Bubble Bobble and Final Fantasy games from Square Wow Bubble Bobble was on Wii virtual console Yeah but Square was on Wii virtual console They're not on Wii U in America weirdly enough And yet they're participating in this

Which means that Nintendo aggressively went after This is what happens when Nintendo aggressively goes after things that they want, they can make it happen. Well, a friend of mine said, this is their holiday game. This is their holiday release. Oh, it absolutely is. There are no games. There's just this thing. And I think we're all on the same page here because I think we've all had the skeptical assertive articles about

like, is this going to sell out in the first 35 seconds and then there's not going to be any and they're going to be $500 on eBay? Like what's going to make so many of them. They're going to make so many of them. No, no, I mean, for Christmas, for this holiday season. Right. No, I mean, I think right now Nintendo needs money more than they

need sales hype. But there's, it's no, no, no, I don't think they, I don't think they ever do it for sales hype. They do it, they do, this is, I think the common misconception that they, that they do it because they want the news stories about the fact that you can't find it. Like, I just think they're really conservative and they lowball the, the popularity of this stuff. And I guess they did that with Amibo, so they still haven't learned. I think they legitimately thought only 5,000 people were going to want a Wii Fit trainer. And, and they totally blew it. And with the NES classic, I wonder if the wheel.

were in motion and they're only producing a certain amount of them. I don't really know what's going to happen. But either way, I agree. It is their holiday game. I think I've called it the most mainstream Nintendo console since the Wii. And I wonder, though, is Nintendo, what does this portend for the Switch? Does Nintendo, do, maybe do they want to move their classic gaming onto systems like this? rather than doing a virtual console for the switch?

Like, I don't know, I'm, you know, you know what I mean? I don't know either way. I'm just saying, like, what does this actually mean? Especially because there's a big old logo on the box for the NES Classic Edition. You're looking at the top of the box. It's a generic logo that says Nintendo Classics. So clearly indicating this is a, this is the start of a new product line. What does this mean for virtual console on the actual, like,

expensive Nintendo platform. I think it means both and. I think Nintendo will never turn down an opportunity to make money on a done deal. Like they don't have to develop Super Mario Brothers again. That game exists and people will buy it. They will buy it on the NES Classic and they will buy it on the NES Classic 2 next year and they will buy it on Switch when Switch virtual console comes along assuming that it does. I don't see virtual console going away, especially when you have a system that is effectively like the Wii U and the 3DS combined and you can play

these classic games any way you want like that's a pretty compelling use case. Hi, I'd do that. Yes, thank you. Okay. Right. Not having to buy these games separately? Oh, again. Okay. Well, that's, so that, so then it introduces the question of, okay, so let's say that they do virtual console on Switch,

which I agree they're probably going to. And I to whatever level they are committed to it, because I don't really know how committed they're going to be this time around. Like, it could be that maybe they're, you know, whiffing it right now on WiiU and 3DS because they're really planning a big, all, virtual console love fest for the Switch. Or maybe they're whiffing it because they don't really care,

and they're just going to do the exact same thing over again. Then the question becomes backward compatibility. It's not... I don't foresee backward compatibility either. Well, excuse me, it can't run the software from the WiiU. It's an invidia tegra chip. It's not going to run the power PC emilators on that. Well, it's just a matter of logistics.

But from backward compatibility, standpoint, what I mean is, if that game gets added to the Switch and they know, again, that your account owns that game on the Wii U or the 3DS, are they going to give it to you for free, which at this point I think are going to should, or give you a discount, you know, what is it going to be like in terms of transferring not the actual software, but understanding you have the rights to that software on the Switch? And are they going to just make people buy stuff all over again? Yeah, I'm concerned about that.

My concern about Nintendo is, the N.S Classic is fine. It's not for me. It's not for people like me. I feel like my concern is that Nintendo is conservative and they have a problem backing away from NES nostalgia where it was like 15 years ago NES nostalgia, 10 years ago NES nostalgia, 10 years ago NES nostalgia. 2016 NES nostalgia. It's like I want you to move on to another era of nostalgia. Like I want the SNS Mini. I'll pay for it.

But I've seen these games so many times. we released so many times, and I fear that the virtual console for the Switch will be just like, oh, you guys want NES games, okay, we'll give you all the NES games, and they'll just ignore every other platform. I feel like the NES is such a safe place for them to just sit. I'm just very concerned that there will not be an S-NES mini. There will not be as deep as an S-NES catalog on the Switch as there will be an NES catalog. Yeah, it's true. Like right now, I mean, you know, across the collecting community, people have kind of noted that

like NES retro prices for the original cartridges are kind of staying. flat while it's Super Nintendo that's exploding and it's N64 that's exploding. I do think they have to get out an S-NES mini sooner rather than later. I think that would be a really big deal for them if they can do that. Yeah, even with the same

limitations of the NES classic, I would be more excited for that just because it's a sort of a new frontier of nostalgia for them to explore where they've just doubled down on NES so much that I'm kind of tired of it, even though I'm very, very nostalgic and I love so many of those games. I'm just kind of sick of seeing them trotted out so many times. They are, and I hope they understand

that they are reaching the end. Like, we are coming up on the end of the cycle for NES nostalgia. It started 20 years after the release of the Famicom in Japan. We're now coming up on... It's 31 years after the NES release in America. Like, that wave of nostalgia has crested, I think.

And now it's like, can they take advantage of Super Nintendo Nostalgia, as you say, in the same way that they were, to take advantage of NES nostalgia. But I will say that the NES classic edition is the right product at the right time, I think, because I've heard a lot of interest in it from people who do not normally care about video games

who are like, oh, yeah, that new NES. Like, can you play cartridges on it? Not only that, that's bad. The vast majority of the people who are going to buy that thing, they don't even know about it right now. They're literally going to walk into a target. They don't read video game news. They've never heard about this thing.

They're going to walk into Target. They're going to walk into the video game section. They're going to see that thing on the shelf. And they're going to be like, what, in God's name? They're going to take that home immediately. I think they're not even going to have to go to the video game section. This, to me, strikes me as Nintendo reaching out into beyond, like, the specialty retail market. You're going to see it on an end cap at, like, home goods or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, this is going to be, totally, totally. People are like, oh, where am I going to be able to find this game? You're going to be able to walk into a huge variety of stores. And this is Nintendo just, like, really, just totally blubters. lows this, they're going to go beyond. Wait, wait. I know. There's a good chance. Anything's possible. But if Nintendo does this right, then basically, like, anything short of a

grocery store is going to be able to walk into a, you know, marshals. And, you know, in between the women's shoes and the oversized men's belt, there should be a display of these things. And this is the, this is what I've called this is, this is the Nintendo should put Super Mario Brothers on cell phones. This is it. This is like going outside of where it wishes its consumers were and actually going to where they are. Yeah, and people are complaining about the $60 price tag, but as people have said, this is the Nintendo holiday video game release. How much would that cost? Oh, that's right. It would be $60. People who are complaining about the $60 price tag are the same people who are complaining that it doesn't have wireless controllers and it doesn't

have downloadable games, it doesn't have a cartridge slot. It's like, yeah, but that's going to make it $200. You don't want that by a Wii. So, yeah, I mean, I do see a future in, I think that Nintendo, it's like, TikTok, congratulations, you finally made it to the dedicated, you know, little mini-consul market, great. And in fairness, have done it better than pretty much anyone. 100%. This is, if you can get over the fact that you have to stretch a giant HDMI cable from your TV to your person to play it. They're going to saw a lot of those Neko link controller extenders. This is a really nice way to play these games, for sure.

It's nicer than it even really needed to be because of that sort of casual audience. Oh, yeah. I mean, people will still buy those A.T. Sega systems. Those are trash. Those are hot trash. Those are like smoldering trash that will melt your hands if you touch them.

This is like a good quality product. Yep, yeah. It's Nintendo doing Nintendo. Like, they don't do crap. And the controller is fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Even though this thing is shortcomings that I don't like, I feel like there's still.

retaining the quality and the value of these games by presenting them in a way where it's like these games are important and you remember them and they're worth playing again instead of just like here's a keychain with Pac-Man on and have fun and again if they do it the right way they can they can refresh it every year they can bring out a new model every year with a few more games they're still they're still the NAS mini they can take advantage of stupid idiots like me who'll just buy all of them they can keep it they can constantly keep whatever it is fresh on store shells which retailers want that's why it's Atari flashback one two three four five six seven because retailers want, what's the new thing?

What's the new thing? You know, you can always say, oh, we added a few more games to it. Like, there is an opportunity to be exploited here. I think the gloom and doom scenario for the Switch, I think, is that not that they don't do virtual console because I think they will, but that it's just, again, it's just like,

oh, we release Super Mario Brothers for the Switch. Oh, we release Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past for the Switch next week. Oh, we release this, we release that. And it's just the big, it's just the big games again. It's waiting for them all again. And it's, and it's, it's quite frankly, it's the Switch doesn't do well,

and Nintendo says they kind of abandon it. But the rosy scenario here is that the Switch is just the first form factor, the first configuration of a family of Nintendo products that all use the same mobile chipsets, and that, you know, maybe there will be, a much more portable version of this. You know what I mean? Like something that with a smaller screen,

you know, the buttons kind of built into the screen that's, that's, you know, that is the 3DS successor. And then at that point, they are just selling you games to your account. And you don't, when the next portable comes out, you don't have to re-buy all the games because it literally just runs all the same games because it's the same system in a smaller form factor. Or people who don't want the Switch,

they release a version that is just a little, Apple TV thing that hooks up to your TV, but again, you just log into your account, all the games are there, and ultimately, hopefully that is like the silver lining here that Nintendo has done running two separate platforms and selling you the same game on both ends. I think that's going to be the case. But the real, like the golden lining would be if they finally just say have a downloadable service where you, you know, just, you know, pay a monthly fee and you can play. and you can play, you know, $15 a month, you can play any old game.

And they charge you $10 a month, $15 a month, they just dump the libraries on there. And then if there is a bug in one of the games, they fix it on the server side because you're logging in to play it anyway and done. It's like you shouldn't have to go through. I mean, this is really about changing Nintendo's mentality in general, but it's like you shouldn't have to go through ages and ages and ages of testing on every single game running on the emulator to make sure that it absolutely works perfectly.

Just get it out there and fix it later. They could call it Nestflix. I was going to mention that my references is dated. I was going to say I was going to bring up a Game Tap-style service, but that seemed too outlandish for Nintendo to ever even want to do. But maybe they're changing things drastically

with the failure of the Wii. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that would be really fascinating if they came out and they said, we're doing Game Tap. that would be really interesting. Because again, what does Nintendo have to offer?

Nintendo, first of all, you know, one of the major revenue drivers that Nintendo is not doing is a monthly subscription service, you know? Microsoft has millions of people just paying them apropos of nothing for Xbox Live Gold, whether they use it or not. I'm paying Sony for PlayStation Plus. I'm paying Microsoft for Xbox Live Gold.

Nintendo could sign up Switch owners onto some kind of service, and maybe they will for most. Multiplayer gaming, quite frankly, they should. Because they don't need to do free online multiplayer gaming anymore. Nobody else does it. They should just say, you've got to pay us whatever a year for multiplayer gaming and then start giving out free virtual console games like candy. Or sign them up, as you say, for that, you know, for that, you know, all you can eat gaming service.

Maybe they don't do virtual console anymore. Maybe they actually don't sell you individual games anymore and they just do the service. Netflix. Yeah, very good. I mean, that is also a possibility. Like, if they really want to radically overhaul what they're doing, they might do that. And they might decide that, you know,

sending out individual ROM files for each individual game and selling them isn't how they want to approach this anymore. So I don't know. Yeah, I mean, if they had an Xbox Live style service that was $10 a month and included, as part of that, total access to the virtual console library, I mean, I think they would make a lot of money that way. Maybe I'm wrong. What do I know? I'm not a business person.

I work in video games, journalism, so what are my life choices? It's like, I don't know, you know, we hear in this room with a virtual council whales, right? Like, if they put out $100 worth of great games a month, we would spend $100 a month. But I don't know what percentage of the audience we truly are. And I'd be willing to say that's why I feel like the all-you-can-eat service makes a lot more sense. Because if you build it into part of a bigger service with other benefits, then it's like, oh, yes, this all makes sense. I'm getting, you know, online access and other assorted benefits. And also look at all these games.

I can play Super Mario Brothers any time. And so what do you think? Do you think that they'd be able to do both? Do you think that they'd be able to sell people the good games and then take all the less good games and put them on the All You Can Eat Service, or do you think it would have to be, it would have to be one or the other? I think it would have to be one or the other. Like if you have an All You Can Eat Service that's just like Urban Champion and Ike.

Yeah. No, like who's going to pay for that? Right. You've got to have the good stuff on there. But I mean, that's fine because if you can get like a 50% attach rate to this service to your console, that's going to be making a lot more money than whatever virtual console games are currently selling. What if, hmm, what if buy,

Forever was also an option. Like, Prime, you know, Amazon Prime has Prime music, but then they also sell you music. Like, I wonder if, wouldn't it be interesting if there was the all-you-can-eat-eat option? And then if it was like, oh, or if you buy this, you can own it for the duration of your experience, you know? I don't know. So many possibilities. Yeah. Which will Nintendo explore?

Probably none. Probably none. We're all going to laugh at this in 10 years. Yeah. Or in three months. Yeah, that's true. Even if they don't do the All You Can Eat Service, I feel like. the Nintendo online service where they charge you for multiplayer and then they

give you free games, a couple of free games a month. I mean, those things are the golden handcuffs because with some of those services, yeah, if you cancel the service, you lose access to those games, right? I mean, certainly in some cases. So that's real incentive. Yeah, to me that seems more likely to happen. But I do like the Netflix model where it's just like, everything because people don't like flip through Netflix and think, oh, these movies have no value because I can watch any of them. They're like, oh, what do I want to watch? Now it's, oh, what do I want to play? And then you have original programming. Like, what would Nintendo's equivalent of Jessica Jones be? I don't know, but I'd be interested to find out.

Right. Yeah, like now Netflix has prestige TV or it didn't before. And people still want to watch that. So, yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Very interesting. I mean, you know, again, And it's like Nintendo just has this massive, massive, amazing catalog of stuff, and there's multiple ways to do something with that. And then also really, you also have the, I mean, you know, Frank Sefalby, Retronaut has talked about this in his GDC presentation, but publishers and console holders are like scared of emulation. It would be totally technically possible for, say, Capcom to like dump all of their

NES games in an emulator and put them on the PS4, but they don't. And so Nintendo has this psychological monopoly on things that were released on old Nintendo systems. So they can exploit this if they want to and in fact have the whole market all to itself if it has the willpower to really do it again. I would love to see a renewed interest in virtual console on the level that we had from 2006, 2010,

which is when I was complaining about virtual console the most, I guess I'm sorry? Like, it's really weird to look back and be complaining to push it to be better. But, like, you know, those were like the golden years when they were actually putting out five games. Well, I think it's a, I think it just shows that virtual consoles should have been better,

but it didn't get better. It got worse. And that's a big letdown. It could have been special. and said it was just like kind of a thing that sort of farted out into nothing. Oh, well, anyway, so good and bad, happy and sad. That's Virtual Console.

That's been this episode of Retronauts, and we'll revisit it 10 years from now and see what we think. Anyway, thanks for listening, and I hope this brought back some fond memories for those of you who have been listening for a long time. It certainly felt like old times to me, except I have to produce the episode myself, I never used to have to do. That sucks.

Anyway, thanks Chris and Bob for participating in this. Why don't you guys tell us your names and everything, all that stuff? I'm Chris Kohler, and I have a new version of my old bookout, speaking of things that are more than 10 years old. Power up, how Japanese video games gave the world an extra life, originally published in 2004. Now available again in 2016 with a new chapter and stuff like that. and if you like old video games,

you should totally read this because that is what I talk about. So just go on to Amazon and search for like power up Chris Kohler and you'll find it pretty easily. It's also available on Kindle. How about that? Hello, I'm Bob Mackey.

I apologize for being quiet on this episode, but like virtual console, I'm also dying. It's not my fault. I do blame Nintendo, though. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also write for Fandum powered by Wikia. You can go to fandom.com to read my writing now. And I also do the podcast Talking Simpsons

or chronological exploration of the Simpsons. You can find that at Leasertimepodcast.com every Wednesday. Thank you. And I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on the internet as Jeremy Parrish or ToastyFrog or GameSpite or Telebony or any of the various other handles that I've adopted over the years. I'm kind of, I'm kind of all over the place. You would just delete your website sometimes.

I sometimes it has to die. Listen. Anyway, yeah, I do stuff about video games. It's pretty cool. You should check it out if you want. It's okay. I won't take it personally if you don't. But you're already here.

listening to this podcast, so you might as well. And of course, this podcast is made possible by funding through patrons like you, if you're one of our patrons. If not, then maybe you should be. It'd be pretty cool if you helped contribute to making this podcast happen because it's not free. Like freedom, podcasts cost money to make. Men died to make this podcast happen. Bob is dying right now. You better stand while you listen to this. That's all I'm saying. With your hand over your heart. Yes, I am dying. We'll end with taps. anyway thank you for those of you those thank you to those of you who support us and we hope that you have enjoyed this episode we'll be back next week with a micro episode and in two

weeks with a bigan thanks I'm going to be able to be. Oh. Oh. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.