Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Nintendo has updated their Japanese Virtual Console site with a list of fifteen games coming out in July. That's nine more than we got last month. Even if we don't believe that the MSX games are actually going to come out (Eggy? Released?) that's a lot of games for Japan to enjoy.

One of the more interesting titles is Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, which was released on the Super Famicom game download service called "Nintendo Power." Much like the rewritable Famicom Disk System disks, the "Nintendo Power" cartridge was a rewritable flash cartridge that could accept games downloaded from store kiosks. A cartridge version of the game came out later.

A couple of retro-tastic Taito games show up this month: Chack 'n Pop is a direct precursor to Bubble Bobble (even including the same Monsta creatures), and Kiki KaiKai is the original Pocky & Rocky (also an ancestor of the recent Heavenly Guardian). The full list of releases is after the break.

D4 Enterprise just opened up a new area of their "Project MSX" website that provides information on the MSX game(s) available on the Japanese Virtual Console. This site, which is designed similarly to the VC sites operated by Sega and Hudson, is going to be an excellent resource for learning about obscure MSX games as they come out, with boxarts, screenshots and game descriptions.

The page for the sole MSX game currently available, Aleste, revealed surprising, previously unknown information about the Wii's MSX emulator: specifically, that Aleste supports the use of USB keyboards, in addition to the Wiimote, GameCube controller, and Classic Controller. It makes sense since the MSX is a computer, but this is the first new control option for a Virtual Console game since the service began.

Japan had to wait long enough for the first MSX game to show up on the Virtual Console that anything extra D4 Enterprise (or Nintendo, or whoever makes the emulators for the VC) could do to make the experience a pleasant one is welcome. Aleste features an extra "MSX Option Menu" that is accessed via the minus button, which allows players to choose between MSX hardware-based music and the more advanced FM music that, back when the MSX was real hardware, required an add-on card.

Impressively, you can also swap the two fire buttons via the "Button Change" option. It's a good thing for Nintendo that they'll never bother to release this over here, because the four people who would download an MSX game would get spoiled.

Unable to resist the opportunity to release a game late even as they were releasing it on time, D4 Enterprise has finally released one of their two planned MSX games (which are now over a year late). Aleste has been added to today's lineup of Virtual Console games, for 800 Wii Points. The other announced MSX game, EGGY, has been postponed for an unspecified amount of time.

Sliding a single release in under the wire is sort of an inauspicious debut for the MSX, but it's better than seeing those two games delayed over and over again, loitering at the bottom of Nintendo's Virtual Console lineup page.

[Via Inside-Games]

Nintendo has released the planned May lineup of Virtual Console games for Japan, and while it doesn't include any megatons (like last month most certainly did), there are at least a lot of games on the list. The first two MSX games, Eggy and Aleste, are supposed to make their fashionably late appearance, but we find it a lot easier to believe that they'll be bumped for some Wonder Boy ports.

Other interesting games, which may actually be released, include: Front Mission Series: Gun Hazard, a shooter similar to Cybernator (in fact director Toshiro Tsuchida worked on both games) and based on the Front Mission series of strategy games; Star Parodier, the "silly" Star Soldier game; and Martial Champion, a CD-based Street Fighter clone from Konami. Hit the break for the full list!

Every week when we go to look up the Japanese Virtual Console releases, we look down at the MSX section and notice the projected "2007" release date for EGGY and Aleste and wonder when Nintendo's going to get the memo. We ... just didn't see them meeting that ship date -- not because we don't have faith in Nintendo or in D4 Enterprise, but because 2007 has been over for almost two months now.

Finally, the dates have been changed to something that doesn't require time travel to meet: May 2008. Will either of these games actually come out in May? We're getting impatient ... for games that will probably never be released outside Japan!

[Via VC Reviews]

It's not SNK putting Neo Geo classics on the Virtual Console. They're off releasing compilations and embarrassing DS games. The company responsible for your sudden access to Blue's Journey is D4 Enterprise, who has been obtaining licenses for Neo Geo games from SNK and putting the games on the Virtual Console.

Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield spoke to D4's Shinobu Shimizu about the company and their Neo Geo plans. Basically, D4 plans to release SNK Playmore properties (and, as shown by World Heroes, ADK games as well) in a very faithfully-emulated form, with the possibility of a few concessions made to new gamers. Selectable difficulty in Magician Lord is cited as such a change.

D4 already has experience with enabling retrogaming on rare systems -- they got their start with the 1Chip MSX device, a new, cheaper version of the MSX computer (pictured). It is no surprise, then, that D4 is behind the plans to put MSX games on the VC.

Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative.

We didn't intend to cover the same series two weeks in a row, but recent developments in the world of Virtual Console made a discussion of a Konami RPG for the MSX2 computer seem timely. Maybe, we thought, our prayers for Snatcher caused the universe to swing things our way a little bit. Well, here's another appeal.

SD Snatcher takes the violent, gritty, sci-fi detective story of Snatcher, and presents it as a turn-based RPG populated by big-headed "super deformed" characters. We choose to believe this decision was some postmodern playfulness from Hideo Kojima-- deliberately downplaying the dramatic aspects of his game and overlaying obvious videogame conventions on top of it, like when Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid read your memory card. Or it could just have been that Japanese gamers like RPG's a lot.

Japanese Wii owners are quite the lucky folk, as word hit today that the Wii's Virtual Console service in Japan will be getting games for the NEO GEO and MSX systems. Games for those systems will be available to Japanese consumers come this Spring, so there is still a bit of waiting. No word has hit on whether these systems' games are going to be available to Virtual Consoles outside the region, but we hope that's the case as it could pave the way for more systems to appear on Nintendo's digital downloading service.

[via CVG; thanks prof-KOS!]

When Nintendo first announced the Virtual Console service, it seemed as though Nintendo themselves would be just about the only ones releasing their past games. Of course, Nintendo's library is beyond incredible, but with the exception of Sega and Hudson, it just seemed as though companies weren't going to be taking advantage of the service.

(insert clichéd "tides have turned" line here) Nintendo has announced Virtual Console partnerships with twenty-four separate publishers, the full listing of which can be seen after the break. The big boys are all on-board: Square-Enix, Konami, Bandai-Namco. A few of the companies don't seem to have much of a legacy at all, however, which implies that they may be working on some smaller-scale original games for the VC service.

In addition, it appears that the Virtual Console will now be supporting the MSX (pictured above), an older arcade system. Iwata-san also expressed in interest to bring even more consoles to the Wii: we here at the Fanboy pray to the rings of Saturn.

(Fun fact! Did you know that video game mega-franchises Dragon Quest and Metal Gear first appeared on the MSX?)