Every other week, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.
If you're smitten with the Virtual Console, one thing we're sure you aren't in love with is having to swap games between an SD card and your Wii's internal memory, or even worse -- deleting games to be re-downloaded later. WiiWare is on its way and it's hard to imagine My Life as a King demeaning itself to share its estate with less noble games. And certainly not with it bringing microtransactions to the royal ball. And wouldn't it be dandy if some of our multiplatform ports had somewhere to store that downloadable content that everyone is raving about on other consoles?
We wantneed more storage, and some of you have gathered to plead with Nintendo to sell a Wii Hard Drive. It appears that your cries just fall on deaf ears because they seem hardly driven to provide one. In this edition of Revolutionary, we'll examine why Wii can't have a hard drive.
Australia getting a Virtual Console game before anyone else? Maybe! We can't be sure when Sonic 3 and Super Mario Bros. 3 will find their way onto the VC, but at least we know they're on their way, thanks to the Office of Film and Classification.
The Aussie equivalent of the ESRB keeps a database of ratings just like the ESRB does. A bunch of games have been added, including a lot that are already out in other regions, and a few, like Mario 3, that are news. Of course, the best part of this for people who don't happen to have Australian consoles is that if a game is planned for one region, it's terribly likely it'll be out soon in others!
Other things on the list that make us happy: Strider (although we don't know if it's the Genesis version or the NES version), Galaga '90, and Probotector II-- which is Super C. The full list of new updates is after the break!
It's an odd pairing for the weekend for European gamers -- the punk-influenced Air Zonk and the classically adorable Paper Mario! What do they both have in common? A light-hearted approach to gaming and solid offerings for their respective genres. That's something we can get behind.
This probably doesn't affect any readers here (although, if you're a Japan-local Wii Fanboy, let us know!) but we discovered something interesting while drooling at the Japanese Virtual Console page.
Proving their absolute and irrational devotion to historical accuracy, the version of Castlevaniagoing up on the VC this month will not be the same cartridge version that's already been released in the US and Europe. Instead, Japan is getting the original version, which was released for the Famicom Disk System in 1986. The differences include a save state feature and a name entry screen with music unheard in the US version! Which, unfortunately, we can't find. The idea that there's Castlevania music out there that we haven't heard makes us kind of uncomfortable.
Hope you're in the mood for sequels today, because if you're itching for a new retro title, that's what Nintendo's offering up, at least when it comes to Sega. A couple of today's titles were also released in the U.S. this week, which means you can check out the video wrap-up for a little game footage.
Also, for some reason the format of the releases on the Nintendo Europe site seems to have changed, so let us know if these costs are not correct -- we're basing this off past VC pricing.
Dragon Spirit -- TurboGrafx -- 600 Wii points
Ecco: The Tides of Time -- Sega Mega Drive -- 800 Wii points
Golden Axe II -- Sega Mega Drive -- 800 Wii points
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 -- Sega Mega Drive -- 800 Wii points
Making up for its delayed arrival to Australia's Virtual Console, the TurboGrafx-16 will debut in the world's smallest continent next week with eleven releases! Hudson's VC site lists that over a third of the games will be shmups -- no big surprise there -- but classics like Dungeon Explorer, Military Madness, and Bomberman '93 are also set to appear at the system's opening ceremony.
The US, having been spoiled with dozens of TG-16 releases since the Wii's launch, will receive only one PC-Engine title next Monday: Dragon Spirit, an impossibly hard, vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up in which you pilot a blue dragon. Check past the post break for Hudson's planned releases across all territories this July.
We can't ever get enough of Kirby around here. He's just so cute and puffy. So obviously, when we think Kirby, we think golf. Because, uh ... balls are round. Yep. And what goes well with golf? Commandos.
Right. We don't get this week's pair of releases either, but hey ... maybe opposites really do attract.
This week's Japanese Virtual Console update brings something very rare to the Wii: a role-playing game. And by Capcom's Breath of Fire II is a pretty good one. Also available are a fossilized Konami classic, the sequel to one of the weirdest game concepts ever to become a mainstream hit, and a bizarre first-person space adventure of some kind-- we can't tell if Silent Debuggers is an action game or a graphical text adventure. Anyone out there play the US release on the Turbografx-16?
Also listed as a June release, but with no specified date, is Paper Mario. Since there are no more Tuesdays in June, this one looks like it's getting delayed.
The Virtual Console has made shooting games widely available for the first time in years. We like shooters, despite being categorically awful at them, so we're happy about this. But has the genre been disproportionately represented on the VC? There are so many, versus very few fighting games, and no role-playing games.
Are you guys buying shooters? Are you happy with the selection? Are you all zap zap zap and pew pew pew at the bad spaceships?
All this week, we've been talking about what we want to see on the Virtual Console, and we're not done yet. But it seemed like a good time to stop and ask your opinion. What games do you think deserve a VC release, and why? Go ahead and throw out a few titles. Don't be shy. We (probably) won't make fun of you; after all, we've been baring our favorites, for good and for ill. So join us and let us know what you're willing to drop five or ten bucks on.
This should be a pretty easy one -- of everything released so far on the Virtual Console, what's been your favorite? What have you not minded spending money on? We've been talking about the VC all week, so of course this question just begs to be answered ... and we expect a hot debate. So let's get it on!
We fully expect to hear a lot about various Zelda titles and maybe a few Castlevanias (we better hear some Castlevania) and perhaps an F-Zero or two, but surely someone will make JC proud and name Ninja Spirit or something.
Every now and then, a game comes out for the Virtual Console that you remember loving back when it was new. At the time, you were convinced it was the best game ever. As soon as it was released for the VC, you raced to the Wii, credit card clutched in one sweaty, excited hand. But as soon as you got past the title screen, something happened. It was no longer as awesome as you remembered. In fact, the game sucked.
All this week, we're celebrating retro goodness here at Wii Fanboy -- call it an extension of Virtually Overlooked -- and we thought we'd start right here with a question that's perfect to ponder while you're having that morning coffee. With over 100 games now available on the Virtual Console, many of you have probably played something this time around that you never got around to before. As new experiences, how do these games hold up? Or are you unwilling to buy anything you didn't already love in a past life?
So why is the ActRaiserbox featured here? Because this blogger never played it back in the day, and after playing it now, pretty much considers the sixteen years without ActRaiser to be a mockery of life.
At the very least, this is a great week for pricing on the Virtual Console -- all three of the games are near the lower end of the pricing scheme, and for gamers trying to collect 'em all (or at least, as many as they can!), that's usually good news. Don't think that limits the choices, however; this week, you can choose your poison -- puzzle, shooter, or ... uh ... Balloon Fight. It's fighting. With balloons. Which is, of course, awesome.
Australia getting a Virtual Console game
All 
This should be a pretty easy one -- of everything released so far on the Virtual Console, what's been your favorite? What have you not minded spending money on? We've been talking about the VC all week, so of course this question just begs to be answered ... and we expect a hot debate. So 
Every now and then, a game comes out for the Virtual Console that you remember loving back when it was new. At the time, you were convinced it was the best game ever. As soon as it was released for the VC, you raced to the Wii, credit card clutched in one sweaty, excited hand. But as soon as you got past the title screen, something happened. It was no longer as awesome as you remembered. In fact, the game sucked.
All this week, we're celebrating retro goodness here at Wii Fanboy -- call it an extension of 
