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.

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]

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]